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To the United States, using the Atomic Bomb on Japan was absolutely necessary. There were several main reasons for which the American government thought that they needed to use destructive and severe action. One reason was the way in which the Japanese government conducted World War II. They had been treating prisoners of war and civilians of cities, which they had been invading relentlessly and had been very brutal and barbaric. Take for example, the Nanking invasion in China by the Japanese in which occupying troops killed between 100,000 and 200,000 people for absolutely no reason at all "except what may only be described as a blood lust."
And then there was the reason that actually brought the United States into World War II. The sneak attack on Pearl Harbour on Dec. 7th, 1941, which took the lives of about 2,500 men (civilians and soldiers), was conducted without warning at all. This also contributed to the reason why the Japanese government wasn't warned of the upcoming nuclear attacks by the American government. Of course, there were other more important factors, which led to the United States not giving any warning on the attacks. One of the most important factors was that if the Japanese government were warned of the attacks, they would for sure bring American and other prisoners of war into the warned area. Furthermore, American leaders argued that a warning of the attacks "can only result in the unnecessary loss of many fine boys in our Air Force." (Senator. Richard B Russell). This wasn't the only reason for the attacks, in 1942, The Japanese held the Bataan death march on April 9, in which 72,000 exhausted Filipino and American defenders of the Bataan Peninsula were marched for four days for 50 miles without food or water, while Japanese soldiers shot or bayoneted hundreds of stragglers. In addition to that, there were also the hostile conditions in the Japanese prison camps endured by military prisoners and interned civilians for the remainder of the war, which lasted about 3 ½ years. The Atomic Bomb was actually a plan B for the United States government over what they thought then was physically invading the Japanese mainland. American leaders were strongly opposed to an invasion of the mainland because they feared the loss of thousands and thousands of their troops. To them, it was their duty to save the lives of as many American soldiers as possible. This idea was terminated when the invasion of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, islands that the Americans thought were crucial if they were to launch any airstrikes, proved deadly in the costs of American troops. The invasion of Iwo Jima took the lives of 6,200 U.S Marines, while the invasion of Okinawa resulted in the death of 13,000 American troops. In addition to that, there was the threat of Kamikaze attacks by the Japanese. In the invasion of Okinawa, Kamikaze pilots drove their planes into American ships and carriers on which one-third of the actual American fatalities took place. The threat of Kamikaze attacks would be more apparent in the invasion of the homelands because the targets would be much closer from their bases. In addition to all the American casualties, the United States government also feared for the lives of Japanese civilians.
All these were moreless reasons for which the Americans looked at the atomic bomb as "a positive good rather than terrible savagery"
*I would also like to submit a letter sent to at the time, President Truman by Senator Richard B. Russel and his reply regarding the attacks upon Japan. 