And yet there are many saying that Japan was willing to surrender as long as they could keep the emperor as a figurehead.

Which, hilariously, is the exact treaty that was signed after the bombing.

I've read many journal articles about this event. Japanese were willing to surrender much earlier.

Possibly, yes.

On the other hand, the military tried to stage a coup and lock the Emperor away when he tried to surrender... AFTER the bombs had already dropped.

It's not nearly as clear-cut as you want to make it appear. There were several factions still fighting for various causes and ideals within Japan.

now this is what´s wrong with this thread. basically  the people who feel similar to me are not saying that the japanese were good at all. their military forces killed millions of people and were terrible just as bad as the guys who threw the bombs. we´re not saying japan was innocent. we are saying that for a allied force like the usa it was a cruel move, if the usa were the good ones they should have attacked the japanese military not a small innocent town. or were the guys at hiroshima the ones that killed millions of people so they deserved to pay?

of course japanese military was not good at all but those people who died did not deserve to. just look up for the causes of the bombing and you will see how terrible it was. I wouldnt wish it on anyone

like someone said before by that logic the native americans had the right to bomb small town all over the usa. how would you have felt if that had happened?

I dont know. some comments on this thread make feel really bad. and a bit disapointed in the world. I thought the world had evolved a bit. I guess I was wrong

so I guess the deaths of thousands of people is not enough to create controversy

While Im not going to understate the horrific nature of the nuclear weapon attack on Hiroshima and Nakgasaki I do believe they were an necessary evil to end the war. Its wonderful to look back on the bombing with 20/20 hind sight and say that the Japanese Empire was close to collapse and might have negotiated for surrender. Truth is the militants were never going to let go of power, and it was only the bombing that forced the Emperor to order the leaders to sue for peace with the Allies, and even then factions in the military attempted a coup d'etat.

I could go on but I'll save you the long boring history that I studied, however I do find it odd that people remember the atomic bombing of those two cities but forget the fire bombing of Tokyo where more people died and where misplaced and civilians where directly targeted to be killed in massive numbers. 

Well, history as shown that you need to kill the right people to create controversy...

I mean, look at Africa. Millions of civilians has been slaughtered in different parts of Africa but the world doesn't care much.

Dropping those bombs is one of the greatest crimes against humanity ever committed.

I don't understand how anybody can still defend them.  Their argument seems to be that it was minimizing potential casualties by stopping the war as quickly as possible.  However, they're deciding that murdering countless innocent children and women and even non-Japanese was okay, as long as it minimized the deaths of U.S. soldiers and Japanese soldiers.  I disagree.  I don't think non-combat troops get to be a part of those equations.

Traditional bombs would have been cheaper, cleaner, more successful, and even deadlier.  More people died in the traditional bombing of Tokyo (but without mutated babies and decades of radiation poisoning).

We were just trying to scare the USSR by showing off our new weapons.  We weren't ending WW2 with the nukes; we were starting the Cold War.

IMO, war altogether is disgusting, and it really saddens me to see how low humanity stoops due to the inability to co-exist with one another.

Now as for the topic itself, I have never, ever, condoned the killing of innocents. Now I don't know just how credible this talk is (history is written by the victor, after all), but going by the American perspective, didn't the US issue a warning to the Japanese to "surrender or face complete and utter destruction" before dropping the A-bombs? I mean, barring Japan, the Axis powers have been defeated. I don't really understand why the Japanese continued fighting (if there's something I'm missing, please fill me in)...

What can I say, war isn't pretty. It is an atrocity without a doubt, but such is the ugliness of war...

Edit: Okayy, I posted this without looking at the previous pages...seeing how there is particularly strong controversy over whether the Japanese were willing to surrender or not depending on the terms of surrender, I really am now at a loss for words...

I suppose that's also true.