I lived through those times. I remember the day it was dropped.
There was a lot of pressure to use it as an expedient. Not many at the time questioned its use or the aftermath.

It's unclear just how much the Japanese had the will to persist
in a war they were clearly losing. The Japanese-Americans were still in internment camps. There was a lot of demonizing as there are in any war. I think only after people saw the pictures of the innocent women and children in Hiroshima that a sense of moral guilt came into being. The bombadier on the Enola Gay was never the same afterward. He was not proud of this "accomplishment". It was a dark day in American history and there is no real honest assessment as to how many American lives it saved. It was an expedient.

Some claim it saved their lives. These are the young men at the time who didn't have to go to fight. But the cost of using it has sent a shadow over the future of the human race that has persisted until this day. Now there is talk of using limited nuclear weapons in the "war on terror". Remember that once it was used as an atom bomb it became larger as a hydrogen bomb. There is something perverse on wanting to make a weapon larger and more efficient.

Because of our foreign policy in using these weapons, other countries are likewise arming themselves with the same.

Frank