John Morrison
US history 2
4/2/2013
An Atomic Mistake On August 6, 1945 the U.S. government, in efforts to spare American lives, chose to illegally drop the devastating atomic bomb on the military oriented city of Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later, after Emperor Hirohito allegedly decided to surrender, President Truman gave the go ahead to drop an additional atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki. The earth has never seen such destruction from two individual bombs. These two cities were eliminated along with roughly 300,000 civilians in a matter of seconds. Although, strong cases have been built saying the Japanese were unrelenting and the bomb was necessary to end the war, a number of alternative options could have been executed in efforts to avoid using two atomic bombs. The atomic age began when Albert Einstein, the most famous physicist of all time, alerted President Roosevelt that the Nazis were beginning to attempt to develop a nuclear weapon. Once this imminent danger was realized the U.S. began the Manhattan project, the goals of this project were to increase defense capabilities mainly by developing an atomic bomb. Even though many see the use of nuclear weapons as a great evil many good things came out of this government investment in science. Millions of dollars went to top Universities to help fund research in this top secret plan of building “the bomb”. Many see this aspect of our history as a positive, the combination of government and science helped create millions of jobs which the American people needed desperately. Franklin D. Roosevelt entered his fourth term in November of 1944, and unfortunately passed away on April 12th of the following year. Vice President Harry Truman then assumed the role as commander in chief. Truman was known to be inexperienced when he entered office and the book “A People and a Nation” explain him as being “a novice at international diplomacy”. Before attending the Potsdam Conference in mid-July it came to Truman’s attention that the atomic bomb testing’s were a success. Truman knowing he had the nuclear bomb in his back pocket, he no longer needed a soviet influence in the war on the Pacific front. Truman then went ahead severing the ties with Stalin which FDR had created. “Roosevelt had secretly promised Stalin territory from Japan’s wartime holdings in exchange for help in defeating Japan; the bomb made those concessions unnecessary.” At this time Truman new he would drop the bomb and flex the militaristic muscle to the rest of the world. Prior to dropping the two bombs “Fat Man” and “Little Boy”, the U.S. preceded to fire bomb the major city of Tokyo along with 66 other Japanese cities. Japan at the time was a society which was “honor” oriented, and this meant fighting to the death for your country. America first got a taste of this fighting style when their combatants attacked Pearl Harbor. The Japanese destroyed air fields and fleets of ships through the use of torpedo bombing, and when they would run out of bombs they would deliberately fly their planes into their enemies; these modern samurai’s were known as “Kamikazes”. In the video game “Call of Duty” your Japanese opponent demonstrates this mentality when they shout “death before dishonor!”. The attack on Pearl Harbor left a bad taste in the mouths of Americans and some felt retaliation with an atomic magnitude was well deserved. At this point in the war, close to a million civilians and Japanese soldiers were killed while 800,000 were homeless. Many historians feel Truman should have made efforts to come to some form of agreement to end the war. Although an ultimatum was inflicted on the Japanese people they chose to ignore it, which is when Truman dropped the bomb. This decision was inhumane and premature. The U.S. was testing bombs all the time, they should have just displayed the power of the bomb by dropping it in a less populated city. If that solution did not work people have suggested