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Matthew Resnick
10/13/16
ENC 2135-0025
Cole
The Morality and Strategic Justification of the Atomic
Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
On the morning of August 6, 1945, a little after eight, 21-year-old Eiko Taoka rides in a
streetcar with her infant son. The morning was calm, as Hiroshima was fortunate enough to not
have seen a single bomb since the onset of World War Two. As Eiko and her son sit in a newly
available seat on the bus, without any warning or noise, a flash blinds the streetcars passengers
as the energy of 15 kilotons of TNT in the form of heat comparable only to the surface of the sun
is released less than a kilometer away. Eiko recalls looking down at her son just after the blast,
he looked at me and smiled at my face which was all bloody. I had plenty of milk which he
drank all throughout that day. I think my child sucked the poison right out of my body. And soon
after that he died. Yes, I think that he died for me (Hiroshima Remembered). Eikos son was one
of about 80,000 people that would die in Hiroshima that day, and more would die in Nagasaki
three days later (Truman Library). The bombs certainly ended the war, as the Japanese Empire
surrendered soon after, but it was clear to the world that -in the incredibly short instant it took a
uranium bullet to fire and start a nuclear chain reaction- war had changed forever.
The atomic bombings were a particularly violent end to a particularly violent war, but for
many, the philosophy of the bombings does not stop there. As chaotic as war might ostensibly be,
sense must be made of such uniquely destructive events. Why Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Why
civilians, mostly? Did nuclear weapons need to be used at all? Sometimes the answers to

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questions like these still remain in classified folders in a military archive, and sometimes there is
no clear answer at all. However, with the information that is publicly available, concrete answers
can be produced and the bombings can be understood. In the over 70 years since August 6, 1945,
it has become evident that the bombings, regardless of unique military strategy pertaining to
nuclear weapons, were morally justified in the scope of the greater war and were crucial to both
short-term and long-term plans that would ensure a period in the future that some regard as The
Long Peace, a time of much needed global relief after the horrors the world witnessed during
World War Two.
After the B-52 that delivered the first nuclear payload, the Enola Gay, was on her way
home after detonating the bomb, co-pilot Captain Robert Lewis remarked, My God, what have
we done (Hiroshima Remembered). It is plausible that most people behind the Manhattan
Project thought this one way or another, because estimates, theory, and predictions probably
seemed insignificant once one saw the size of the destruction. Even some of the most
aggressively militaristic of individuals were shocked and frightened by the raw power of the
bombs, as General Douglas MacArthur remarked, my abhorrence of war reached its height with
the perfection of the atomic bomb (McNelly). Yet, putting aside the symbolic implications the
bombs had on society as a whole, the truth of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is that
they were perhaps the most merciful of all of the options the United States military had at their
disposal for ending the war for both sides. According to historian Ward Wilson, conventional air
attacks on mainland Japan, which had been going on since March of 1945, in many instances
caused more destruction than the atomic bombs and in one firebombing raid there were even
more casualties than in either of the nuclear bombings (167). Thus, the strategic bombings of two
cities, serving to both destroy some industrial capability and to show the power the U.S. had at

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its disposal, would kill many people but in the long-run would save many more because they
would be the last bombs dropped in the war. Not to mention, there was much careful thought that
went into the atomic bombings, and those who planned it knew very well the ethical
implications. There was a committee whose sole responsibility was to pick targets for the
bombings, and even ruled a city out because of its great religious and cultural significance to
the Japanese (Jones 529). Part of the plan of the bombs was to give the Japanese time to
surrender after they saw what just one bomb could do, President Truman even himself even gave
a stern warning to the government and people of Japan, stating explicitly that the weapon was
nuclear and that if they did not surrender, the country would see a rain of ruin from the air, the
like of which has never been seen on this earth" (Wilson 178). It is therefore evident that not only
was the significance of the bombings, both ethically and symbolically, understood by U.S.
military leadership, but alternatives would have had much more grim outcomes. The people of
Japan seemed to recognize these ideas after the war was over and, for the most part, blamed their
own government for the destruction wrought by the atomic bombs and the war in general. An
early post-war survey by the United States Strategic Bombing Survey found that 35% of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki residents thought that the bombings were the fault of their own
government and 29% of respondents thought that the bombings were simply a result of the
nature of war (Sadao).