The Atom Bombs On Hiroshima And Nagasaki

They think that the Japanese were going to surrender, that Truman’s advisers didn’t all agree that the bomb was necessary, and that there was a better way to get Japan to surrender. But, it turns out that this was not the case. Japan was an honor-based country. Surrendering was not honorable to them. They were taught that suicide was an honorable death. “A prominent local Navy man, a former employee, had committed suicide the day before by throwing himself under a train- a death considered honorable enough to warrant a memorial service.”. (Hersey, 16). If it was honorable enough for a normal man to commit suicide, then people wouldn’t hesitate to die for their country. Japan would be wiped out because they wouldn’t know when to give up. In an interview with a high ranked Japanese officer on v-j day, Karl T. Compton asked him what he thought would happen if we hadn’t dropped the bomb, and invaded instead. He said, “We would have kept on fighting until all Japanese were killed, but we would not have been defeated.”. By this he means that they would have kept fighting until they were dead, and even though they would lose, it wouldn’t be losing if they died honorably, fighting for their country. Another reason why people did not think that he atomic bomb was not necessary was because people think that Truman’s advisors were not in favor of the bomb, therefore making the decision to drop the bomb only up to Truman,

The Japanese showed it a lot, but theirs appeared more forced, as though they were trying to prove to the POWs that they were not going to give up without a fight. In chapter 18, Louie and Phil were on Kwajalein, and they were interrogating them about the American army and war strategies. When it was Phils turn, “the interrogators asked him to describe American war strategy. He replied that he thought they would work their way in until they defeated Japan. The interrogators responded with whoops of laughter.

Was it necessary for Truman to drop the Atomic Bombs on Japan in World War II? On August 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb was dropped by a US aircraft on Hiroshima. This atomic bomb was dropped to force Japan into surrender, this bomb alone destroyed Hiroshima and over 90,000 people were instantly killed in the explosion and an additional 100,000 people perished from burns and radiation sickness. On August 9, 1945 only three days later, the second atomic bomb was dropped over Nagasaki resulting in an additional 80,000 casualties of the Japanese population. The people of Japan surrendered on August 14, 1945 soon after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Many people opposed to the use of the atomic bombs because people argued that Truman 's decision to use atomic bombs was a barbaric act of cruelty. People also argued that the US government had other ulterior motives to drop the atomic bomb that were necessary for America 's ideals. Necessary motives like presenting The Soviet Union a strong message for the Soviets to watch their step around America. A conventional way of warfare for Japan 's surrender would have costed many more American lives. Truman and others believed that the atomic bomb was necessary to save American lives but also Japanese lives. These actions from President Truman marked the end of the most destructive war in history. The two sources that will used and evaluated in this paper are is The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb by Dennis D. Wainstock (1996)

Intense moral justification was needed in order to make the decision to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki however, President Truman was ultimately the man who made the final decision to launch ‘Little Boy’ and destroy Hiroshima, Nagasaki and their civilians, thus forcing an end to the war. Although there were many alternatives presented to President Truman, it is unknown as to whether they would have actually succeeded in ending the war or producing less casualties. Truman made the decision to drop these bombs in the heat of war but his justification of having a military target appeared extremely unrealistic, as both cities were full of innocent civilians. The morality of the bombs have been debated over the years, however the publication of the actual damage to civilian life caused a strong voice opposed to the usage in the 60 years following the action.

President Truman and the United States were not justified in using this weapon to force the Japanese to surrender. First of all, the use of this weapon was inhumane to the Japanese civilians. The weapon resulted in an estimated value of 129,000-226,000 deaths. Even after the tragedy, survivors were affected by the high amounts of radiation in their bodies. Most of them contracted cancer and faced the consequences of the bomb. Survivors had to battle burns, starvation, and even severe sickness. Survivors also had to battle with the “inner scars”, physiological damage to the brain. While they were treated for radiation illnesses, many were left traumatized, some the only survivors from their family. Some who still bore inner scars committed suicide. For the rest of their lives, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors would be shunned by the Japanese society and haunted by the bomb's’ radiation. The usage of this bomb was inhumane

