...The Atomic Bomb: A Necessity or a Desire Tanmay Bhanushali Year 10 Historical Paper “Great power imposes the obligation of exercising restraint” Leo Szilard - Hungarian-born Physicist and main scientist to oppose the atomic Bombings This was spoken in an interview titled “President Truman did not Understand”. This was between a US news reporter and Leo Szilard the key figure among the scientists opposing the use of the bomb. The interview was in August 15, 1960. Why was their so fierce Opposition? In what Way did Truman Not Understand? These answers lie in the depths of the controversy about the Atomic Bomb. Introduction The atomic bomb was a topic of major controversy but the main debate was about the necessity of the atomic bomb. Many say that the atomic bomb was dropped because it would save millions of American lives. However at that period the Japanese were also at the point of surrendering. Huge amounts of incendiary bombs were used in large-scale cities against japan. Many of the scientists in the Manhattan Project were disturbed about it. The incendiary bombs reduced much morale from the Japanese army and crippled the will power. However this small cripple made Japan even angrier because these incendiary bombs were used on innocent civilians and not the Japanese army. Many think that it was necessary to use the Atomic Bombs because Japan attacked America first and not the other way around. It is a fact that when Hitler attacked...
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...the atomic bomb to gain a military advantage against Germany. Roosevelt wanted the U.S. to construct the atomic bomb first so that the U.S. could use it against Germany in hopes of getting them to surrender, but on May 8 Germany was defeated. The sole purpose of the Manhattan Project was to benefit the U.S. with power and use the bomb to get Germany to surrender, but now that Germany was defeated, concern rose among the scientists in the Metallurgical Laboratory at Chicago. The Chicago Scientists reasoned that since Germany was defeated there was no point in continuing with the construction of the atomic bomb. The scientists’ attitudes now towards...
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...Truman During his few weeks as Vice President, Harry S Truman scarcely saw President Roosevelt, and received no briefing on the development of the atomic bomb or the unfolding difficulties with Soviet Russia. Suddenly these and a host of other wartime problems became Truman's to solve when, on April 12, 1945, he became President. Truman was born in Lamar, Missouri, in 1884. He grew up in Independence, and for 12 years prospered as a Missouri farmer. He went to France during World War I as a captain in the Field Artillery. Returning, he married Elizabeth Virginia Wallace, and opened a haberdashery in Kansas City. Active in the Democratic Party, Truman was elected a judge of the Jackson County Court in 1922. He became a Senator in 1934. During World War II he headed the Senate war investigating committee, checking into waste and corruption and saving perhaps as much as 15 billion dollars. As President, Truman made some of the most crucial decisions in history. Soon after the war against Japan had reached its final stage. An urgent plea to Japan to surrender was rejected. Truman, after consultations with his advisers, ordered atomic bombs dropped on cities devoted to war work. Two were Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japanese surrender quickly followed. The first use of an atomic bomb in warfare took place on August 6, 1945. The weapon was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima by the U.S. bomber Enola Gay, instantaneously destroying four square miles in the middle of the population...
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...Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and the United States entered into World War II. When the United States realized that Germany attempted to build an atomic bomb, Americans began to concentrate on their research about creating an atomic bomb more heavily. President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Manhattan Project, which included a group of top scientists, under General Leslie R. Groves, who worked around the clock to try to develop an atomic bomb within three years (Bondi 493). The Americans and the British combined their efforts to research the development of the bomb and created plants and factories to work in (“The Atomic Bomb…” 257). They created plants for three separate processes: electromagnetic, gaseous diffusion, and thermal diffusion. These plants helped create the plutonium and uranium 235 needed to manufacture the atomic bomb (Gerdes 142). The secrecy of the Manhattan Project was essential in order to develop the atomic bombs to end World War II. The United States and Great Britain kept the development of the atomic bomb a secret (Bondi 493). In order to keep the secret, Groves spread the work out between laboratories so that the people working on the bomb could not figure out they were manufacturing. The members of the Manhattan Project asked the scientists questions about the bomb, and they gave answers back, but they did not know what the responses were for. The project consisted of so many restrictions for the employees in order to keep the secrecy of the project...
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...In a speech given by Harry S. Truman, announcing the usage of the A-Bomb in Hiroshima, he informs the people of the United States what has happened and why it happened. The speech was given sixteen hours after the bomb was dropped. Harry Truman then explains why the American airplane dropped the bomb in the first place, “The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid…”(Truman, Paragraph 2). Truman then goes on the explain the bomb and why it was so effective. He explains how powerful this bomb actually was and how it was a new weapon of war. “That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of T.N.T. It had more than two thousand times the blast power of the british ‘Grand Slam’ which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare”(Truman, Paragraph 1) Largest is what Truman explains the bomb as. That means that the military...
