One of the reasons why bombing Japan was not justified is because America had other options, which they could have used to compel Japan to surrender. According to political analysts, postwar interviews with numerous Japanese military and civilian leaders showed that Japan could have given in before November 1, which is the date that the U.S. had planned to invade the country. Truman replied, When you have to deal with a beast you have to treat him as a beast. Whether these comments are racist about the Japanese people or only express the Presidents opinion about the Japanese military is a matter of interpretation. We utilize security vendors that protect and (modern). Even Tarzan, in one of the last novels written by his creator Edgar Rice Burroughs, spent time in the Pacific hunting and killing Japs. Japan was seeking surrender. Proposing that the bombing was justified or unjustified requires you to establish what it means for the atomic bombing to be justified. Additionally, Truman allowed Byrnes to erase crucial language in the Potsdam Declaration. That story was first told by the White House Aide himself, Jonathan Daniels, in a book published in 1950. The cold statistics must give way to the human story. "Reasons why Bombing Japan was not justified." IvyPanda. It was created to destroy and kill on a massive scale. Note: This section is intended as an objective overview of reasons against dropping the atomic bomb. In July, when President Truman traveled to Germany to meet his Allied leaders for the first time, pinning down Stalin on the exact date was at the top of his agenda. Later that night, Truman wrote in the diary,Most of the big points are settled. This has been looked at as one of the chief reasons against dropping the atomic bomb. 4 April. I would argue that Japan 1945 was one of these situations. America supposedly places a high value on life. Why was the dropping of the atomic bomb unjustified? - Quora Those weeks mean the world if youre one of those thousands or related to one of them. And Allied losses continued even after the atomic bombings. Almost as soon as the bombs had dropped, however, attempts began to justify the unjustifiable. Such a site could have been prepared in 1945. For the other side of the issue,go here. This essay "Reasons why Bombing Japan was not justified" was written and submitted by your fellow Of course, he would have to be demoted to a powerless figurehead (much like the Royal Family in Great Britain), but it was possible that this one condition alone might have been enough to satisfy the American War Departments conclusion that it was necessary to convince the Japanese that they would not be annihilated if they surrendered. Their warning eventually resulted in the Manhattan Project. At a time when Black Lives Matter protests have thrust the history of slavery and of empire into public debate, it is striking that there remains such historical amnesia about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Why the bomb was not needed, or unjustified: Japan was ready to call it quits anyway. But perhaps the most compelling reasons why dropping the bomb was not justified is that the United States was weeks or months away from Japan surrendering and the war ending before dropping the bombs and killing hundreds of thousands of innocent . United States and British intelligence had already advised that Japan was likely to surrender when the Soviet Union entered the war in early Augustand on terms which, in fact, would have been very close to those ultimately accepted by the United States. Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. Debate over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki American soldiers did not send home Nazi skulls as trophies or sweetheart gifts. The underlying reasons for American support of the atomic bomb are surely varied, but two reasons merit consideration because of their power to obscure our moral reasoning. In NE203, Midshipmen learn that it would be impermissible to intentionally harvest the organs of one healthy person in order to save five patients. When, 25 years ago, Washingtons National Air and Space Museum planned an exhibition to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of Second World War, part of which put the bombings in historical context, it faced fierce criticism from politicians and veterans. World War Two Timeline From The Great War To Germanys Surrender. On August 8, 1945, two days after the Hiroshima bombing, as agreed to by Joseph Stalin during the Tehrn . In a 1991 address to congress, George Bush claimed that Trumans decision to drop the bomb spared millions of American lives. Another one of the reasons against dropping the atomic bomb was the League of Nations. Regarding discrimination, the claim that civilians were not targetednot intentionally used as means to a good endseems dubious. On June 13, in a memorandum to President Truman from Acting Secretary of State Joseph Grew (former American ambassador to Japan), Grew wrote: Every evidence, without exception, that we are able to obtain of the views of the Japanese with regard to the institution of the throne, indicates that the non-molestation of the person of the present emperor and the preservation of the institution of the throne comprises irreducible Japanese termsThey are prepared for prolonged resistance if it be the intention of the United Nations to try the present emperor as a war criminal or to abolish the imperial institutionFailure on our part to clarify our intentions in this regard..will ensure prolongation of the war and cost a large number of human lives. