A majority of Americans surveyed think dropping atomic bombs on Japan during World War II was the right thing to do, but support was weaker among Democrats, women, younger voters and minority voters, according to a Quinnipiac University poll.
The poll, released Tuesday, found 61 percent of the more than 2,400 American voters questioned think the U.S. did the right thing; 22 percent called it wrong, and 16 percent were undecided.
The first bomb was dropped Aug. 6, 1945, on Hiroshima. An estimated 140,000 people were killed instantly or died within a few months. Tens of thousands more died from radiation poisoning in the years following.
Three days later, another bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing about 80,000 people. Japan surrendered less than a week later.
"Sixty-four years after the dawn of the atomic age, one in five Americans think President Harry Truman made a mistake dropping the bomb," said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
The poll asked a single question: "Do you think the United States did the right thing or the wrong thing by dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?"
Among voters over 55 years of age, 73 percent of those surveyed approved the decision, while 13 percent opposed. Sixty percent of voters 35 to 54 approved, while 50 percent approved among voters 18 to 34 years old, according to the poll.
"Voters who remember the horrors of World War II overwhelmingly support Truman's decision," Mr. Brown said. "Support drops with age, from the generation that grew up with the nuclear fear of the Cold War to the youngest voters, who know less about WW II or the Cold War."
Only 34 percent of black voters and 44 percent of Hispanic voters approved the decision, according to the poll. But Mr. Brown cautioned that the polling sample was smaller for those groups, so officials said the margin of error was 8 percentage points for blacks and 10 percentage points for Hispanics.
Support for Mr. Truman's decision was much stronger among Republicans than Democrats and among men than women.
Among Democrats surveyed, 49 percent approved, while 74 percent of Republicans supported his decision.
Among women questioned, 51 percent supported the bombing, compared with 72 percent of men surveyed.
The poll showed about 70 percent of white Protestants, Catholics and evangelical Christians supported the bombing, while 58 percent of Jews approved. The margin of error was 12 percentage points for Jewish voters, officials said.
All this is fine and dandy, and everything is great! I just wonder why the Japanese people who were on the receiving end of the atomic blasts weren't polled? Now, before you go off ranting the usual banal response that everyone has heard a million times, don’t tell me you can compare the preemptive December 7th raid on Pearl Harbor, which was a legitimate military target, to the atomic bombing of defenseless civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki…
War is the epidemy of barbarism and stupidity; the so-called winners become losers, and the losers only become resentful.
I took a class at U Rock that posed this same question with the class of over 35 students split about in half. I was on the opposed side and feel that besides the obvious fact that Japan is an Island and blockade would be the simplest way to resolve things, claiming that the death toll to Americans would be too great to risk a conventional invasion just doesn't pass scrutiny. I believe that in committing this atrocity the US has opened up the gates for any country to use whatever means possible to hurt us or our allies.
ReplyDelete