1) The use of the atomic bomb against Hiroshima and Nagasaki produced fewer casualties combined (including from radiation illness and cancer rates) than the firebombing of Tokyo alone.
2) After the Japanese military convinced the population of
Okinawa that the Americans would behave just as the Japanese had in Nanking (i.e. raping, plundering, murdering, etc.), the U.S. government had to re-evaluate casualty projections for civilians for Operation Downfall, which grew to number in the millions.
3) The prospect of continuing a war for at least another year, and having to suffer rapidly increasing numbers of casualties, both of American and Japanese soldiers, and Japanese civilians (both caught in the crossfire and actively suicide-charging allied forces) was, without the use of the atomic bomb, an horrific necessity.
People are very quick to judge the American decision to use the atomic bomb. And they betray their own foolishness and ignorance to believe that all Americans feel that it was the right thing to do. They are also foolish to believe that all Americans supported both the Vietnam and the current Iraq war. Such people betray an incredible ignorance both of American politics and the American people as a whole. Especially since both the Vietnam and Iraq wars succeeded in dividing the country's populace and creating a lot of internal tensions and discontent at home.
The use of the atomic bomb is heavily criticized in the United States by American historians, political theorists, and journalists. Americans are more likely to know about the
Mai Lai massacre during the Vietnam War than the
Rape of Nanking by the Japanese. (Ironically, the Mai Lai massacre was interrupted by an American helicopter officer who refused to permit the slaughter to continue unchecked, while no Japanese stepped up to stop what was going on in Nanking.)
My point is this: Criticizing the American use of the atomic bomb is fine. But to condemn the United States for its use is foolish and ignorant. The fact is that the use of the bomb saved lives. The casualties, both Japanese and American, from Operation Downfall would have been worse than anything that had yet been seen in the war. In addition, the Soviet Union let it's non-aggression pact with the Japanese expire, and by dropping the bomb the United States prevented Japan from being parceled out like Germany was. Soviet behavior in East Germany as they drove on Berlin, and later with the purging of the Japanese from Sakhalin, was abominable, and easily comparable to the Japanese in China.
To criticize the use of atomic weapons because they are, by their very nature, atomic weapons is acceptable. But also realize that Truman never again dropped another atomic bomb, not even when it would have been to his advantage during the Korean War, at the behest of MacArthur. The United States has never again deployed atomic weapons in an attack against an opposing faction, state, or government. Period. American attitudes towards our own nuclear arsenal are fearful and mixed with loathing.
In addition, the United States has some of the strictest laws regarding emissions from automobiles, factories, and other industrial facilities in the world: one of the reasons companies continue shutting down factories and moving to countries where the fines are not as high and the regulations are not as strict. And every year, emissions requirements for automobiles become increasingly strict, requiring an average of $200 a year in maintainance on automobiles to bring them up to the new specifications. In fact, the United States, once responsible for over half of the world's pollution during the 1980s, is now only responsible for about 20%, and increase in pollution has slowed, while Europe, Russia, and Russia are producing more greenhouse gases and industrial waste at exponentially increasing rates each year. Finally, the United States' forests have tripled in size in the past 100 years, while other nations, such as Brazil, are destroying their forests at increasing rates every year. To accuse the United States of not only being a warmongering nation of tyrants is ignorant, but to also accuse it of being singlehandedly responsible for destroying the environment is foolish beyond description.
It is very easy to play the blame game and point fingers at other countries for their iniquities, especially if you don't live there, have never visited there, and do not know the facts. Just because you saw it on television doesn't make it true. Ironically, that is something Americans teach their children as a rule by the time they are 10 years old.