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...Monday, August 6, 1945, at 8:15 AM, the nuclear bomb 'Little Boy' was dropped on Hiroshima by an American B-29 bomber. The decision to do so has become one of the most controversial topics in scholarly debate. The two major arguments among historians, such as Herbert Feis, Barton Bernstein and Martin Sherwin, are that on the one hand, the atomic bomb was dropped to end the war with Japan and on the other, that the bomb was dropped by the Truman administration to make the Soviet Union more manageable. I am in more agreement with the latter and this essay will argue that the decision to drop the atomic bomb was an American attempt to inhibit Soviet diplomatic ambitions rather than an attempt to bring the war to a quick end. The American decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan was without doubt influenced by the desire to end the war since that is what it accomplished. Truman assured after the bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that “the dropping of the bombs stopped the war and saved millions of lives.”[1] The dropping of the atomic bombs prevented an American invasion on Japan, the approximate cost for this exceeded $500,000 and more than a million lives would have been lost. Herbert Feis argued that many in the Truman administration believed that a land invasion of Japan would not have been sufficient enough to cause Japan to surrender quickly and unconditionally and thus Truman’s decision to use the atomic bomb was a quick solution to ending the war with Japan...
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...build an atomic bomb, Americans began to concentrate on their research about creating an atomic bomb. President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Manhattan Project, which included a group of top scientists, under General Leslie R. Groves, who worked around the clock to try to develop an atomic bomb within three years. The Americans and the British combined their efforts to research the development of the bomb and created plants and factories to work in. They created plants for three separate processes: electromagnetic, gaseous diffusion, and thermal diffusion. These plants helped create the plutonium and uranium 235 needed to manufacture the atomic bomb. The secrecy of the Manhattan Project was essential in order to develop the atomic bombs to end World War II. The United States and Great Britain kept the development of the atomic bomb a secret. In order to keep the secret, Groves spread the work out between laboratories so that the people working on the bomb could not figure out they were manufacturing. The members of the Manhattan Project asked the scientists questions about the bomb, and they gave answers back, but they did not know what the responses were for. The project consisted of so many restrictions for the employees in order to keep the secrecy of the project. They could not hold private conversations about the material they were working on because after awhile, people might have been able to put it together and determine that they were creating a bomb. Employees...
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...History of the A-Bomb In early August 1945 atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These two bombs quickly yielded the surrender of Japan and the end of American involvement in World War II. By 1946 the two bombs caused the death of perhaps as many as 240,000 Japanese citizens1. The popular, or traditional, view that dominated the 1950s and 60s – put forth by President Harry Truman and Secretary of War Henry Stimson – was that the dropping of the bomb was a diplomatic maneuver aimed at intimating and gaining the upper hand in relations with Russia. Today, fifty-four years after the two bombings, with the advantage of historical hindsight and the advantage of new evidence, a third view, free of obscuring bias and passion, can be presented. First, the dropping of the bomb was born out of complex infinite military, domestic and diplomatic pressures and concerns. Second, many potentially viable alternatives to dropping the bombs were not explored by Truman and other men in power, as they probably should have been. Lastly, because these alternatives were never explored, we can only conjecture over whether or not Truman’s decision was a morally just one, and if indeed it was necessary to use atomic energy to win the war. The war in Asia had its roots in the early 1930s. Japan had expansionist aims in Eastern Asia and the Western Pacific, especially in Indochina2. In July of 1940 the United States placed an embargo on materials exported to...
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...Manhattan Project was a top secret project during World War II conducted by the United States, Great Britain, and Canada to develop the first nuclear weapon (the atomic bomb). Once President Truman was informed of the Manhattan Project, he formed a committee to research and discuss the most effective way to use the bomb to shock Japan into surrendering. Based upon the massive loss of lives suffered by both the United States and Japan on Iwo Jima and Okinawa, President Truman knew that it was unlikely that Japan would surrender unconditionally as demanded by the Potsdam Declaration without an invasion of Japan itself. After conferring with advisers, President Truman considered, but ultimately rejected several alternatives to using the bomb....
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...racism as a reason that the United States dropped bombs on both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In a world where America already had a reputation of being racially elite via slavery, through the slaughter of the Chinese in the 1800’s, through the terrorization and segregation of the Native Americans, to ignoring what Hitler was doing to the Jewish people and in the total blind movement of rounding up Japanese Americans and placing them in internment camps, it seems to fit that theory that we dropped the bomb simply because we didn’t like the Japanese people and we wanted to eradicate anyone who was not an American (The Decision to Drop the Bomb). In reality, America, specifically Truman, had no choice but to use extreme measures in order to end the war. A significant factor in prompting Truman to make this decision was that Germany was working on a project very similar to America’s Manhattan Project. (Manhattan Project) and we could not let Germany take this weapon into their hands without inflicting further serious damage. Another large deciding factor was that Truman felt it was a very clear decision based on the facts that Americans and their soldiers were worn out from this war, as well as the fact that the President felt we needed to avoid losing close to 500,000 American lives had we decided to invade Japan. (Beschloss, M. R. 1995) Even though there are many debates in today’s world about whether Truman should have dropped the atomic bomb or if the reason he gave was in fact legitimate...
