Hiroshima, 80 Years On

Over the years I've gone back and forth on the question of whether the bombings were justified.

For awhile now, I've leaned significantly toward an affirmative answer.

I think a negative answer to the question only makes sense if you don't know much about the history, including the planning for Operation Downfall.

As I've mentioned before: casualty estimates for the Allies (mainly Americans): around a million (ranging from about 1/4 million to "several" million).

I care much less about Japanese casualty estimates, but I do care about them. They seem to typically have been a couple of million, but ranged into the tens of millions.

Note: these estimates apparently didn't include the large number of American and Allied POWs who would likely have been executed by the Japanese...

Here's a fact that actually weighs fairly heavily in my thinking:

We are, to this day, still giving out Purple Hearts that were struck in anticipation of DOWNFALL...

IIRC, we struck like 1.5 million of them.

We've struck additional ones since...but not really all that many.

So guys wounded in Afghanistan were--some of them--still getting medals made during WWII.

I think it can also give some important perspective to realize that OLYMPIC (the invasion of southern Kyushu), the first phase of DOWNFALL, was scheduled not for some hazy future date, but for 11/1/45... That is: less than three months after the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

And: the question isn't really: Was the decision to drop the bomb optimal? Rather it's: Was dropping it permissible?