Japan was near defeat, but many question how close Japan was to surrender (Jennings). Although some do not agree with the actions of the United States, the bombs were dropped, altering the history of World War II, our country, and the rest of the world. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and war is definitely no exception to this
With this amount of casualties projected, a land invasion would have trumped the death toll of D-Day. Also, more civilians and more cities would have been destroyed because of the strict Japanese leadership and stubbornness to surrender, especially when they know that they are in an un-winnable war. Another negative one could claim is that these events lead to the arms race. If the bombs were not dropped, there would have still been the arms race. Urgent use of the bombs portrayed to the world of the bombs potential and prevented future use when stockpiles were much
The Japanese were seen as bloodthirsty savages willing to die rather than give up. Their defense of Okinawa and the thousands of kamikaze pilots only confirmed this fear in the eyes of the Americans. Truman felt the bomb would save more lives in the long run, due to avoiding another six or more months of carnage that the war was known for. Truman later said he estimated fighting losses numbered in the several hundred thousands, while bomb losses numbered in the tens of thousands since he intended to spare as many women and children as humanly possible. Using the bomb pretty much guaranteed that the U.S. would occupy Japan without the Soviets as well as sending a clear message to the Soviets to go slow and careful in Europe and it’s territories.
Even if Truman had decided to use the bomb, there was no reason to bomb Hiroshima. Hiroshima had limited military value and was mostly civilians, outnumbering the soldiers six to one. Over 200,000 men, women and children died because of the bomb, most of the casualties being women, children and old men. Although President Truman said the use of the atomic bomb was also used to reduce casualties on the Japanese side, if he cared so much about Japanese casualties, he could have just changed the unconditional surrender to make it easier for the Japanese to
Moreover, other countries claimed the right of nuclear weapons to defend their citizens. Consequently, the tragic bombings became the example of an arm’s race instead of peace. Furthermore, since Japan was already on the brink of collapse the bombing was unnecessary, and peace talks would have taken place within a decent time frame (even after the cancelled Hawaii summit). The millions of deaths calculated by Operation Downfall [the codename for the Allied plan for the invasion of Japan near the end of the Second World War, which was abandoned when Japan surrendered following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki] actually show that only desperation and honour stood between Japan and unconditional
I do agree of dropping the bomb because it did save a lot of lives. Franklin Roosevelt was trying to find a way to end the war very fast. Then Truman had to end Roosevelt’s idea of winning the war fast. Truman wasn’t looking for a way to not use the atomic bomb. The United States wanted to end the war fast because we wanted the lowest amount of casualties.
• Even though they were going to use the bomb the government kept recruiting people into the army. • Many people argued that if the government were going to use this amazing weapon why not just stop investing so much money into the military. E. Conclusion • The United States cannot be fully responsible for the bombing for Hiroshima but they do play a major role of the bombing. • Japan was warned that they would be bombed if they did not comply to American terms but because of this Japan refused to accept the terms and in return an atomic bomb was dropped over Hiroshima • President Truman had many other options that bombing Japan in order for them to surrender but since America is such a nationalistic country they wanted to prove to Russia their enemy before and after WWII that they were the stronger country. • Even though the bomb was dropped and Japan refused to surrender.
Truman declared to drop the bomb onto Japan mainly because he didn’t want any more of his men to be slaughtered and because Japan was not agreeing to negotiate anything. Although the atomic bomb was dropped onto the two cities of Japan, it was still an unnecessary attack because many innocent civilians were killed. Since Japan was still continuing the war (before the bomb dropped), many deaths would have been sacrificed on both sides, the Japanese and the Americans and that is to say that’ll be millions of sacrifices if the war continued between both countries. The total death of the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima are approximately around 300,000 lives. The nuke drop on Japan is a devastating event but there are also beneficial outcomes that come out of it for example: learning how the radioactive dust kicked up into the atmosphere by large-yield weaponry, was economically cheaper than to do a full scale invasion on Japan, and it shows how much power the country has in terms of
That is what a lot of people asked themselves and still ask themselves until this day. To put it briefly, Fussel’s argument states that war was savage for invasion forces and killing civilians of Japan was the only way to avoid a Japanese invasion. In complete disregard to civilian lives, he believes the atomic bomb may have killed many but that it saved many more. Walzer believes that dropping the atomic bomb was inhumane and that war is all about the choices that you make. Walzer makes many valid points that forced me to change
Secondly the Bomb alone would cost 2 Billions USD to Construct, which was coming out of the peoples money and not the governments. Another reason is the Americans thought that the Japanese deserved the Bomb because the had been very cruel to prisoners of war, but the Japanese did not take as many lives as the two atomic bombs put together which I think was a disgrace. The reasons which I believe that were against the Americans was that if America had this huge bomb then other countries would obviously want it too, and maybe it may be used against America in the future, secondly the bombs the Americans dropped killed 220,000 people combined, and which half of them were innocent civilians. I believe that Americans were wrong to drop such a huge bomb on the Japanese even though there are many things I do agree with , the Americans believed the atom bomb was no ’great decision’ and it was just another powerful weapon and that it stopped the war and saved millions of lives which was