Hiroshima, Nagasaki Atom Bombs Was Right Decision According To Majority Of Americans: Poll

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — A majority of Americans surveyed believe dropping atomic bombs on Japan during World War II was the right thing to do, but support was weaker among Democrats, women, younger voters and minority voters, according to a Quinnipiac University poll.

The poll, released Tuesday, found 61 percent of the more than 2,400 American voters questioned believe the U.S. did the right thing. Twenty-two percent called it wrong and 16 percent were undecided.

The first bomb was dropped Aug. 6, 1945, on Hiroshima. An estimated 140,000 people were killed instantly or died within a few months. Tens of thousands more died from radiation poisoning in the years following.

Three days later, another bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing about 80,000 people. Japan surrendered less than a week later.

"Sixty-four years after the dawn of the atomic age, one in five Americans think President Harry Truman made a mistake dropping the bomb," said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

The poll asked a single question: "Do you think the United States did the right thing or the wrong thing by dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?"

Among voters over 55 years of age, 73 percent of those surveyed approved the decision while 13 percent opposed. Sixty percent of voters 35 to 54 approved, while 50 percent approved among voters 18 to 34 years old, according to the poll.

"Voters who remember the horrors of World War II overwhelmingly support Truman's decision," Brown said. "Support drops with age, from the generation that grew up with the nuclear fear of the Cold War to the youngest voters, who know less about WW II or the Cold War."

Only 34 percent of black voters and 44 percent of Hispanic voters approved the decision, according to the poll. But Brown cautioned that the polling sample was smaller for those groups, so officials said the margin of error was 8 percentage points for blacks and 10 percentage points for Hispanics.

Support for Truman's decision was much stronger among Republicans than Democrats and among men than women.

Among Democrats surveyed, 49 percent approved, while 74 percent of Republicans supported Truman's decision.

Among women questioned, 51 percent supported the bombing, compared to 72 percent of men surveyed.

The poll showed about 70 percent of white Protestants, Catholics and evangelical Christians support the bombing, while 58 percent of Jews approved. The margin of error was 12 percentage points for Jewish voters, officials said.

Quinnipiac surveyed 2,409 registered voters from July 27 to Aug. 3. The poll has a margin of error of 2 percentage points.

Comments

[tweedledeedumb]

I think that because of our guilt for the bombings, we lost the moral authority to hold th Japanese accountable for all of the atrocioous and racist behavior they exhibited in WWII. They still honor military leaders every year who ran death camps and murdered plenty of innocent civilians. Similar behavior in Germany has been punished to this day.

[sonofsamphm1c]

I want you to meet somebody who was apparently not innocent enough to consider saving. He had recently graduated from high school. He became the youngest man under my father's command. He told my father he was an only son, and dad dearly wanted to send him back to his mother. Nobody would save this Private Ryan. On my father's birthday they jumped off on an assault in the vicinity of Hill 362. A mortar round - smaller than an atomic bomb so apparently not horrible - dropped beside Whitey. That night dad wrote my mother a letter and told her that Whitey Broughton had been killed in action. "It was merciful," he wrote, "he only kicked and screamed for a few minutes." Whitey was a brave kid, and had risked his life to save wounded Marines many times. Dad put him in for a medal, and Whitey is the recipient of a posthumous Bronze Star for gallantry in action while under devastating enemy fire.

He was a noncombatant: there to save lives.

As the story goes, Whitey's father died days after learning of his son's death. Iwo Jima cost her dearly.

My parents have kept Whitey's memory alive for 64 years. Here's "not innocent enough for saving" Whitey:

http://www.pacificwarmemorial.org/images/Bricks/Broughton,%20FH%20PHM3C.jpg

After Iwo Jima the draft gave my father a new Whitey, and a new Fred, etc., and they were training hard for the invasion of Japan.

