The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki proved fatal for the Japanese; the loss of the war and the irreplaceable loss of more than 100,000 innocent lives. Before the bombing that took place in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United States was to develop the lethal weapon that would end the war against Japan Under the Manhattan Project (1940), the US Army Corps of Engineers. was tasked with building the facilities needed for this top-secret project. Over the next few years, scientists worked to produce the key materials for nuclear fission, uranium and plutonium. The Manhattan Project conducted its first successful test at the Trinity Site in Alamogordo, New Mexico. By this time, the war in Europe was over and America could concentrate on the war against Japan. vowed to fight to the end and refused to surrender despite clear indications that there was little or no chance of winning. During 1945 and mid-July, Japanese forces managed to inflict casualties on the Allies amounting to almost half of the losses inflicted during the full three years of war in the Pacific. Japan was a cornered animal and all animals are more deadly when cornered. General Douglas MacArthur and other senior officers favored the bombing of Japan and named the plan "Operation Downfall." They believed that if the war continued, the number of casualties would rise to over a million. To avoid the anticipated high casualty rate, President Truman decided, against Secretary of War Henry Stimson, General Dwight Eisenhower, and other Manhattan Project scientists, that the use of the atomic bomb would quickly end to war. Truman's Secretary of State believed that the devastation... middle of paper ... would prove American military dominance in the postwar world and reduce casualties among Allied nations. Japan had the opportunity to surrender; the first occurred before the bombing of Hiroshima and the second after. America and Japan are stubborn and proud nations, and neither was willing to surrender, which was understandable. If everyone wanted to avoid casualties they would not have entered the war in the first place, war results in loss of life for both sides, all nations involved in the war knew the risks they had to take to win . If Japan had decided to surrender, even after the first bombing, there would not have been so many casualties. Therefore, America's reasoning was justified: the dropping of the atomic bomb avoided the estimated loss of over a million lives, compared to the 135,000 lost to the bombing..