According to author Kenneth Samples:

The justification for such a tragic event rests with the reasonable assessment that at least hundreds of thousands more American soldiers would be killed and wounded if the Japanese mainland was invaded. The estimated death and casualty toll for the Japanese (including both soldiers and civilians) could reasonably have reached into the millions. So while the atomic bombings on the Japanese cities were horrific, the decision to bomb instead of invade likely saved millions of lives. Furthermore, ensuring Japan’s swift surrender to the United States has proved to be very beneficial to the Japanese people. America rebuilt Japan and that assistance lead to Japan’s becoming a world economic power. Today, Japan competes with the Western world in terms of gross national product.

(taken from https://reasons.org/explore/blogs/reflections/the-ethics-of-dropping-the-atomic-bomb (Links to an external site.))

In contrast, author William Brown argues:

Although many people say this was justified because Truman had previously warned them saying,”It was to spare the Japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum of July 26, was issued at Potsdam. Their leaders promptly rejected that ultimatum. If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a rain of ruin from the air the like of which has never been seen on this earth.”

There are clear ethical dilemmas between the two options. In one option they can destroy a whole city and kill an estimated 200,000. This seems harsh but it would be rash to say it was not well thought out. The other option was to send more of their own people in to get killed, which would amount to thousands of more US deaths. As unjustified as it seems Japan was not willing to surrender easily, so many believe that the US wanted to send a shock to the Japanese. It seems that dropping at atomic bomb is completely unjustified, after dropping one bomb the Japanese War council was still unwilling to surrender unconditionally. This led to the second bomb. This shows how strong the Japanese were in their ideals, but does not take away from the damage these bombs did to Japanese cities and to many innocent people.

(taken from http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/brown-w1/ (Links to an external site.))

Prompt 

In a well thought out paper, discuss one simplistic—yet extraordinarily difficult question: should the United States of America have used the atomic bomb in the Second World War?