[NYC07]

Maybe People should look at what the Japanese were doing before condemning the US http://www.centurychina.com/wiihist/germwar/germwar.htmm

[werunohe]

it is important to apply accusations with care especially when grouping people.
The people who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were civilians while the people who committed the heinous war crimes that you cite were part of the Japanese army stationed in China, Korea and South East Asia.
It's like arguing the incendiary bombing of Berlin, Hamburg and Dresden is justified by the actions of the SS and Gestapo.
Civilians shouldn't pay for the crimes committed by their leaders although they always do.

As a first class nation even then, we should never have resorted to tit-for-tat foreign policy. It is our burden as a superpower that we must be better and more dignified than the nations we go to war with.

[sonofsamphm1c]

Saying civilians should not pay for what their military does simply unleashes an incredibly dangerous moral hazard.

In Germany we forced civilians to go into death camps and bury the corpses - to punish them. They got off light.

[TruthJusticeForAll]

I suggest you speak to surviving American citizens and ask them how engaged & supportive of the war they were. Many had family serving in the military or otherwise in harm's way. Ask them if they were ready to die in place of any of their family who were in danger. Our 48 states was among the safest of all involved in the war. Japan & Germany murdered millions of civilians, many for no other reason than sadism & to dispose of them.

Research "total war (fare)".

[NYC07]

I am not condemning the Japanese people as a whole thought they themselves seem to refuse to admit to the atrocities that they performed atrocities that were in many ways equal to the Nazis. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both part of the Japanese military complex making them available as targets, find me a city that was bombed that had no civilian causalities that is the nature of war. Tit for Tat foreign policy?????? The bombs were dropped to end the war, a war which after two bombs were dropped the Japanese Military was still willing to fight to the total annihilation of their own people. The Japanese were developing their own bomb do you think given what they had done in China and Korea they would have not used it???? You talk as if the Japanese were blameless. Wars start and are sustained because the people are comfortable with what is happening regardless of the consequences. Where were the protests in the streets of Japan to end the war?? Where was the outcry over what was being done to the Chinese or Koreans or the treatment of Prisoners of War??

[Nebris]

To those opposed, Google 'Okinawa' and 'operation downfall'.

[katmeyster]

Psychologically we would like to feel it was justified to murder over 200,000 innocent civilians. But an atomic bomb was the only answer? And then another? There are just too many conflicting views about how ready the Japanese were to surrender, and about our own interests, to just wholesale agree that these actions were justified. The evidence is not clear, so neither should be your conviction.

[Gasparilla]

They were not "ready to surrender". That would have gone like this, "we surrender".

[sonofsamphm1c]

There really aren't conflicting viewpoints. We intercepted their messages. We have their actual words - timed and dated. We have the hand-written contemporaneous diaries of many of the participants from both sides.

Once the Emperor decided upon surrender, hard-line officers in the Japanese military attempted to kill him so that they could continue the war. That is after two bombs and the instruction of essentially a God. And these officers knew full well continuing would mean the deaths of tens of millions of innocent women and children and old men. They did not care one bit. They thought that possibility would be fantastic glory.

They failed. Had they succeeded, the war would have continued.

[TruthJusticeForAll]

The "conflict" only revises in revisionist or Japanese revisionist history. The bombs saved both American & Japanese lives & ended the war.

[TruthJusticeForAll]

The eviodence is abundantly clear. Only revisionist versions cloud the issue. The Japanese were unwilling to surrender. Even after the 2 bombs were dropped & the Emprorer decided to surrender, some in the military attempted a coup to continue the war. Millions from both sides would have died in an invasion. The Japanese were defeated, but not yet beaten.

[VoiceAgainstThoughtCrime]

Don't you think they could have blown up the atomic bomb a few miles away from the city centers so as to show how powerful it was, but saving lives of innocent civilians???

[Layman23]

It was wrong to use the A-bomb, for our own political benefit. The bomb was originally destined for Germany and then Germany surrendered.

Japan, didnt. A continuous carpet bombing would have subdued them. But alas, we had to test it some place and prove the power.