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...The use of an atomic bomb is something that has lingered in the conscience of many Americans since the American B-29 Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb ever used on August 6, 1945. The United States was urging Japan to surrender, when they refused to comply with these terms, the bomb was dropped and 100,000 people were killed. Two professors of American History, Robert James Maddox and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, share their opposing views on weather the atomic bomb was necessary to end World War II. Maddox claims that the atomic bomb forced the Japanese army to agree to surrender, which significantly saved more lives than would have been lost. Hasegawa asserts that the Soviet invasion of Japan was a more prominent reasoning for surrender in comparison to the use of the atomic bomb and considers alternatives that seemed to be overlooked by military leaders. A meeting was held at the White House on June 18, 1945. A committee was assembled to consider the major issues concerning the use of the bomb that would present its opinion to the president, army chiefs and secretaries. Army chief of Staff General George C. Marshall was asked to present future war plans. They suggested an operation that was code-named Olympic which would be the invasion of Kyushu to blockade and stage an invasion of Japan’s main island. They then recommended to Truman, “the bomb should be used against Japan as soon as possible… against a military target surrounded by other buildings… without prior warning...
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...straightforward? Did you learn anything interesting along the way? I was able to pull up the three sources are good, and a straightforward resource sources, but some research was challenging like, trying to find Leo Szilard biography on the atomic bomb, which I found it on an interview with William Linoleate published his biography in the book of “Genius in the Shadows” (Kelly, William Linoleate 's Interview). I learn that the letters and the journals are very interesting history resources, which can help with my future project in class. Furthermore, the interviews are very helpful in a history research project because the questions give a breakdown on what some topics like biography, which might be discussing in my future project. 2....
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...Modern History Conflict in the Pacific 1937-1941 Due: Thursday 28th of August, 2008 Alyce Wearne Task: Evaluate the argument that America was justified in using atomic weapons against Japan in 1945. As one of the most significant and consequential decisions in the history of the world, President Harry Truman’s allowance of atomic weapons towards the end of World War II, of which he himself understood would cause both mass devastation and indignation, is still one of the most controversial and heavily debated topics in today’s society. This was partially due to the adverse underestimation and seemingly ignorant approach the American’s had towards their latest development of mass destruction; almost oblivious to the immense aftermath of physical injury, civilian death and emotional torment it would produce for those involved. This decision, ultimately made by one man, affected not only America and Japan, but the world. Dispute over this was, and continues to be highly generated, the event causing anger and infuriation to millions across the world. This resentment did not just accumulate from the lack of awareness and slaughter of innocent life, but from the graphic images shown in newspapers, the casualties, and the torturous amount of death underwent as a result of the bomb. As a Japanese survivor documented: “The appearance of people was . . . well, they all had skin blackened by burns. . . . They had no hair because their hair was burned, and at a glance you...
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...1945, President Truman described with utter clarity his views on the destructive nature of the atomic bomb: We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. It may be the fire of destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley era, after Noah and his fabulous ark. Yet, despite his characterization of the bomb as the fire that would destroy the world, Truman goes on to state: This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10 It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful. How could a Christian man justify using what seemed to be the very power of God against enemy cities with the intent to kill over 100,000 innocent civilians with the power from one atomic bomb (Goldfield, D., Abbot, C., Anderson, V., Argersinger, J., Argersinger,P, Barney, W, Weir, R. ,2010)?” “Truman’s argument for the use of atomic weapons against Japan focused on the fact that the targets were strictly military and no innocent civilians would be harmed: I have told the secretary of war, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers are the target and not women and children. Truman further argues that the U.S., on account of its reputation as a leader of the civilized world, would never bomb a civilian city: Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop this terrible bomb on the old capital or the new. Moreover, Truman stated that the...
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...Truman’s Moral Dilemma President Truman’s Decision of dropping the Atomic Bomb brought much controversy to the U.S and other countries that were involved in the war, controversy which can be argued to be both good and bad. The U.S was the very first country to develop an atomic bomb, and their focus was to use it and show the world they had it. This action saved and took many lives around the entire world. The question on whether such a powerful attack was necessary to end the war has often been asked. Harry S. Truman became president after Theodore Roosevelt had died of a brain hemorrhage in April 1945. Roosevelt sadly passed away while World War II was still going on. The death...
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