The largest number of people killed in war was not at Hiroshima, but at Tokyo, with conventional firebombs. The military leaders refused to take action and surrender. Some 80,000-100,00 people killed. After Japan surrendered in 1945, no more Japanese people were killed. It would have been hard to imagine how many Japanese lives would have been lost had they not have stopped.
The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed millions of people, left families with nothing, and leveled cities. The war would have gone on for a couple more years if we had not dropped the bombs and sent troops to Japan instead. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was justified. This is one of the pros for the atomic bombing on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One of the pros for dropping the atom bombs is that the Japanese would have not surrendered.
Three days later, another atom bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. It is estimated that between 150,000 and 250,000 people were killed as a result of the bombings. However, once the Japanese government witnessed the destructive power of the bombs, they had no choice but to surrender. Had the bombs not been used, the war would have gone on for much longer.
The island of Okinawa was the closest island to the Japanese mainland, and the last island battle. Many higher-ups believed that Okinawa could be seen as a trial for an invasion of Japan, yet before the native soil of Japan could be assaulted, atomic bombs were dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To what extent did the Battle of Okinawa affect the U.S.’s decision to deploy the atomic bomb? The decision to drop the bomb was solely up to the President of the United States at that time, Harry S. Truman. With the bomb came advances in technology, the possibility to end millions of lives, and the beginnings of the Cold War.
The Making of a Bomb On August 6th and 9th, 1945, two explosions leveled the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The brute destructive force of the atomic bomb was the likes of which had never been seen before. The path taken to bring this marvel to fruition was paved with moral scruples and encompassed the collaboration of thousands of brilliant scientist along with allocation of billions of dollars. The massive undertaking was all kept secret under the Umbrella of the US government’s top secret project, code named “the Manhattan Project.” How is it that a seemingly dooms-day device came to be and what challenges did this endeavor encounter? I plan to explore the makings of the new class of weapon that intimidated nations and presented unparalleled threats to which the world had never experienced before.
In fact, the debates behind using the atomic bombs against Japan began even before the decision was made. Many of the scientists such as Leo Szilard and Dr. James Franck, who made great contributions towards the creation of the bomb, campaigned against its use. President Truman said “We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Amercicans”. It is completely understandable that President Truman’s aim was always to save the lives as many American people, but was it necessary to do it by dropping the atomic bombs on Japan? And was the reason behind the decision to drop the two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki purely to ‘save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans’?
The United States should not have dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945. The decision to use the atomic bomb was made by President Truman. President Truman was fully aware of the criticism and questions he was to face and that he had the most responsibility over the decision. The atomic bomb would go down in history as one of the devastating attacks ever. The attack produced tens of thousands of deaths.
Stanley Kubrick’s film deals comically with the fear that the opposing sides had of nuclear annihilation and their strategic deterrence as a direct consequence of this fear. Dr. Strangelove defines deterrence as “the art of producing in the mind of the enemy fear to attack”. Kubrick uses the ultimate deterrence: mutually assured destruction. The doomsday device represents the dangers of mutually assured destruction, an unstoppable deterrence device. In the film the deterrence device built by the Soviet Union is impossible to stop and once triggered will release enough radiation to make the world uninhabitable for one hundred years.
The once efficient city of Hiroshima was devastated by the violent detonation of the Atom bomb that soon engulfed and destroyed much of it. The nation of Japan was strong and powerful during the crisis of the World War. The United States had come to fear the economic power of the city of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the conflict with Japan. At this time during the war(1945), the Manhattan Project was ready for the first payload of the most powerful bomb in the history of mankind. The city of Hiroshima was the primary target.
Such a poor choice this was, to split the nuclei of atoms. When the U.S. developed the first atomic bomb in the 1940s, other countries soon followed. Relations with Russia had been strained since the 1890s, even as allies in the second world war, and as the United States and then Soviet Union began building stockpiles of nuclear weapons, tension broke out again. “"Cold war" is the term given to the competition, conducted through means short of direct military conflict, between the United States and the Soviet Union since World War II.”(Foner, p. 1). The threat of “mutually assured destruction” kept everyone on edge during this time, and has since lessened since the fall of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War.