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Primary Sources

Decent Essays

Primary sources are useful because they are the reports and interpretations of the historians that are closer to the event. Therefore, some of the primary sources that will be most helpful when researching to what extent did the military play a role in the decision to drop the atomic bomb on August 6, 1945. First, I would use the interviews and memos that lead up to the event; I will read some of the interviews that were conducted from sources like Robert Oppenheimer, Stanislaus Ulam, and Kathleen Maxwell, these people are important, because they are the individuals who actually worked on the bomb. I will pull the interviews from the Voices of the Manhattan Project. Then I would like to get into the actual decision and meetings in Potsdam, which will be pulled from a few memos, …show more content…

Take for instance, in Groves (1993) article on “The Story of the Manhattan Project” it is related to the interviews conducted by scholars on the “Voices of the Manhattan projects,” because some of Groves’ direct quotes were pulled from the interviews about how the Manhattan project began. Even Samuel Walker, who wrote about a fierce debate among many scholars, his evidences and facts were taken from the information from Truman’s Library documents, memorandums, and meeting notes. Also, some of the data was even taken from the National Security Archives to come up with a clear conclusion to why Truman’s administration came to decide whether or not to use the bomb on Japan on August 6, 1945. However, most of the secondary sources do support the primary sources that I will investigate, but there is at least one that does show a little bias or contradicts the facts. Thus, Bernstein does present a little bit of bias, because he does not write about all the points, but he stands by his beliefs and maintains his own opinions to why the bomb was

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