The Bombing of Japan was the best option

1. The Atomic Bomb meant an immediate end to the war. While it may not have been pretty dropping the atomic bomb forced Japan to surrender within less than a week. Japan was not willing to stop fighting and would have continued a war in the Pacific. With over one million members in the Japanese army they had more than enough insurgents to attempt a new attempt of taking over the midway islands and the Philippines. As had been proven by the numerous kamikaze pilots the Japanese warriors were far from surrender. The attack on Hiroshima was the only thing the Allies could do sending a powerful enough message to force a surrender. 2. The Bomb actually resulted in less deaths. The Japanese government had been given many chances for a surrender but they refused. It was obvious to the Allies that the only other way to bring about an end to the war would have been an actual mainland assault on Japan. In the final two battles Iwo Jima and Okinawa the results were incredibly bloody and every Japanese soldier on the islands refused to retreat and instead fought to their deaths which is what would have happened on Japan except on a much larger scale. By even the most conservative of estimates say that an inland attack if it ended in a surrender would have cost the Americans at least 100,000 deaths and over 1,000,000 Japanese that is including soldiers and the civilians who would no doubt try to fight off the Allies advance. However in the bombing the deaths were counted at 90,000–166,000 people. This is a much more preferable number even if they were civilian deaths. 3. Civilian deaths were unavoidable. Operation Olympic (aka the alternate to a bombing ) would have involved an attack on Japanese soil. This would be unavoidable because of Japans absolute resistance to lose the war. Can you imagine how hard you and every American would fight if the Japanese were attacking us here on our own soil. Then you can imagine how unendingly the Japanese would battle to protect their homes and families in the event of a ground invasion. The civilians would of course fight us and so civilian deaths were unavoidable under any circumstances. Also even the civilians that lived in Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have been in dire danger because both of those cities were major targets in Operation Olympic. With or without bombings civilians would not have been able to not be harmed. 4. Soviets needed to be fended off. In the Final days a battle with Soviet Russia would have been disastrous. It seemed that to the other Allies that Russia would have caused a confrontation. Russia continued to build up its army and navy with the intent of causing another fight. The American government had to assure that Russia would have been kept from a battle and that they realized we were not going to back down from a fight so they would back off. This worked well as the Soviets and the Americans never did go to war. If we had not dropped the atomic bomb and had instead fought the Japanese on their own land we would have lost 100,000 Americans a large chunk of our military. This would have weakened our resolve killed many of our soldier and used tons of funds in the battle. This would have made us prime targets for the Soviets. President Harry S. Truman dropped the bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima for one reason: not to end the war with Japan, but to intimidate Stalin, keep him out of the Pacific war, deny him a share of the peace that we were going to impose on Japan. 5. The other options were even more brutal. I have already reviewed the flaws in a mainland attacks but many have argued about blockading Japan in until they quit. This would not have ended the battle as many people would have died trying to escape the blockade and it would also not have intimidated Russia. However let me ask you this. Which would you rather choose. A quick and painless death or starvation to death. If we blockaded them many civilians would have died as all the remaining supplies would be given to the military in an attempt to break the blockade. The average non military Japanese person was only living on 1,000 calories a day. If we blockaded them in hundreds of thousands would people would starve to death and many people still would have opposed a surrender http://www.americanheritage.com... http://wiki.answers.com... http://www.youtube.com...