But it will still remain in history as the only country to ever have used a nuclear weapon. Its a shame !

[TruthJusticeForAll]

Destroying Tokyo & other Japanese cities did not compel them to surrender & there was no reason to believe they were ready to surrender. They were defeated, but unwilling to surrender.

[chavo]

A continuous carpet bombing would never have subdued them. They would have sent tens of millions of their own to die, and tens of millions of Americans would have also died.

There was no other choice.

[sonofsamphm1c]

Also, a continuous carpet bombing would have killed 100s of thousands of civilians, or more.

When the B-29s dropped bombs from high altitudes over Japan, which was the original intent, they couldn't reliably hit targets because of the extreme winds aloft over Japan. Something they had not anticipated. Their only option would have been to go after large targets, like cities.

That is why Lemay switched to low-altitude incendiary bombings, which killed far more civilians than the atomic bombs did. The cities had wooden structures and they used a lot of paper in their buildings. It burned like crazy. If they had not had the bombs, they would have continued with incendiaries, and the death toll would have been higher.

No matter how you slice it, using the atomic bombs saved Japanese lives, and it saved American lives.

[robobbob]

Here are some things to consider:
Fact: We did not start the war.
Fact: We did bomb Hamburg with conventional bombs killing 80K Europeans
Fact: We did bomb Dresdan with conventional bombs killing 60K Europeans
Fact: We did bomb Tokyo with conventional bombs killing 80K Asians
Fact: The island of Okinawa was the first peice of sovereign Japanese territory the US invaded. It cost the US 48,000 causalties including 36 ships sunk, 225 tanks destroyed, and 12,000 DEAD representing 3% of all US KIA for the ENTIRE WAR in taking one island.
Fact: Having chosen to fight to the death, the Japanese garrison of 110,000 suffered roughly 100,000 DEAD. The indigenous population suffered 100,000 Dead, many thousands of whom chose suicide over surrunder.
Fact: The Japanese home islands were defended by TWENTY times more soldiers than Okinawa.
Fact :The Japanese were warned of the deployment of new super weapons and were given the chance to surrender.
Fact: One bomb was insufficient to break the Imperial Military's resolve to continue fighting.
Opinion: The bombing was the continuation of a general strategy that was used against European and Asian adversaries.
Opinion: The US military and political leaders viewed the weapons as just an enormous advance in efficiency, and had little knowledge, or interest, in long term radiation effects.
Opinion: Twenty times more defenders, coupled with a mobilized suicidal population would inflict no less then twenty times the causalties.
Fact: It worked
Everything listed as Facts are easily verifiable through nonpartisan sources.

[sonofsamphm1c]

Other facts; Hiroshima was the HQ for two Japanese armies, and several military supply depots. It is estimated 43,000 military personnel were housed within the city. There was also considerable defense manufacturing done within the city.

[TruthJusticeForAll]

Well deserved bombings.

[Passenger57]

Since they actually WERE two different bombs (I just looked it up), now I am sure that they were being TESTED on the Japanese.
On Sept. 11, 2001, the country was HORRIFIED as they watched the planes hit the buildings, the buildings collapsed,and about 3,000 people perished.
Now just imagine : Sept.14,2001, FIVE planes ALL hit their targets.
How would we feel? These aren't even bombs, just aircraft...
I wonder how Israel would feel if Iran detonated a nuke over their state - using the excuse of saving the lives of Iranians that would die in an invasion of Israel". What could the US say?

[jamiso]

That does not make any sense!
It is not like Japan was hangin out chillin, and mean ol truman shot a nuke at them.
It was WW2, total war that was going on for years. How can you not get the difference?

The fact that you had to "look up" that there were 2 bombs, makes me think you really dont know very much to begin with

[TruthJusticeForAll]

Astute observation. I thoght the same thing.

[chavo]

Utter nonsense.

An invasion of Japan would have cost tens of millions of lives on both sides. It's utterly ignorant of the facts of the day to think that the bombs were tested on Japan.

