As I write this (August 6th) it is the 75th anniversary of the destruction of Hiroshima, Japan with an atomic (or fission) bomb. John C. Hopkins has a very interesting and informative column on the bombing at the Wall Street Journal, but unfortunately it's behind a paywall. Nevertheless, I'd like to share some of what Mr. Hopkins, a nuclear physicist, writes.
He notes that the death toll of the two attacks (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) in August of 1945, was horrific - somewhere between 129,000 and 226,000 men, women and children, but that, even so, it actually saved millions of lives.
The reason is that had the Japanese not been forced to surrender an invasion would eventually have been undertaken which, it was estimated, would cost the lives of 400,000 to 800,000 Allied troops and between five to ten million Japanese. The Japanese authorities had mobilized almost their entire society to fight to the death, and would have lost millions in the ensuing resistance to the invasion.
Had the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki not induced the Japanese leadership to surrender, the war would've dragged on for at least another year and a half, which would've allowed time for the Soviet Union to invade the northern part of the country. A Soviet invasion would most likely have led to a partitioned Japan with a communist North and a free South. Vast numbers of Japanese would've found themselves living under a communist tyranny much as did the citizens of Eastern Europe.
Moreover, Japan faced a major famine shortly after the war that was partly mitigated by humanitarian shipments of more than 800,000 tons of food provided by the U.S. Had the bomb not been used the Allied invasion, the famine and the seizure of much of the country by the U.S.S.R. would've all occurred about the same time. The misery imposed on the Japanese people would've been catastrophic, far more catastrophic, even, than the devastation wrought by the bomb.
Although Hopkins doesn't mention it in his article, there's another incidental point that might be made about all this. Had the war continued into 1947 few military personnel would've been discharged before it was over. This means that almost none of those contemporary Americans who had a father, grandfather or great grandfather in the service during WWII would have been conceived. There are millions of Americans alive today who never would've been born had their ancestor not been discharged from the service when they were, setting them free to marry and start a family.
In other words, whether you think dropping the nuclear bomb was right or wrong, millions of Americans are alive today because President Harry Truman made the decision to drop the bomb on Japan in August 1945. If you're one of these individuals you might say that you owe your existence to the atomic bomb.