Hiroshima, a Tragedy That Could Have Been Averted? Essay

One of the most controversial and heavily scrutinized issue of the twentieth century was President Harry S. Truman’s decision to unleash atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The motives behind Truman’s actions are shrouded in controversy as top military officials publicly denounced the use of such a disastrous weapon. There is overwhelming evidence supporting both sides of the decision, as historians are split in opinion. The United States had been using conventional bombing to try to push Japan over the edge to surrender, but with countless Japanese civilians loyal to their country, invading Japan proved to be more problematic than first thought. Harry S. Truman made the ultimate decision of dropping the atomic bomb in hopes that it would end the war, but the amount of casualties caused by it has historians questioning if it was morally right, “The bomb was unfortunate, but it was the only means to bring Japan to a surrender,” historian Sadao Asada states (Bomb 9). Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justifiable because they would ultimately lead to the end of the war and would demonstrate U.S. supremacy.

     The book, Hiroshima, is the story of six individuals who experienced the true effects of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, August 6, 1945. Miss Toshinki Sasaki, a clerk in the East Asia Tin Works factory, just sat down in the plant office and was turning to converse with the girl at the next desk when the bomb exploded. Dr. Masakazu Fujii, a physician, was relaxing on his porch, which overlooked the Kyo River, where he was reading the morning periodical when the shell detonated. Before the eruption, Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura was observing her neighbor destruct his house as part of a fire lane in preparation of an American attack. Previous to the attack, Father

1. The bombings killed 129,000-246,000 people in total over two to four months. The Japanese army managed to kill over 300,000 people in a single city over a span of just over a month. People really shouldn't be calling the bombings truculent when Japan's allies, the nazis, started the Holocaust and committed genocide .2. The US even gave Japan a chance to surrender before the bombs were dropped by issuing the Potsdam declaration which stated that if they didn’t surrender, Japan would face “prompt and utter destruction”. Japan did not surrender so they had to face the consequence. The US could have just dropped the bombs without any warning, but they decided to give Japan a chance to surrender first. This shows that the US were not inhumane in the bombings of Hiroshima and

Some say the decision was moral and some say it was immoral. The people who think the bombing was immoral was because they think that the atomic bomb is the last thing for destruction on God’s scale. It is immoral to God’s creation of mankind. As the author of Nippon Times (Tokyo) said, a nuclear bomb “strikes at the very basis of moral existence” (Document 4). The author said that it is ethically wrong to bomb innocent humans and destroy mankind. But although the Japanese had to face poor conditions, the American lives were saved by President Truman. The decision was indeed justified on the United States standpoint but unfortunately the decision was immoral on the Japanese

Although WW II ended over 50 years ago there is still much discussion as to the events which ended the War in the Pacific. The primary event which historians attribute to this end are the use of atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Although the bombing of these cities did force the Japanese to surrender, many people today ask "Was the use of the atomic bomb necessary to end the war?" and more importantly "Why was the decision to use the bomb made?" Ronald Takaki examines these questions in his book Hiroshima.

Had he chosen a different alternative , the world as we know it today might not have been the same and the balance of powers of the world would be extremely different. “The losses in Hiroshima and Nagasaki assuredly were horrific, but they pale when compared to the estimates of 17 to 24 million deaths attributed to the Japanese during their rampage from Manchuria to New Guinea. The historian Gavan Daws accurately described "Asia under the Japanese" as "a charnel house of atrocities." During the months of war following the attack on Pearl Harbor, reliable estimates establish that between 200,000 to 300,000 people died each month either directly or indirectly at Japanese hands. The historian Robert Newman tellingly reveals that "the last months were in many ways the worst; starvation and disease aggravated the usual beatings, beheadings and battle deaths. It is plausible to hold that upwards of 250,000 people, mostly Asian but some Westerners, would have died each month the Japanese Empire struggled in its death throes beyond July 1945." (Yes: Truman’s Simple Decision). It was clear that the Japanese war machine had to be stopped, the atomic bomb was the fastest way to draw the war to a close and prevent the deaths of thousands of Americans. While the instantaneous destruction of entire cities and their occupants is without a doubt horrendous, It was the by far the best of a multitude of other

bombing actions on Japanese countries, which were Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were shown as justified actions is the U.S. wanted to save innocent American lives during the war. This is because in document C it stated, “We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save thousands and thousands of young Americans.” This quote explains that if the United States didn’t end the war any sooner, thousands and thousands of innocent American lives would have been lost. During the war, Japan was the cause of many American deaths. President Truman wanted to decrease the death rate of Americans lives. He thought that if there was a way to cause much causality on Japan and limit the number of the deaths of American soldiers. This idea that President Truman created became a reality because this idea was the use of the atomic bomb. When the U.S. used the atomic bomb on Japan, it ended the agony of war, saved many American soldiers’ lives, and destroyed Japan’s power to create a war. This quote shows that if the U.S. didn’t stop Japan from surrendering the war, it would’ve costed them a lot because it would cause many casualties of young American soldiers and innocent

The atomic bombs that Harry Truman dropped on the Japanese killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people. This action was unjustified because many innocent Japanese civilians lost their lives in the bombings. These bombs were so powerful that it caused imminent defeat and were not necessary. Also, the US officials were split. The actions Harry Truman had undertaken in the bombing of the Japanese were unjustified because many innocent people were killed, the bomb was not necessary, and the US officials were split.

