Wwii Atomic Bombs Essay Research Paper WWII

Wwii Atomic Bombs Essay, Research Paper

WWII Atomic Bombs

When the atomic bomb went off over Hiroshima on Aug. 6th, 1945, 70,000 lives were ended in a flash. To the

American people who were weary from the long and brutal war, such a drastic measure seemed a necessary,

even righteous way to end the madness that was World War II. However, the madness had just begun. That

August morning was the day that heralded the dawn of the nuclear age, and with it came more than just the loss

of lives. According to Archibald MacLeish, a U.S. poet, “What happened at Hiroshima was not only that a

scientific breakthrough . . . had occurred and that a great part of the population of a city had been burned to

death, but that the problem of the relation of the triumphs of modern science to the human purposes of man had

been explicitly defined.” The entire globe was now to live with the fear of total annihilation, the fear that drove the

cold war, the fear that has forever changed world politics. The fear is real, more real today than ever, for the

ease at which a nuclear bomb is achieved in this day and age sparks fear in the hearts of most people on this

planet. According to General Douglas MacArthur, “We have had our last chance. If we do not devise some

greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door.” The decision to drop the atomic bomb on

Japanese citizens in August, 1945, as a means to bring the long Pacific war to an end was justified-militarily,

politically and morally.

The goal of waging war is victory with minimum losses on one’s own side and, if possible, on the enemy’s side.

No one disputes the fact that the Japanese military was prepared to fight to the last man to defend the home

islands, and indeed had already demonstrated this determination in previous Pacific island campaigns. A

weapon originally developed to contain a Nazi atomic project was available that would spare Americans

hundreds of thousands of causalities in an invasion of Japan, and-not incidentally-save several times more than

that among Japanese soldiers and civilians. The thousands who have died in the atomic attacks on Hiroshima

and Nagasaki were far less than would have died in an allied invasion, and their sudden deaths convinced the

Japanese military to surrender.

Every nation has an interest in being at peace with other nations, but there has never been a time when the

world was free of the scourge of war. Hence, peaceful nations must always have adequate military force at their

disposal in order to deter or defeat the aggressive designs of rogue nations. The United States was therefore

right in using whatever means were necessary to defeat the Japanese empire in the war which the latter began,

including the use of superior or more powerful weaponry-not only to defeat Japan but to remain able following

the war to maintain peace sufficiently to guarantee its own existence. A long, costly and bloody conflict is a

wasteful use of a nation’s resources when quicker, more decisive means are available. Japan was not then-or

later-the only nation America had to restrain, and an all-out U.S. invasion of Japan would have risked the victory

already gained in Europe in the face of the palpable thereat of Soviet domination.

Finally, we can never forget the maxim of Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that

good men do nothing.” The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought us into a war which we had vainly hoped

to avoid. We could no longer “do nothing” but were compelled to “do something” to roll back the Japanese

militarists. Victims of aggression have every right both to end the aggression and to prevent the perpetrator of it

from continuing or renewing it. Our natural right of self defense as well as our moral duty to defeat tyranny

justified our decision to wage the war and, ultimately, to drop the atomic bomb. We should expect political

leaders to be guided by moral principles but this does not mean they must subject millions of people to

needless injury or death out of a misplaced concern for the safety of enemy soldiers or civilians.

President Truman’s decision to deploy atomic power in Japan revealed a man who understood the moral issues

at stake and who had the courage to strike a decisive blow that quickly brought to an end the most destructive

war in human history. Squeamishness is not a moral principle, but making the best decisions at the time, given

the circumstances, is clear evidence that the decision maker is guided by morality.

The atomic bomb was considered a “quick” and even economical way to win the war; however, it was a cruel

and unusual form of punishment for the Japanese citizens. The weapon that we refer to as “quick” was just the

opposite. On one hand, it meant a quick end to the war for the United States, and on the other hand, a slow and

painful death to many innocent Japanese. According to a book called Hiroshima Plus 20 the effects of radiation

poisoning are horrific, ranging from pur

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