...Justified or Not? When Harry Truman learned of the success of the Manhattan Project, he knew he would be faced with a tough controversial decision. The ability to end the war with Japan was in his hands, but it would involve unleashing the worst weapon ever known to man. American soldiers and civilians were weary from four years of war, and the Japanese military was refusing to give up their fight. The atomic bomb was key to ending the war, without too many Allied and Japanese casualties. American forces occupied Okinawa and Iwo Jima and were intensely firebombing Japanese cities. But Japan had an army of 2 million strong stationed in the home islands guarding against invasion. For Truman, the choice whether or not to use the atomic bomb was the most difficult decision of his life. First, an Allied demand for an unconditional surrender was made to the leadership in Japan. The Japanese military command rejected the request for unconditional surrender. So on August 6, 1945, a plane named the Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. 70,000 Japanese citizens were vaporized. In the time that followed, an additional 100,000 died from burns and radiation sickness. On August 9, a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, where 80,000 Japanese people died. On August 14, 1945, the Japanese surrendered. Critics have charged that Truman's decision was “a barbaric act that brought negative long-term consequences to the United States”. Some military analysts insist that Japan was...
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...My President In 1825 If I was President Harry Truman, Would I have made the decision to drop the Atomic Bomb On Hiroshima? Yes, I would have dropped Bomb on Japan Hiroshima, because of the thing they did on December 7, 1941. The main cause for all of this problem was Japan trying to be World Power. The one way Japan could become world power is by taking control other countries, so they can take their resource and became powerful. They were struggling on resources like Oil, Iron, and War materials. They use to get their resource from America, until America stopped trading with them. Their relationship between America and Japan was broke after their trading stopped. On Sunday Dec 7, 1941, Japan dropped bomb on America without anyone expecting...
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...The dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was destined to make history. Killing over 200,000 people, the bombs dropped in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki destroyed anything and everything around it. The destruction came, but the war was finally over. But was it worth it? Did Truman make the right decision in dropping these bombs on Japan? Truman was justified in dropping the bomb because it was strategically, morally, and politically correct. The bombing was definitely strategically correct. In the battle of Hiroshima, 100,000 lives were quickly lost within minutes. After Nagasaki, the total death count was over 200,000. This led the Japanese to surrender, and the war was over. The Japanese believe that surrendering is not an option; when you...
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...The scope of this essay is that the decision, to drop the atomic bomb, made by President Truman was largely influenced by political factors rather than military factors. By observing the historical timeline, the Cold War started shortly after World War II. Truman was likely to have been aware of the rising power of the USSR. This mostly likely influenced him more to drop the bomb. Truman at the same time could have been influenced by the people around him such as the Manhattan Project and Congress. The dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been one of the most widely debated topics to date. The two conflicting sides of the argument are political and militarily. Traditionalist historians argue from the military perspective,...
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...to take a side and then write an editorial on Harry S Truman’s decision to order the dropping of the atom bomb. HARRY S TRUMAN & THE DECISION TO ORDER THE DROPPING OF THE ATOMIC BOMB Boom! Boom! Seventy thousands Japanese citizens were perished instantly after the first atomic bomb was dropped in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Japanese still refused to surrender to Allied forces. On August 9, 1945, with the dropping of the second atomic bomb in Nagasaki, where eighty thousands people were vaporized, Japanese surrendered unconditionally and the World War II ended (“The Decision to Drop the Bomb” 5-6). But was it a right decision of Harry S Truman to end the war with two atomic bombs? Becoming the president of the United States on April 12, 1945 upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S Truman faced with a decision of unprecedented gravity in his life: dropping the atomic bombs in Japan to end the World War II. It was just a matter of opinion whether his decision was right or wrong. But at the time the bombs were dropped, most Americans as wells as Allied forces accepted President Truman’s decision and agreed that the atomic bombs were necessary to end the war quickly before the disastrous invasion of the Japanese mainland could occur. But after that, many people started questioning about President Truman’s decision to order the dropping of the atomic bombs. They believed that dropping two atomic bombs to destroy two cities of Japan helped America generally and President...
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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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...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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...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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...Atomic Bomb Millions of people already dead and thousands more every day. The citizens beg for the conflict to stop but there is no end in sight. A single option seems to be able to end this conflict for good. In World War 2 the United States dropped the Atomic bomb on Japan in order to make them surrender and end the war. The dropping of the atomic bomb was justified in World War 2 because of Japan’s refusal to surrender, it saved U.S. lives and it demonstrated U.S. power. World War 2 was a dark time for all countries involved and especially the United States. Following the war in Europe ending with the death of Adolf Hitler, the war in the Pacific raged on. The United States were fighting with Japan to avenge the bombing of Pearl Harbor which started World War 2. Pearl Harbor was a surprise bombing of a United States naval base by Japan. It killed thousands of people and destroyed large amounts of naval equipment. As the United States fought Germany in Europe, the conflict with Japan was on the backburner. Now with the war in Europe over, Japan is the main enemy. Japan’s military strategy was known to be very unorthodox. With suicide pilots attacking U.S. ships and their relentless mindset made it a daunting task for the U.S. to overcome. In the mainland the U.S. was holding Japanese Americans in internment camps to isolate them from the rest of society in fear they may be giving information to the Japanese. The United States did not see an invasion of Japan as a viable...
