Paper Title
Was the Nuclear Bombing of Japanese Cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki a Necessity? – A Critical Review

Abstract
After the Japanese fleet was destroyed at Leyte Gulf in October 1944, the U.S. was able to carry out uncontested bombing of Japan's cities, including the hellish fire-bombings of Tokyo and Osaka. The Japanese position was hopeless and they had lost control of their own air. Hence, without a navy, the resource-poor Japanese had lost the ability to import the food, oil, and industrial supplies needed to carry on a World War. The United States and Britain felt that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a way to demonstrate their military power and pre-empt Soviet dreams of Communist expansionism. But dropping of nuclear bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not end the war. It was, in fact, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria which ended the war, because it suddenly convinced Japan that no negotiated settlement with the Western powers was possible. But the use of the nuclear weapon did not surprise the Soviet Union, but it did spur them into action and by 1949, Soviet scientists had developed the country's first nuclear bomb. What followed was a nuclear arms race during the Cold War. US used Hiroshima and Nagasaki as testing grounds for the new weapon. It is horrifying to think that millions of non-combatants were used as guinea pigs for a cruel Allied experiment. US action constituted state terrorism, and even genocide. The present nuclear warheads are capable of far greater and more lasting destruction. The prospect of global destruction is very real if such warheads are at all used in the present age. Key words- Nuclear Bomb, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Cold War, Genocide, Mamchuria.