What do U.S. citizens think about the atomic bombarding of Hiroshima city and Nagasaki ?

There are 300 million people in America, so there are potentially 300 million can answers to this question.
86 % of the current USA population was not yet born when the bombings occurred and I would hazard a guess that half of that number are not aware the bombings occurred.

Of those that are aware, a majority possibly want to believe the best of their country and view it as a necessary evil in order to defeat the enemy with minimal losses and victims on both sides. Official estimates are that somewhere between 300,000 - 700,000 American soldiers would have died in a land invasion of Japan and more than 6 million Japanese would have died. If 300,000 additional American soldiers had died in a land invasion, the result would be that around 8 million people that are alive in America today would never have been born.

A minority probably see it as a terrible act that killed innocent people, some object because they oppose nuclear weapons and fear the precedent it set

 

Twenty-five year old American here. I believe that it was a terrible and horrible tragedy that should have been avoided. I think I learned about it before it was mentioned in school, but when I read and saw pictures and videos of the victims of the bombings, I couldn't understand how we could do that to innocent citizens. Yes, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, but two wrongs don't make a right and I didn't know at the time the potential loss of lives if we had not bomb Japan. Knowing what I know now about the lives that would have been lost, I think if we wanted to bomb Japan, we should have bombed a Japanese military base instead.

 

I can't see it as having gone down any other way. I'm glad it happened then, and not later, because I believe it actually led to people realizing just how horrific nuclear weapons - not to mention indiscriminate bombing in general - actually was. It's easy for our increasingly global society to criticize it, but back then, in times of war everything the enemy had would be thrown into the war effort. We've been fortunate enough to avoid any total war situations since then, and I think part of that is because a couple of cities were sacrificed for it.

Imagine if bigger bombs had been dropped in Korea or Vietnam, or some other conflict.

 

War in itself is a tragedy. It is the reason that humanity is the second gravest threat to human kind. Every person can be positive, caring and nurturing to one another. Every person can also be negative, hurtful and destructive. War is a byproduct of what happens when large groups of people interact and become destructive. There is no rationalizing the weapons/methods used by any side. You could have a similar argument, but talking about rifles instead of swords. It isn't the weapons, but the core reason why the weapons are made. I am not saying they are the same thing. It is a fact that war brings out the cruelest aspects of humanity, no matter how you slice it. What do I think about the United States using atomic bombs? If I were in that time period and in place of decision making, I would have used them. I can talk about peace and prosperity all day, but millions of people killing each other with no other foreseeable outcome is a situation you can't ignore. If you are going to go to war, you better not hold back. I was born several generations later and those people's decisions still impact my life, for better or worse. Atomic science led to more destructive forms of weapons. I wish and hope for peace. I also would never ask my country's soldiers to sandbag their power to protect 'my feelings.' If only humanity learned earlier on what outcomes war creates, we could save us from ourselves.

 

It's very easy for people to come out with facts of what would have been if they didn't do this one way or if they hadn't done that. But I think in this case telling us these facts is just a means to justify that the atomic bombs have killed innocents. People who had nothing to do with the war at the time. People who were living in the country they were born in and grew up in and who should not feel any need to be terrorised by another country deciding to blow up their city.

That would be like if someone from Afghanistan had said if they didn't crash two planes into the twin towers then something more drastic would have happened. It's easy for the one doing the deed to justify what they are doing.

So to answer you question I do not think the atomic bomb was necessary, in fact I think the atomic bomb was overkill because to this day the people living in those cities are still suffering the effects of the radiation from those attacks.