The question of whether or not the United States should have used the Atomic Bomb against Japan has been a perineal question among American...

For
obvious reasons, this is a very sensitive issue, and it's important to acknowledge that there
are perfectly valid reasons to support either side of the argument. Having said that, I would
argue that the United States was not justified in dropping the atomic bomb on Japan, for the
reasons I will set out below.

The most important reason would be moral. The
atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused massive
devastation, taking the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Although the vast
majority of these deaths took place on the day that the bombs were dropped, many of those who
survived the initial attack eventually died from serious illnesses such as cancer and radiation
sickness. Many children also suffered from birth defects such as cleft palates and club foot due
to their mothers' exposure to high levels of radiation.

In practical terms,
the dropping of the bomb was also unnecessary. Even the Secretary for War at the time, Henry
Lewis Stimson, acknowledged that

Japan had no allies; its
navy was almost destroyed; its islands were under a naval blockade; and its cities were
undergoing concentrated air attacks.

That being the case,
Japan was virtually on the brink of defeat, and so there was no need for the United States to
adopt such drastic measures.

It's interesting to note that, in its
preparations for deploying the atomic bomb, the US military was more concerned with the
devastating effect it would cause rather than any assistance it might provide in bringing an end
to the war. Strategic geopolitical considerations were of considerably greater importance here
than any desire to save American lives, in contrast to what supporters of the decision to bomb
Japan have always claimed.

In bombing Japan, President Truman and the army
brass wanted to send out a clear warning to the USSR of what the United States was capable of
should the Soviets push them too far. In this high-stakes game of international politics,
Japanese civilians were considered expendable. As well as being utterly amoral and cynical, this
contempt for the welfare of Japanese civilians was completely unnecessary anyway, as the USSR
was already in the process of developing its own atomic weapons capability.

If anything, the Soviets saw the bombing of Japan as an incentive to acquire the same
weaponry. Thus was born the great arms race that would create so many tensions during the Cold
War and would lead the world to the brink of nuclear armageddon during the Cuban Missile
Crisis.

In both the short and long-term, then, the consequences of the
bombing of Japan were damaging indeednot just for the people of Japan but for the whole
world.