The United States of America should never have bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Thank you for your response. Even though it did take two days, it is well-composed and thought out. Rebuttals Before I begin, I would just like to extremely stress the option of "peace." My opponent has never clearly refuted why it was not and option and stated, confusingly, that it was a hypothetical option, which did not prove why he posed it in the first place. He stated that moral in war was to end the war with the fewest deaths. I don't believe that ending it the fastest is truly that moral. Anyway, he stated that the bombs were the best option for his definition of moral, compared to a mainland assault on Japan. True, but once again, peace outruns both of these options. Peace stops the war completely, and quickly to your definition, and there would no longer be casualties or deaths. "We know now that the Japanese Imperial Army High Command were planning "Operation Ketsu-Go" [1], an all-out defense of Kyushu." Then why didn't we drop the bombs on Kyushu? It seems like it makes complete sense to bomb a true militaristic island rather than Hiroshima and Nagasaki who had many more civilians. "On July 26, 1945, the Allies released the terms of surrender [2] and after a meeting by Japanese military and government, they were rejected with contempt." Possibly, however, 3 days before the Hiroshima bombing, on August 3rd, after the Japanese denial of peace, Walter Brown, assistant to then-US secretary of state James Byrnes, Truman agreed at a meeting three days before the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima that Japan was "looking for peace". Truman was told by his army generals, Douglas Macarthur and Dwight Eisenhower, and his naval chief of staff, William Leahy, that there was no military need to use the bomb. "We cannot argue that it worked. We have the ability to look back in retrospect." Isn't that only because none of our troops died from the bombings? When the Japanese look back in retrospect, don't they remember a country that killed many of their citizens, family members, and friends? "Only the combined effects of the bombing of Hiroshima, the Soviet Union declaring war on Japan and the bombing of Nagasaki were enough to push the Japanese military into conceding defeat." I challenge this and say that the Soviet Union was the reason Japan gave up. Historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's research has led him to conclude that the atomic bombings themselves were not even the principal reason for capitulation. Instead, he contends, it was the swift and devastating Soviet victories in Manchuria that forced the Japanese surrender on August 15, 1945. So you see, it was clearly unimportant to bomb them, as they were already beaten by the Soviets. "The next point I will address is that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not valid military targets. A little bit of research would have shown my opponent that this is completely untrue." My opponent then goes on to show his information on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A little bit of reading would have shown my opponent that I did not previously say that they didn't have any militaristic business whatsoever, but instead, that civilians who had not take in the war were murdered by the thousands. If you read back, you can see my argument for this point. A more valid military target would have been Kyushu, which my opponent even said was to have an all-out defense. "My opponent also proposes that the bombings were not consistent with international law. The evidence he cites is indeed very strong. I ask why no-one has even been held legally responsible, if indeed international law was broken." Actually, if my opponent did read back to the first round, in 1963 the bombings were the subject of a judicial review in Ryuichi Shimoda et al. v. The State. We were held legally responsible. "I will also add that the war ending led to the formation of the United Nations, which has been a strong force in preventing the further use of Nuclear Weapons." There has never truly been a need to use atomic bombs and the UN certainly hasn't stopped North Korea from threatening people with theirs. Also, the UN hardly does anything at all and anything it does do is irrelevant to peace. And you can clearly see that they failed in preventing the War in Iraq and Iran. "I think the fact that America dropped Atomic bombs is not the only factor involved in the Cold War and is irrelevant to this argument regardless." I think it is completely relevant because it was and important cause and effect in the bombings. The bombs arguably were also used to show that we had such massive destruction and to impress the Soviet Union. Before I conclude, I'd like to point out that strangely, most, except for one, of my opponent's evidence comes from Wikipedia, which you or I can post on any day. Conclusion: My main argument in this debate is that peace, which has never been clearly refuted, was the best option in the war. Japan pended for it before the bomb was dropped and the US decided to ignore it. America did not make a decisive, winning military decision at all in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The one they chose was one of the worst and should never have been carried out. I'd like to thank my opponent for an excellent, exciting debate and wish him luck in his future endeavors. Sources: 1. http://answers.yahoo.com... 2. http://wiki.answers.com... 3. http://history1900s.about.com... 4. http://www.hiroshima-remembered.com... 5. http://www.vce.com...