Debate Club: Should Truman Have Used the Atomic Bomb?

Debate Club: President Barack Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima, Japan, on Friday. The president's historic visit took place 71 years after the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on the city during World War II, one of two it used during that conflict.

During a speech at the site, Obama called for the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons, revisiting an issue that helped him win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. "We must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them,” he said. "That is a future we can choose, a future in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not as the dawn of atomic warfare but as the start of our own moral awakening."

Obama's trip generated controversy, raising questions about whether the president should apologize to the victims of the bombing and reigniting debate about whether President Harry Truman made the right decision to use the atomic bombs back in 1945, which killed about 100,000 in Hiroshima alone. During his visit, Obama met with survivors of the nuclear blast.

Some historians argue that the atomic bomb was Truman's best option to avoid an invasion and prolonged fighting with Japan, thereby preventing even more deaths. Others, though, argue that resorting to nuclear weapons was not necessary and find that Japan would have surrendered even if the U.S. had not dropped the bomb.