A retired Major, Richard Gordon, was a POW in Japan and said, ?The dropping of the bomb saved the lives of all of us being held in Japan. There wasn?t one prisoner who wasn?t told they were dead if the Americans invaded Japan. We were looking forward to an invasion, but we knew we might not be around to see it.? Another survivor of the Bataan Death March, Grayford C. Payne, was quoted as saying, ?I had not been a prisoner for fifteen minutes before they bayoneted a fifteen-year-old Filipino kid right next to me.? A Japanese directive describes how the prisoners were to be killed: ?mass bombing, or poisonous smoke, poisons, decapitation?. In any case, it is the aim not to allow the escape of a single one, to annihilate them all, and not to leave any traces.? An invasion was the most favored alternative of the allies to force a Japanese surrender, if the bomb was not used. The other alternatives were naval blockades, modification of unconditional surrender terms, conventional bombing, and waiting a little longer to see if the Soviets would enter into the war. The number of Americans and Japanese who would have died if such invasions had occurred would have been astronomically higher than the number who died at Hiroshima. Pentagon planners projected 132,000 American casualties for an invasion of Kyushu, and 90,000 or so for Honshu. Using Okinawa as a model, there would be one American casualty for every four Japanese casualties, and Japan?s

The fact that not proper information was given to Japan to make the decision whether to surrender or not made people think

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

Although the Japanese believed it was dishonarable to surrender and probably thought they made the best decision, I am sure they didnt think about the lives they were putting in danger. The civilians that died were not to blame, and shouldnt have had to endure the devastions of the war but sadly they did live on a military port.

This explains why the Japanese saw the men that surrendered as ‘lesser-humans,’ which they already believed before the men

While many believe the bombing of Hiroshima was justifiable and necessary to end WWII, there are still points of contention surrounding this decision. This essay will discuss the events and decisions that led up to this conclusion. Harry Truman, the U.S. President deemed responsible for this decision, was not completely informed with all the possible options and had less engagement than other associates in the decision-making process. The Soviets had just declared war on Japan which was putting pressure on the Japanese to accept surrender. The conventional methods of war were already defeating the Japanese which would have led to an eventual surrender from Japan.

To begin, they decided to go to war with two of the most powerful industrial and naval forces, the US and Britain, during Japan’s attempted Occupation of Indochina (now Indonesia) from the 22nd to the 26th of September 1940, even though they knew it was impossible to win. All because it was either that or surrender, and they thought that would make them look weak. That, and during all of their battles, they would fight to the death even though they knew they had no chance of winning. They would much rather commit suicide than surrender, as dictated by the “Bushido” code, or the “Way of the Warrior” or Samurai. According to Bushido, it was “preferable to commit suicide rather than suffer the disgrace of being captured by the enemy.” [3]. Putting pride before ethical, logical and effective decisions by the Imperial Japanese Army caused their own downfall in

“Kamikaze alone cost American Navy 10,000 lives, and Army and Marine casualties were more than 50,000 soldiers. He is mentioning the fact that in 1945 American intelligence intercepts a message about Japanese desire for piece but this was “irrelevant because the Japanese government remained in the hands of militarists: Their message indicated a willingness to fight to the death.” Japanese gathered 5,000 aircraft as suicide weapons. They willingness to die was not only empty word. He mentioned that several of his colleagues at Kyushu University told him that “as boys of 14 and 15, they were being trained to meet Americans on the beaches with little more than sharpened bamboo spears.” How determined the militarists were shows the fact that after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on August 10, when they debated about capitulation the militarist still insist that “Japan should hold out for terms for better than unconditional surrender.”

In order to have any valid opinion about the bomb dropping on Hiroshima, it would be good to know why the U.S dropped it in first place. Dropping the bomb on Hiroshima was not an easy decision made by the United States President. President Truman wanted to end the war as quickly as possible with few casualties. (Donohue, Nathan) What many people do not know is that the bomb was also dropped to impress the Soviets and to persuade them to relax their grip on Eastern Europe. (Clare, John D) “After Germany 's surrender, tension mounted between the U.S. and the Soviet Union regarding the disposition of postwar Europe. The U.S. began worrying about the increased influence the Soviets would obtain if they joined the war against Japan in mid-August as

Would you kill a thousand to save millions? Well the drastic actions taken by the United States did save millions. There were two actions that had to occur to save the millions and end the war, the dropping of the two atomic bombs being the first of their kind were to be the most powerful bomb ever invented using atomic and nuclear forces so create it and packed over 20,000 tons of TNT and was about ten feet long. The bomber that transported and dropped them was called the 'Enola Gay’. The two Japanese cities’ that were struck by such creations were Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In this essay I will be discussing on how the actions taken by the United States of America were completely justified in dropping the two bombs as is established a future power image, saved millions, ended the war and ended the axis of evil.