[brian66]

The dropping of the two bombs certainly was a test. What is unknown is whether the testing was the principal motivation of the bombing.

The bomb dropped on HIroshima was a uranium bomb. The bomb dropped on Nagasaki was a plutonium bomb. Both cities had not been conventionally bombed for quite some time (if ever) before receiving the nuclear bombs. So we had two undamaged cities upon which to conduct these experiments. The results of the experiments form the backbone of the Federal Office of Technology Assessment publication, "The Effects of Nuclear Weapons".

As to the necessity, this is not settled yet either. It probably never will be. The Japanese government had requested surrender terms from the US about two weeks before bombing. Also, at the time of the bombing General Eisenhower stated that he thought it was unnecessary and immoral.

[Oralloy]

Unknown by whom? The historians are all very clear on the fact that the motivation for the bombing was to make Japan surrender.

You are a bit mixed up on the surrender terms. Japan "received" the surrender terms about two weeks before the bombings. They did not request anything. We just sent them the terms.

Japan didn't actually offer to surrender until after both A-bombs were dropped.

Ike never convinced anyone else that the bombs were unnecessary. He was just told that he didn't know what he was talking about, and that was the end of that.

[Oralloy]

While we always take readings to measure effectiveness when first using a new weapon, the reason the bombs were used was the hope that it would make Japan surrender.

It should be noted that the World Trade Center was a civilian target. It did not contain tens of thousands of soldiers like Hiroshima, or large weapons factories like Nagasaki.

As for "Iran launching a nuclear attack on Israel" we'd probably warn the world to prepared for the nuclear winter that would be caused by all the fires spreading across Iran.

I believe I saw somewhere that the Obama Administration strongly hinted that if Iran develops nukes we would counter by having a ballistic missile sub off their coast on hair-trigger alert.

[FearlessFreep]

Defenders of the decision to use the A-bomb often resort to sophistry, dismissing any criticism as "hindsight judgement." Yet what is history if not hindsight?

My own opinion is that it was probably unnecessary, and it was certainly unnecessary to do it that soon. There's a very good chance that the Soviet intervention alone would have induced Japan's surrender. And even if it had still proved necessary, there was still plenty of time to make sure of it. (The dreaded invasion was still months away.) This was not a "now or never" moment; Truman made his decision in a hurry.

For many defenders of the decision, it isn't really about the right or wrong of it. It's about loyalty.

[TruthJusticeForAll]

Horse Puckets.

[joelamp]

If you consider that the goal of the US in August 1945 was to win the war on terms acceptable to the Allies (i.e., get the Japanese to accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration) as quickly as possible with a minimum of American lives lost, then the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were obviously the right tactics to employ since they achieved their objective. Even though those two cities could have been destroyed in conventional B-29 raids (as so many other cities in Japan were), it would not have had the same shock value in getting the Japanese leadership to capitulate immediately. Also, had there been no nuke attacks, likely American tactics would have included a naval blockade to strangle and starve the country as well as conventional attacks on the Japanese rail system to paralyze their ability to transport and distribute food around the country. The combined effects of these measures might well have killed more Japanese through starvation before surrender was extracted.

[TruthJusticeForAll]

Truman did the right thing.

[FearlessFreep]

One more loyalist.

[NYC07]

Perhaps you fell that things like this should have been left to continue as long as possible http://www.centurychina.com/wiihist/germwar/germwar.htmm

[Oralloy]

The reason for the hindsight argument is some people try to claim that "today's views that the bombs may not have been necessary" were prevalent in 1945, and they then criticize Truman for dropping the bombs when he allegedly knew they were not necessary.

In more extreme cases they even take the views of military men who said in hindsight that the bombs were not necessary, and claim that those quotes were opposition spoken out before the bombs were dropped. (In reality, Ike was the only one who spoke out like that, and he didn't convince anyone else.)

Pointing out that (Ike excepted) this was a view that only came about in hindsight helps correct the wrong impression that Truman dropped the bombs with the knowledge that they were not necessary.