    The decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the hardest decision for President Truman to make. He had the power right there in his hands to end the war but he would have to unleash the most powerful weapon known to man, at this time. Everyone was very tired of fighting but the Japanese would not give up so Truman decided to drop it. Even though we told Japan that if they did not surrender we would completely demolish some of their cities, they did not listen and they did not surrender. Maybe they did not think about what kind of weapons we would use because

Ethics and morals are a very important to all people and dropping these bombs showed the United State government’s true colors during the war. Dropping the atomic bombs on the two Japanese cities killed many innocent civilians and drastically damaged Japan and its people as a whole. Killing innocent civilians is unethical and morally incorrect. The intention of dropping the atomic bombs to cause a surrender from Japan was correct, but the government surely could have planned a better way to make Japan surrender just as quickly. On July 17th a petitions was made to President Truman attempting to change his view on the bombing; ethics were brought up as the petitions states “we feel, however, that such attacks on japan could not be justified, at least not unless… Japan were given an opportunity to surrender” (A Petition). This quote shows that the people believed Japan should have been given an opportunity to surrender before falling victim to a devastating nuclear

While the act can be completely justified from a war standpoint, from the people’s firsthand accounts of the bombing, it never truly can. What the citizens of Hiroshima experienced that day was, as John Berger including themselves would describe it as, nothing short of hell. The fireball that the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima was over 300,000 degrees celcius, or over 500,000 degrees fahrenheit. Not even the surface of the sun compares to the temperature of the center of the fireball, which was located smack in the middle of the city of Hiroshima. The horrors of first hand accounts depicting this are traumatic and

As the war continued and violence escalated, bombings caused enormous destruction and high death tolls, leading inevitably to the use of the atomic bombs. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki represented a culmination in the destructiveness of bombings, not a significant deviation from previous bombing practices. The alternatives to the use of the atomic bomb were likely to have caused equal suffering for the Japanese people. The use of the atomic bomb was no less moral than these horrific wartime practices. Harry Truman’s decision to use the atomic bomb against Japan was justified by Japan’s refusal to immediately surrender. Harry Truman gave the Japanese time to surrender in order to preserve the existence of their people. They did not comply and as a result endured the consequences. (Walker) Yet an alternate perspective states that it was quite unnecessary to drop the Atomic Bombs in that Japan was practically an already defeated opponent. If a conditional surrender were to be issued by the United States to Japan in

As evidence, Truman’s critics point to the “peace feelers” put out by the Japanese, as “peace entrepreneurs” that appealed to Portugal, the Vatican and Sweden to help negotiate the terms of surrender. The most noteworthy of these entrepreneurs was ambassador Natoke Sato who was working at the time in order to negotiate better terms for a surrender. Also, an inner cabinet had formed that consisted of powerful Japanese leaders who in secrecy intended to negotiate an end to the war (Frank 46). This could have opened a diplomatic path to negotiate a surrender which Truman did not use and it gives his critics reasons to believe that the bombing was not for military purposes.Moreover, Japan had militarily lost the war. Their navy was sunk and air force could not prevent the American B-29 air raids. The naval blockade (Code named Operation Starvation) had made food and fuel scarce meaning the Japanese were starving to death. Given these facts, it would seem that Truman really had no need to bomb Hiroshima because he could have secured peace without

Truman couldn 't release the lives of these individuals futile. I trust that the passing of these fighters settled on his choice to drop the bomb moral. Also, with all that being said, the losses from the U.S. key traditional besieging effort significantly obscured the quantity of people who passed on from the nuclear bombings. The March 1945 firebombing of Tokyo alone murdered exactly 120,000 Japanese. A ground intrusion would have brought about almost endless more setbacks. As one researcher who examined the U.S. attack arrange, Operation Downfall, notes: "contingent upon how much Japanese regular people opposed the intrusion, gauges kept running into the millions for Allied setbacks and several millions for Japanese losses"(Keck, 2014, p. 1). That being stated, a solid case can be made that Operation Downfall, in any event as it was arranged, wouldn 't have been important regardless of the possibility that the U.S. hadn 't turned to atomic weapons. Specifically, the Soviet Union 's choice to enter the Pacific War against Japan would have absolutely rushed Japan 's surrender, and in this way spared lives.

However, it is difficult to make a case for the ethics in the use of the atomic bombing of Japan. Although it may have been needed to end the war, war, in any manner, is never ethical and all those innocent people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki should not have died.