The Civil War. The Napoleonic Wars. The Hundred Years’ War. The Vietnam War. The Korean War. America’s Revolutionary War. The Great War. All of these wars were filled with terrible suffering and thousands of deaths, but one could be considered the most catastrophic of them all: World War II. Many horrendous events took place in those six years, yet none were as devastating as what happened in August 1945. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were hit with a nuclear blast so powerful people over two miles away burst into flames. War brings things like this to the world, but for some people, the atomic bombings seemed to go too far. Others believe the atomic bombs were the only way to end the war. This question is still being debated today: Was dropping the atomic bombs during WWII justified? First, many believe dropping the atomic bombs was not justified because innocents were killed by a country focused on revenge. For example, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor the US was mad, and rightly …show more content…
For instance, Riddle reports, “…no one really knew how it would affect the people or the environment.” The US didn’t know what the atomic bomb could do, just that it would cause mass destruction. They could have been condemning the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to a hideous fate, but they dropped the bomb anyways. For a country that says they’re saving people, many of those people stilled ended up dying because of the US. In addition, “…almost 3,800 people (of 10,412) who had died from the blast or related to the blast, were found to have developed lung cancers” (Riddle). 3,800 people developed lung cancer because of the bomb. These innocent people were suffering because of something that they couldn’t control––war. Clearly, the US was not justified in dropping the bombs because the US didn’t know how the bomb would affect people and the effects ended up being