In early August, 1945, United States military planes dropped atomic bombs on two of Japan’s largest and most populated cities, vaporizing everyone at the center of the blast and permanently disfiguring many thousands more. Today, now that the consequences of atomic warfare are widely known, historians debate whether the bombings were necessary or advisable. It's true that avoiding a land invasion saved millions of lives, yet some historians argue that Japan would have surrendered anyway once the USSR entered the war, and that the bombings were really intended to warn the larger Soviet army to stay within its borders.

What do you think? Was the United States justified in its use of atomic bombs at the end of World War II? Regardless of the rightness of the decision at the time, was it a good idea, in hindsight?