[bluesky49876]

Majority of Americans also support torture. It says a lot about our country..doesn't it?

[sonofsamphm1c]

It says something about Americans misunderstanding torture. It says zippo about Hiroshima. Okay, sorry, WW2 humor.

[swellsoire]

The atomic bombs saved American lives. The projected Allied casualties for an invasion of Japan were as high as 1,000,000. Japan would not accept unconditional surrender. The atomic bomb left the emperor little choice.

[Gasparilla]

The fact is that Japan had been engaged on a campaign of massacring civilians across Southeast Asia well before Pearl Harbor, particularly in China. The people who say they were "prepared to surrender" ignore the fact that what they actually wanted was the fighting to stop, with their occupied territories under their control. They were trying to work out a separate deal with Russia, who would have been glad to sell us out. The Russians were glad to work with Hitler, until he double crossed them. Nor was the surrender after the second bomb any slam dunk. There were many in the military opposed to surrender and it was only the power of the emperor that assured it.

[joelamp]

Let's put Truman's decision in context: WWII was a "total war" in which carpet bombing and destruction of whole cities with high explosives and incendiaries resulting in mass slaughter of civilians became common place. Tokyo, Yokohama, Dresden, Coventry, etc.. Also, due to the "sneak attack" at Pearl Harbor, as well as Nanking and various other Japanese wartime atrocities, it is difficult to overstate the degree to which the Japanese were hated by most Americans. Yes, the Japanese had put out secret peace feelers prior to being nuked, but they refused to accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration (i.e., unconditional surrender) and the US was in no mood to negotiate an ending short of total capitulation. It has been estimated that an invasion of Japan (Operation Downfall/Olympic/Coronet) would have resulted in 500,000 or 1,000,000 casualties amongst Japanese, Americans and Allied forces, so in some ways as terrible as Hiroshima and Nagasaki were, they may have prevented even greater bloodshed.

[tlgeiger62]

Was it a terrorist act on our part? I think so. I have watched many documentaries on the subject. Yet now we know what the decision's cost was. And we also know the US was ignorant about what the decision would mean for not only the population of Japan at the time but for the population for generations to come. The ramifications of radiation poison seemed to be something many in the US military deeply misunderstood at that time.

The important thing NOW is to remember those consequences and make sure the horror is prevented from being unleashed again.

How meaningless would it be to say "no nukes" and not know exactly what the nukes can do?

[NeoStar9]

After war is declared by both parties I think an act stops being a "terrorist" act. In war pretty much anything goes. That's not to say that what happen wasn't horrific but I think the cost in lives would have been exponentially greater on both sides had we not dropped those nukes when we did. The point was to force Japan into surrendering without landing troops within Japan which would have been devastating for the country and our own military.

It's wrong to take that many civilian lives. So on that front I'm in agreement with others. However it was something that had to be done. A necessary evil.

[NYC07]

Yes as we know the Japanese were such kind hearted people at that time, how dare we do this :
http://www.centurychina.com/wiihist/germwar/germwar.htm

[Oralloy]

Terrorism is when covert attackers target civilians. The A-bombs were overt attacks against targets that had great military value.

"Generations to come" are not suffering damage from the A-bombs. The radiation injuries were all caused at the instant the bomb exploded. That did include some unborn fetuses, but they were all born by the end of 1946.

[tlgeiger62]

I have to admit, I do not know what conclusion it was that caused the US to make the decision to drop these 2 bombs. Especially the 2nd one after the devastation of the 1st.

What exactly did our gov't think would happen otherwise? The war would never end?

[E-MU]

The fear was that an invasion of Japan's homeland would result in hundreds of thousands of American casualties, take more than a year to fight and strain homeland support, especially because the soldiers freed from the European theater would be sent to Japan rather than home.
The Japanese would not unconditionally surrender, even after the first bomb dropped.
Also, the Russians were preparing to enter the war and we didn't want that.