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. On the 9th, the day Nagasaki was bombed, President Truman addressed the nation on radio. Why not wait? Regarding proportionality, although legitimate military targets existed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, their military value was not proportionate to the foreseeable collateral damage. The United States was not justified in using atomic bombs against Japanese cities in 1945. He didnt like the idea of killing, as he said, all those kids., Reasons Against Dropping the Atomic Bomb Argument 7: The Atomic Bomb Was Inhumane. Harvard University Press, 2005. Having met with Szilard, Byrnes was even more firmly convinced of the rightness of his own views. Szilards biggest concern was that the Soviet Union should be informed about the bomb ahead of time. Most historians who have been taking part in the debate on how World War II ended have based much of their focus on why the U.S. decided to drop the atomic bomb. The dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9, 1945) is still one of the most debated topics in modern history. Nothing on this scale was done to the Germans during WWII, or even during the First World War, when there were millions of German and Austrian immigrants and their children living in the United States. Additionally, the U.S. only had two bombs left after Los Alamos. One historian claimed that the people who supported the high casualty claims relied upon strained readings and omitted crucial material, which in effect limited their research and cast a shadow of doubt on their findings. There are no civilians in Japan. The deliberate firebombings of Japanese cities are believed to have killed some 350,000 civilians. There is evidence that the Americans had been preparing to use the A-bomb against the Japanese as early as 1943 and that, in the words of General Leslie R Groves, director of the Manhattan Project, the US nuclear weapon programme, the target was always expected to be Japan. As far as reasons against dropping the atomic bomb, bomb opponents argue that the atomic bomb was built as a defensive weapon, not an offensive one. The origins of the Manhattan Project go back to 1939, when Hungarian-born physicist Leo Szilard, who had moved to the U.S. in 1938 to conduct research at Columbia University, became convinced of the feasibility of using nuclear chain reactions to create new, powerful bombs. It was intercepted and held back by General Leslie Groves, military head of the Manhattan Project and a key advisor to James Byrnes. Hundreds of thousands of civilians with no democratic rights to oppose their militarist government, including women and children, were vaporized, turned into charred blobs of carbon, horrifically burned, buried in rubble, speared by flying debris, and saturated with radiation. On Aug. 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing tens of thousands of people - many instantly, others from the effects of radiation. It was an uneasy alliance; Joseph Stalin believed that the Americans and British had purposely delayed opening a second front in Europe (D-DayJune 6, 1944) so that the Russians would bear the brunt of defeating the Nazis. Immediate use of the bomb convinced the world of its horror and prevented future use when nuclear stockpiles were far larger. Patel 1 Nidhi Patel Mrs. Mazaika H American Studies III 4 April, 2019 The Atomic Bomb August 6 th,1954 the end of World War II had begun with the dropping of the atomic bomb on the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If you are the copyright owner of this paper and no longer wish to have your work published on IvyPanda. The aircraft group that included the Enola Gay was directed to deliver the first atomic bomb, weather-permitting, on any of the four target cities: Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata, or Nagasaki, on or after August 3. Fini Japs when that comes about(meaning, theyll be finished). And, a date for this intervention had been set. In fact, it took an order from President Truman to stop any further bombing after Nagasaki had been hit. October 29, 2022 by Kimota. Just before leaving Potsdam, Truman did feel obliged to say something to the Soviet leader. Although Japan had not yet given a public indication that it intended to surrender, insiders knew that the country could not continue with the war and surrender was imminent. Specifically, they charge that information counter to the Surveys conclusion was left out of the report, and that inter-service wrangling resulted in the Air Force over exaggerating its role in the war so as to secure a large post-war budget. Our biggest concern was Germany. Why was the atomic bomb not justified? - Quora The atomic bombing of Japan at the end of World War II by the United States is one of the most debated and controversial topics in all of history. The Japanese, however, were particularly despised because they were non-white. When Truman and Stalin met on the 17th, the Soviet leader confirmed they would declare war on Japan on August 15. IvyPanda. It was the Soviet invasion and threat of communism that was the impetus that brought both Japan and the US to reach a compromi. The database is updated daily, so anyone can easily find a relevant essay example. The popular novelty hit, Remember Pearl Harbor by Carson Robison, for example, urges Americans to wipe the Jap from the map. It continues: Remember how we used to call them our little brown brothers? What a laugh that turned out to be Well, we can all thank God that were not related To that yellow scum of the sea They talked of peace, and of friendship We found out just what all that talk was worth All right, theyve asked for it, and now theyre going to get it Well blow every one of them right off of the face of the Earth. American racism led to a failure to distinguish between the Japanese government, dominated by hard-line militarists, and the Japanese civilian who was caught up in their governments war. Byrnes told Szilard, Russia might be more manageable if impressed by American military might, and that a demonstration of the bomb [on Japan] might impress Russia. Years later, Szilard wrote of the encounter,I shared Byrnes concerns about