Why Is The Atomic Bomb Necessary

On August 9th, 1945, the second Atomic Bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, and only three days earlier the first was seen in Hiroshima. These were two of the numerous events that propelled the most powerful combatants in history, the United States and Soviet Union, into the dangerous arms race we know as the Cold War. Many ask, “Was it necessary?” This is a controversial topic, asking whether or not the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians was worth saving a much smaller number of military personnel, or if the bomb should have even been created in the first place. To the former, my answer is no. This bomb did need to exist, but we did not need to use it – at least not in this way. The entire Cold War, the deadliest
The bombs saved more American lives, but they did not save as many Japanese lives as a normal invasion would have. It’s very difficult to justify the massacre of hundreds of thousands of civilians, animals, and even children, who had absolutely nothing to do with the war to begin with. It was estimated that there were between 60,000 and 80,000 casualties in Hiroshima alone, and at least another 40,000 in Nagasaki. These were death tolls from the initial blast, the result is much grimmer once you throw the suffering from radiation ­ and fallout into the mix – the after effect of a nuclear blast. Consequently, the total comes up to around 90,000 through 140,000 in Hiroshima alone, and the result doubles for Nagasaki with ease . But an invasion surely would be much more costly, right? No, an invasion would have been more costly if the intent was to stay and fight to the bitter end for the Japanese. The only thing we needed to do at that point was make Japan surrender, which was already on the horizon being that their Supreme Council met to discuss their terms of surrender on the morning right before the bombing of Nagasaki. This means that the second bomb did not contribute to the surrender, as they had met before it landed, and it managed to yield the same results as one of the standard B-29
While this is both extremely selfish to say and rude, as they were civilians that died, this ultimately is still not the case. The Soviet Union had launched a full scale offensive and taken all of Manchuria and the Northern Japanese islands, which housed the largest active Japanese Army at the time, in less than two weeks. The only thing that stopped the Soviets from steamrolling through that land, according to several people, was that they had ran out of gas. The army size was estimated to be above 700,000 soldiers, and it was the last true force Japan had to defend itself with. So now we know that Japan is outnumbered, undersupplied, with weak morale, and already meeting to surrender on August 9th – so far it’s looking like there was no point in the second blast on Nagasaki, or the first, since they had waited three days to prepare the meeting instead of making it a national emergency? These civilians died slow and painful deaths because of radiation poisoning if they weren’t killed in the blast, how could this be worse than just continuing normal bombing runs on actual military targets? Previously, it was even mentioned that the bombs were used to scare Japan; how could they do that? Japan had its own nuclear weapons program, so they knew what the bomb was, these bombs were also nothing more than another statistic on their several charts involving