Eric Meisel's Viewpoint on da Bombs

I believe that dropping the bomb was in fact a very good idea. Dropping the bombs did in fact save overall lives. Although the destruction was devastative to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Little Boy (Hiroshima) and Fat Man (Nagasaki) killed about 140,000 and 80,000 people respectively by the end of 1942 (yes, wikipedia). However, the firebombing that the U.S had been exercising killed an estimated 500,000 between 1942 and 1945 (wikipedia again). Only several days after the bombs were dropped, Japan announced its surrender to the Allied Forces, therefore ending the part of the war involving Japan and stopping the casualty count where it was. The important aspect to note is the Japanese believed in fighting to the death, or until they won. The Allied forces were devastating the Japanese soldier population, but the Japanese, because of their values, would not stop. Therefore, had we not scared the Japanese into surrender, they probably would never have stopped fighting until they were all dead, so the number of casualties could have continues rising in vast numbers because the firebombing would have continued. Because the U.S dropped the bombs, the firebombing stopped, so although there were many concentrated deaths at one time, the total amount of casualties was in all likelihood less than it would have been had we not dropped the bombs. Because Japan swiftly exited the war, the Germans were left alone with Italy, and the end of WWII followed soon enough. The end of the Japanese threat therefore helped lead to the end of the German threat as well, and in turn saved many more lives. The other aspect of noticeable importance is that dropping the bombs solidified America as a super power. Before WWII, America was just a country. What WWII did was industrialize the nation as a whole, and creating and dropping the atomic bombs made us a full-fledged super power because it showed the world that we had manpower and intelligence, and that we could use both of those resources. All of these factors, although some were extreme, led to the world we have today. However, sometimes it takes extreme action to get what one wants when nothing else works. This is what America did, and it did work. This is important to know, and overall there is no way of truly telling, but it is very likely that the world would be a very different place had America not made the decision it did.