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...Atomic Bomb By: Jordan Long Atom bombs were always just a thought to scientists before they were created and dropped on two different Japanese cities in order to end war. The question people were and still to this day are asking is, “Was it the right thing to do?’ Yes it was the best thing to do in that certain situation. The atomic bombs explosion is massive.“A nuclear weapon’s explosive power is measured in yield, which is expressed in tons of TNT. Fission, or atomic bombs, can be as small as one kiloton (KT) of explosive power or as large as several hundred kilotons.”(PBS Newshour) This is important because it's showing the measures of the power of an atomic bomb. Since the end of the Cold War, both Pakistan and India have developed nuclear...
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...President 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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...Technology in WWII: The Atomic Bomb The most significant way that technology changed in WWII, was with the invention of the atomic bomb. A scientific advancement in the 1930’s made the atomic bomb production possible. The discovery of nuclear fission; the process in which an atom is split, and the realization that the power from this could be controlled to produce mass amounts of energy were elements of what fuelled this development. Once the bombs were made and tested the decision on whether or not they should be used was given to the US president at the time, Harry Truman. Two Japan cities ended up being the main targets for the bombings and suffered great fatalities as a result. The affects of the decision to drop the bombs are still being seen today and it is still debated whether or not Truman made the right decision. Whether it was a justified decision or not, this breakthrough in technology was, and remains to be, a significant turning point in warfare. Looking closer at the decision Truman was faced with we can get a better look at why he decided to drop the bombs. The Allies were still at war with Japan, so the main idea was to drop the bombs on Japan, and weaken them enough so that they would surrender. This was seen as a better solution than the other way that the situation would have been handled – troops forcefully taking over Tokyo – because it wouldn’t be at the cost of countless numbers of soldier’s lives. Also, the bombs could inflict much more damage...
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...Hiroshima and memory Background During the final stage of World War II 1945, the United States conducted the atomic bombings of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. Such events are the only use of nuclear weapons in the world. The atomic bombs were created by the Manhattan Project, which was a research and development program established by the United States with the United Kingdom and Canada that produced the first atomic bomb during World War II. The United States called for a surrender of Japan in the Potsdam Declaration on 26 July 1945 by threatening Japan with “prompt and utter destruction”. However, such ultimatum was ignored by the Japanese government. Thus, two nuclear weapons that developed by the Manhattan Project had been deployed by the United States. Hiroshima was the primary target of the first atomic bomb mission and Nagasaki was the second target of the mission. The first nuclear weapon named Little Boy was dropped from an American B-29 Superfortress, known as Enola Gay on the city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 and followed by another nuclear weapon named Fat Man dropped from the B-29 Bockscar on the city of Nagasaki on 9 August. The official figures by Japanese at the time put the death toll at 118,661 and the later estimates the final toll was about 140,000 of Hiroshima’s 350,000 population including military personnel and those who died later due to radiation. On the other hand, the explosion of Fat Man event killed 39,000 and caused a further...
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...Historical Context: The first source by Zeman talks about how at the time many magazines praised the atomic bomb for its technological advancements, but did not mention its effects. The magazine “Popular Science” mentions the atomic bombs for the first time in September 1945. They also wrote about the bombs again after the September 1945 issue. The second source by Miles says that there were other alternatives to a land invasion and a bombing, but they were widely ignored by those who could make the decision. After the bombings, the American people would not know if there were other ways because they would not have this knowledge until years later. Influence of Historical Context: Since the magazines and media talked positively of the atomic bombs, that is what the public thought of them. After the bombings in Japan, American citizens thought how the atomic bombs would be a window to nuclear technology, and not just destruction. The decision to drop the bombs versus other decisions has had great effect. The use of the nuclear bombs may have prevented them from being used again because they are so deadly. The use is widely debated due to the bombings...
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...Was the decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan justified? The dropping of the atomic bombs was justified because the Japanese were not willing to surrender, therefore Truman didn’t have much of a choice but to drop the atomic bomb. The US wanted Japan to surrender to reduce the number of American lives lost. The dropping of the atomic bombs was justified because Japan wouldn’t surrender, so Truman was left under pressure. Hiroshima was bombed on August 6, and Nagasaki on August 9. The two cities were part of the Japanese war effort. One was an army center and the other was naval and industrial (Document B). This explains why it was justified because Truman bombed the important places that would eventually attack the United States. The bomb...
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