The FACTS

Miyoko was a first-year student at First Municipal Girls High School. She was exposed to the Hiroshima bomb at her building demolition work site.  Her body was never found, but her mother found this wooden sandal two months later.  She recognized it by the straps that she had made herself using material from her kimono.  The print of Miyoko's left foot remains on the sandal.
(Photo by Sharkey, taken at the Peace Museum in Hiroshima August 2010)

In early 1945 the US was fighting on two fronts:  Europe and the Pacific (Wikipedia, 2011, and History.com).  Germany surrendered to the Allied Forces (which included the USA and the USSR) on May 7, and May 8, 1945 is remembered as Victory in Europe Day.  On the Pacific front, Japan was still fighting against the US and its allies, and also against China.  They had lost several important battles to control islands in the Pacific, like Iwo Jima and Okinawa, their Imperial Navy was in ruins, and American planes were constantly bombing Japanese cities (Hersey, 1989).  Train tracks within the country had also been bombed, and the difficulties in transportation made food scarce in most areas of Japan.  Earlier in 1945, a newly elected Japanese Prime Minister, Kantaro Suzuki , had urges his government to negotiate surrender with the United States (Wikipedia, 2011).  After Victory in Europe, he was even more ready to capitulate because now the allied forces would be using all their might against Japan, and they were hoping for some good terms for their surrender.  Many American generals and military experts were also convinced that Japan could not keep fighting (Tataki, 1996).  Japan also tried to involve the Soviet Union in negotiations, because the US was calling for unconditional surrender, and at that point the US was no longer interested in a dialogue (Debatepedia, 2010).   So, on August 6, 1945, without  warning  an American fighter plane dropped a  nuclear bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, destroying about  four square miles of the city.  Right away, 90,000 people were killed; 40,000 were injured, and most of these people died shortly after from radiation sickness. Three days later, a second atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki killed 37,000 people and injured 43,000. On August 15, 1945 Japan surrendered unconditionally (Wikipedia, 2011).

Japanese foreign affairs minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signs the Japanese Instrument of Surrender
on board USS Missouri as General Richard K. Sutherland watches, September 2, 1945
(Source: Wikimedia Commons--public domain)

Hiroshima/Nagasaki Thesis and Introduction

Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, ca. 1942
(Photo by Sharkey, taken at the Peace Park in Hiroshima August 2010)

Now known as A-bomb dome. August 2010
(Photo by Sharkey, taken at the Peace Park in Hiroshima August 2010)

 Dropping the atom bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was an unjustified and criminal act.  On August 6 and 9, 1945 the United States dropped two atom bombs on the Japanese industrial cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, destroying the cities, killing over 200,000 people, contaminating million more, and accelerating the surrender of Japan and the end of WWII  (Wikipedia, 2011). Yet, the destruction of these two cities, and the civilian casualties did not actually change the outcome of the war, nor saved millions of lives, like some said.  Actually, by the Summer of 1945, Japan was already on its knees and ready to capitulate, even before the bombings Lewis 2010).  The bombings were not justified:  They were mostly a show of strength by the United States, meant to frighten future enemies and to impress current and future allies.  They were a warning, a "Don't mess with us" sign, a message not just to Asia, but also to Europe and its leaders, and most of all to the Soviet Union.

Anti-Japanese progaganda,
a U.S. Army official poster
(Source: Wikimedia Commons--public domain)

Japan had to be the target of the first atom bomb attack, because such attacks on Europe would have found more opposition in the US government, and among the citizens.  Instead, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had caused deep American hatred for Japan, and the little opposition by white Americans to the internment of Japanese Americans (Tataki, 1996) had lead the US Government to assume American support for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.