Hiroshima The Dropping Of The Atomic Bomb

Hiroshima: The Dropping Of The Atomic Bomb Essay, Research Paper

Hiroshima: the Dropping of the Atomic Bomb It was a beautiful morning on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, on the Hawaiian Island of Oahu. Little did anybody know that that morning would be remembered as one of the most important and tragic days in United States History. The Japanese had been planning the attack on Pearl Harbor since September of that year. The plans were told to the pilots on October 5th and the order to begin the attack was given on December 5th. On December 8, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave a speech before Congress and to millions of people listening on the radio. He told them “Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States was suddenly and deliberately attacked by the navel and air forces of the Empire of Japan. Then he called for a war with Japan. After the speech Congress agreed almost unanimously to declare war. In 1942 German born Albert Einstein brought to President Roosevelt s attention that it might be possible to build a bomb more powerful than any other that had been made before. After being consulted by his military advisors that an invasion of Japan would cost over one million American lives, he decided it was a military necessity to drop the bomb on Japan. The reason the atomic bomb was a military necessity was because the Japanese possessed the ability to fight on. During the war Japan had the ability to fight on mentally but not physically. Their resources and manpower were far more less then the United States. Even though Japan was severely losing the war to the U.S. and Soviet armies, they still fought on to try and win the war; to even use bamboo spears to ward off the enemy. A quote that President Truman stated during the war follows: “Having found the bomb we have used it. We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans.” (”Public Papers of the Presidents: Harry S Truman, 1945″, pg. 212). This quote shows the effect that Japan had on the United States and it s President. Truman felt it was necessary to drop the bomb to retaliate against Japan for their actions at Pearl Harbor during the war. Truman and his advisors felt that an invasion of Japan would cost over one million American casualties. On August 6, 1945, an American bomber dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. In an instant, 75,000 people had died, and another 100,000 were injured, in a city of 344,000 Japanese. The Japanese still hesitated to surrender and another atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. World War Two was finally over. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the war in the Pacific was fully underway. After 40,000 American casualties in the Battle of Okinawa, the U.S. could not afford to lose more lives. It seemed as if the only solution to save American lives and stop further Japanese expansion was to drop the atomic bomb. The Japanese were not going to give up and without the bomb we would have had to invade the islands of Japan and that would have cost many American lives and even more Japanese lives. Truman wanted to end the war as quickly as possible and with as few American casualties as possible. A quote that shows the number of casualties saved by not dropping the atomic bomb follows; Neither do we intend to challenge Mr. Churchill s highly speculative assertion that the use of the bomb saved the lives of more than one million American and 250,000 British soldiers. (PBR p. 50). Another quote from Truman that shows the many Japanese and American lives saved by the dropping of the bomb follows, General Marshall said in Potsdam that if the bomb worked we would save a quarter of a million American lives and probably save millions of Japanese. (PBR p.2) Truman saw the atomic bomb principally as a means to end the war quickly and save American lives. On another note the war would have raged on and on, for who knows how many years and also the economy would have possibly been destroyed from the constant making of weapons and vehicles. Overall, the causality estimate of the atomic bomb made Truman to believe even more to drop the bomb. After the Big Three conference at Potsdam on July 16, 1945, a warning was issued to Japan in the form of the Potsdam Declaration: to surrender unconditionally or face “prompt and utter destruction. An unconditional surrender, to Japan, meant humiliation to the ancient warrior tradition and the Emperor. Also the demand for unconditional surrender meant the total destruction of their political system, including a “divine ” monarchy that had survived for more than a thousand years. Therefore, on July 29, 1945, the Japanese rejected the Potsdam Declaration and every man, woman, and child prepared to fight to death. The President of the United States, the President of the National Government of the Republica of China and the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Agreed that Japan shall be given an opportunity to end this war (PBR 17). The Potsdam Proclamation left the emperor s status unclear by making no reference to the royal house in the section that promised the Japanese that they could design their new gov