What are some of the opinions concerning the ethics of using atomic weapons to end the Second World War?

In 1946, John Hersey’s Hiroshima began the national conversation on whether or not it was ethical to use the atomic bomb to end the Second World War. Even sixty years later, this conversation continues as the United States and other countries grapple with the grave responsibility that comes with having atomic weapons.

When Japan surrendered shortly after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, most Americans viewed the atomic bomb as a miracle weapon. The war was over. Millions of young men would not have to fight in Japan. Until his dying day, President Truman claimed that the atomic bomb saved a million American lives, along with the lives of millions of Japanese. Though we will never know the true casualty numbers, military records concerning the planning for the invasion of Japan are shocking. Compared to D-Day in northern France, the invasion of Japan would have been an order of magnitude larger in terms of troops, ships, and supporting aircraft. In the weeks leading up to the invasion, the United States and its allies would have continued firebombing Japanese cities, along with a blockade of Japan’s ports. The combination of bombing, blockade, and invasion would have starved Japan’s civilian population, which was already dealing with severe rationing in the war’s final months. Most telling was that that U.S. military ordered 500,000 purple heart medals for the invasion. Since the invasion never happened, these sixty-year-old medals are still being awarded to American soldiers wounded in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

Much of the human suffering presented in Hiroshima is the basis for the argument against the use of atomic bombs to end the Second World War. In August 1945, Hiroshima was one of the handful of Japanese cities not damaged or destroyed by Allied firebombing. An unknown number of civilian refugees, likely in the tens of thousands, had relocated to the city. When the atomic bomb exploded 600 meters above the city, the blast wave did not discriminate between civilians and military personnel. In the days, weeks, months, and even years after the bombing, tens of thousands succumbed to their physical injuries and the cancers caused by radiation poisoning. The most prominent example of the bomb’s lingering effects is the story of Sadako Sasaki, who was only two years old when the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima. In 1955, ten years after the bombing, she was diagnosed with leukemia. Before dying later that year, she folded over 1,000 paper cranes with the hope of being granted a single wish: to survive her illness. Ever since her death, she and her cranes have become powerful symbols of world peace and the effects of atomic warfare on the innocent.

Another argument against the use of atomic weapons to end the Second World War is that the invention of atomic weapons represents the ultimate Faustian bargain. Atomic weapons may have ended the war earlier than an invasion, and perhaps saved lives, but in return mankind gained the power to destroy itself and all life on Earth. For forty-five years after the Second World War, the Cold War between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. held hostage the Earth’s population. At any moment, a misstep on either side could have killed everyone on the planet. Even today, as unstable countries like North Korea flex their nuclear might, there remains the possibility that other cities around the world, and the millions of people living there, will experience Hiroshima’s fate.