Gruesome as it was, I don't think it was a terrorist act - we had to end the war and Japan would not
surrender.

We have to remember the nature of regime that ruled Japan.

[TruthJusticeForAll]

We DID want the Russians in the war. The day the Russians declared war was 90 days after V-E Day. We had gotten them to commit to war against Japan within 90 days of V-E Day. Japan only tried to get Russia to negotiate for them because they were at peace & hoped the Russians could get them better terms.

[blacksmithn]

No, not never. But the alternative would have been the invasion of the Japanese Home Islands, with projected casualties of over one million.

It's easy to sit back now, with the perspective that time provides, and cooly deliberate on whether the decision was the correct one or not. Hindsight is always, after all, 20/20.

[TruthJusticeForAll]

American casualities in excess of 1M. Japanese casualties expected to be many times more.

[VoiceAgainstThoughtCrime]

The alternative?
Dropping the bombs in the ocean close enough from the city to be felt but without casualties... as a warning...
Obviously, to test real damages it does, that would not be very good...

[Passenger57]

I believe the excuse was "to save American lives that would have been lost in an invasion of Japan".
I think they just wanted to really see what the bombs would do to real populations.

[dan-o]

Two of my great uncles were two of those lives saved. They had both fought on other islands against the Japanese and fully believed that if it wasn't for the dropping of the Atomic Bombs that they would have died in the invasion of the Japanese homeland. It could have easily cost over one million dead Americans and millions of dead Japanese.

[TruthJusticeForAll]

The original test demonstrated what it would do to people. Melt them.

[TruthJusticeForAll]

Have you ever seen any of the numerous films of bomb tests? There is one in which the navy thought American warships could survive a bomb blast. That fleet was sunk. The power & destructive force is apparent in the films. I do not believe any one has to see what a bomb will do to people to know the answer to that.

[Oralloy]

What they wanted was for Japan to surrender.

[sonofsamphm1c]

There were opinions all over the map. I have a newspaper article from 1945 in which a retired General predicts the war with Japan would last another 5 years.

After the heavy casualties at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, many military and political leaders in the US were rethinking invasion, and their favorite alternative was a prolonged blockade. A Naval blockade would have resulted in a death count for Japanese civilians that would have far exceeded the death counts from the two bombs. Numbers in the tens of millions are not an unreasonable expectation. Their rice harvest was devastated. They were getting almost nothing from the ocean, which was a major food source for the Japanese. As the food supply dwindled, there is little doubt the Japanese military would have taken food from the civilian population. There are excellent records on their food supply and average calorie intake. They were suffering from malnutrition, and they were on the brink of catastrophe.

Of course, starvation of millions is more acceptable - I guess, in some twisted, weird world.

After the first bomb, we have intercepts of Japanese messages. Their military leadership was in denial of what had happened. They downplayed it. They said people could go underground and completely escape. They argued the triggering device was pure luck, and the Americans would not be able to replicate it, or that we could not possibly have enough nuclear material. They did not get the message. Truman was in no mood for their stubbornness.

[E-MU]

I had posted a less detailed version of this very interesting and valuable contribution but it got censored.

Best section: "there is little doubt the Japanese military would have taken food from the civilian population. There are excellent records on their food supply and average calorie intake. They were suffering from malnutrition, and they were on the brink of catastrophe.

Of course, starvation of millions is more acceptable - I guess, in some twisted, weird world."

Upshot: "They did not get the message. Truman was in no mood for their stubbornness."

I don't believe that Truman never "lost any sleep" over the bombing but I do believe that he honestly believed to his core that he took the correct and necessary action.

[FearlessFreep]

Some people believe that Washington was anxious to use the weapon while they had the chance, to impress the Soviet Union.

[NYC07]

Hey I wonder who the Japanesse were trying to impress with this http://www.centurychina.com/wiihist/germwar/germwar.htmm

[Oralloy]

The historians, however, point out that all Truman was trying to do was make Japan surrender.