Since Japan was already prepared to surrender, the United States was unjustified in dropping the atomic bomb because it went against all natural laws of humanity, caused incredible amounts of destruction, and took many innocent civilian lives.
There were many reasons why dropping the bombs on Japan were unjustified. First and foremost, the bombs took over three hundred forty thousand lives away from innocent civilians which affected many of the following generations. Even though the United States had tested the bomb numerous times in the Pacific Ocean and saw the magnitude of the explosion, they still believed that it was the most effective way to get the Japanese to surrender. In one test, the explosion was so powerful that it disintegrated a sixty foot steel tower and created a six foot deep crater in the earth. Truman himself, while watching from afar (32 kilometers away) felt the intense heat that radiated from the bomb. If so much destruction was caused in a simple test, you would think that the United States would decide against dropping a bomb on an actual city because it was simply inhumane. This however, was not the case. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Manhatten Project (the secret project the US government executed to develop the nuclear bomb) didn’t go as far as to investigate the full capability the bomb had to destroy when dropped on a city and felt by humans. Because of this, Truman was ignorant of the effects that radiation can have on the human body. Another reason why dropping the bomb was wrong was because Japan was divided at the time. The doves (people who were ready to surrender) and the hawks (people who were not ready to surrender because they thought it was against their culture) had an ongoing internal battle over what to do. In the midst of all of this turmoil, with a longer amount of time, Japan would have agreed to surrender. Even the emperor’s advisor and the foreign minister were trying to persuade the emperor to surrender. If the emperor had given the decree to surrender, it was certain that the entire country would agree upon it, despite the differences in views, because it is Japanese culture to worship the emperor like a god. One reason why it was so difficult for the Japanese to surrender was because they thought that surrendering meant the loss of their emperor and a gain of a democratic government, which they did not want. If the United States warning to Japan would have included a promise to keep their emperor in power, surrender would have likely ensued.
Due to the fact that more than sixty of its cities had been destroyed by more conventional bombing, Japan’s native islands were being blockaded by the Americans and the Soviet Union which would have eventually led to surrender. Japan’s resistance was prolonged by America insisting on an unconditional surrender. It also was inhumane to drop atomic bombs on such civilian inhabited cities while fire bombing would have caused significant damage without taking nearly as many human lives and starting nuclear warfare.
