Should the United States have Dropped the Atomic Bomb

I'd like to start my case with a rebuttal. "Even though the first bomb killed more than 100,000 people it saved the lives of many more." I'd like to disagree on this point: it would save more American lives. Also, the bomb completely devastated Hiroshima, causing tons of monetary damage. Finally, it was an attack almost entirely targeting the civilian population of Hiroshima. As the headquarters of the Second Army and of the Chugoku Regional Army, a military target, the blast extended to almost the entire city and caused much more loss of civilian life. The radiation continued to kill and mutate generations afterwards, an extremely immoral and pain-inflicting side effect of the bomb that ALLIED SCIENTISTS KNEW WOULD HAPPEN. It may have been beneficial for the allies, and saved American lives, but at a steep price to pay for the civilians of Japan. To take control over Japanese territory enough to force a surrender they would have had to take many of these islands. Not so. General Douglas MacArthur enforced a policy of island hopping (in which allied forces would carve a path through Japan by taking only strategic, necessary islands needed to form a supply chain. We did not need to take all 6852 islands of Japan; It's preposterous to fight warfare blindly. "As we learned in previous Japanese island battles this was difficult. For example at Iwo Jima there were over 29,000 casualties on this small island alone over a month." This isn't a black and white scenario. It's not "Invade or drop the atomic bomb". Rather, there were other options. For instance, a demonstration over Tokyo harbor would've been sufficient to scare the Japanese into surrender. The Russians had joined the war, and we were already at the Japanese homeland. They were demoralized, and a simple changing of surrender terms could've allowed us to avoid the bloodshed. Yes, invading mainland Japan would've cost us many, many lives. But were there not other alternatives? "I move on to my next point. Dropping the bomb was a just and moral event that we were right to do. Japan had given up the right to be dealt with kindly when they attacked Pearl harbor unprovoked on December 7th, 1941 killing 2,836 and injuring another 1,139." What is your definition of just and moral? Is it moral to decimate an entire city, kill 100,000, and horribly poison and mutate generations to come? Not only do you deal death, but you peddle radiation sickness and genetic mutations as "just" and "moral"? This seems to be the same outlook of a serial killer. "Japan had given up the right to be dealt with kindly when they attacked Pearl harbor unprovoked on December 7th, 1941 killing 2,836 and injuring another 1,139." First of all, I would like to say it was the U.S.'s interventionist nature that (in part) put us into the war. As Japan was expanding in Asia, Roosevelt looked for a way to help his allies in Europe. As the Japanese had signed the Tripartite pact, allying with Germany and Italy, Roosevelt saw that a declaration of war would be beneficial for his cause...once involved in the war, he could join Britain and Russia in Europe to stop Hitler. He then declared the Japanese expansionism a violation of the open door policy...to get into europe, and threatened the Japanese with war. Japan, a small island with virtually no resources, was faced with the choice of abandoning all territory, and becoming a poor fishing nation once more, or risk war with the U.S. Since the literally couldn't back out (Japanese economy and infrastructure would collapse) they were forced with the war the U.S. had forced upon them. So they struck preemptively. In this sense, they were not "unprovoked." Also, do you really think 100,000 deaths in Hiroshima (largely civilian) was the result of a "unprovoked" Japanese surprise attack (that at most killed 3000)? "The full application of our military power, backed by our resolve, will mean the inevitable and complete destruction of the Japanese armed forces and just as inevitably the utter devastation of the Japanese homeland." Would you not say that if you were in that position, even without military power? The Japanese thought we were bluffing, and thought we didn't have the guts to invade Japan. And, in part, they were right, as Truman resorted to the atomic bomb. After the Japanese captured the Philippines in April, 1942 they forced marched 76,000 people 60 miles to death camps. On the way over 15,000 died with another 10,000 dying in the camps. They also joined in, in the mass genocide of surrounding nation to at the time economically strangle them into submission. So when you say that it was immoral to drop the bomb, you are telling a lie because it was in retaliation to heartless acts that needed to be stopped. Was there not the Japanese internment camps in the U.S.? I mean, there was also the complete systematic purging of the Native Americans onto reservations...that they still live in today, a modern day society. We aren't so squeaky clean, either. I would also like to point out that the dropping of the bomb onto Japan was largely to intimidate the Russians...which largely failed, as the world escalated into the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis. The war needed to be ended, but the civilian death toll and devastation to Japan was not worth it. I believe that America should not have dropped the atomic bomb.