Russias throwing her weight around in the post-war period, but I was completely flabbergasted by the assumption that rattling the bomb might make Russia more manageable.He later mused, How much better off the world might be had I been born in America and become influential in American politics, and had Byrnes been born in Hungary and studied physics.. I would therefore like you to miss no favorable opportunity to talk to the Soviet leaders. He then writes, I have told the Sec. One alternative might have been to arrange a demonstration of the bomb. This was also among the more common reasons against dropping the atomic bomb. Atomic Bomb Justified - 1976 Words | Internet Public Library Since 1945, public opinion about the ethics of the two bombs has shifted. Explain Why Atomic Bombings Was Justified | ipl.org However, it was clearly not moral to use this weapon knowing that it would kill civilians and destroy the urban milieu. If anyone had the budget and the motives to make this weapon besides us, it was Germany. Your privacy is extremely important to us. There are some critics who support dropping the first bomb, but feel the second was completely unnecessary. Alternative 4: Continue Conventional Bombing Some military analysts were convinced in the summer of 1945 that Japan very near surrendered, that the pounding they were taking from conventional weapons would soon convince the Japanese cabinet that further resistance was futile. IvyPanda, 4 Apr. And the key to this argument lies in the fact that the American government already planned on letting the emperor stay. It seems quite possible to me that this presents the opportunity which the Japanese are looking for. ensure the integrity of our platform while keeping your private information safe. Reasons Against Dropping the Atomic Bomb Argument 4: There Were Alternatives. Why The Atomic Bomb Was Justified - 585 Words | Bartleby Why Was The Atomic Bomb Justified - Internet Public Library Reasons Against Dropping the Atomic Bomb Argument 2: Use of the Bomb was Illegal, Reasons Against Dropping The Atomic Bomb. Although the Japanese leadership suspected the bombing was atomic in nature, they sent scientists to Hiroshima to confirm these suspicions and they had not even returned with their findings when Nagasaki was hit. (This argument had been made most consistently by historian Gar Alperovitz). If representatives of the Japanese government, military, and scientific community could have seen the bomb, it might have been enough to convince them of the foolishness of continued resistance. Substantial debate exists over the ethical, legal, and military aspects of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 August and 9 August 1945 at the close of World War II (1939-45). In a cable sent on June 4, the Foreign Minister wrote: It is a matter of utmost urgency that we should not only prevent Russia from entering the war but should also induce her to adopt a favorable attitude toward Japan. Numerous songs advocated killing all Japanese. 70 years after Hiroshima, opinions have shifted on use of atomic bomb Cheers for the public-spirited citizens of New Jersey who ran Mr. Yamamoto away. With a deadline to beat, the only option that remained for Truman and his administration was to use the atomic bomb (Hasegawa 101). Either way, critics of the dropping of Fat Man on Nagasaki blame Truman for a lack of leadership. One of the major obstacles, which were overcome only recently, was the absence of a historian who was fluent in English, Japanese and Russian to enable him to examine the major materials, which included government, military, and intelligence memos and reports in all the three languages. This contradicted the claims by Stimson the Secretary of War who two years after the war had claimed that over a million people were dead, wounded, or missing. Reasons Against Dropping the Atomic Bomb Argument #5: Use of the bomb was more to scare Russia than to defeat Japan. It was not universally supported in the United States. Anti-Japanese imagery was everywherein Bugs Bunny cartoons, popular music, postcards, childrens toys, magazine advertisements, and in a wide array of novelty items ranging from ashtrays to Jap Hunting License buttons. So Far Away Although there was certainly no guarantee that taking this action would bring about a Japanese surrender, bomb opponents argue that it was at least worth a try (although bomb supporters counter-argue that doing so could have been interpreted as a weakness by the Japanese military leadership and could actually have emboldened the Japanese to fight on). Another reason why the United States dropped the atomic bombsand, specifically, the second one on Nagasaki has to do with the Soviet Union. They were further dehumanized as being snakes, cockroaches, and rats, and their entire culture was mocked, including language, customs, and religious beliefs. The reasons given included: Japanese military leaders would be unconvinced of the bomb's destructiveness against cities; and even if impressive, a demonstration would eliminate the shock effect, especially the psychological impact on leaders, of any subsequent bombs. Most of which had died instantly into black dust of charcoal and others who burned from the inside out staying in pain and agony. September 10, 2022 by Kimota The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were military attacks on the Empire of Japan during World War II (WWII). They believed the shock-and-awe effect of using the atomic bomb against Japan would make the Soviet Union more manageable in post-war negotiations. The mushroom cloud after the bombing of Nagasaki on 09 August 1945, killing more than 73,000 people. Print. They also point out that even if the Surveys evidence and conclusionswere accurate, it is illogical to criticize the Truman administration for not pursuing an alternative to the bomb that was based on information obtained onlyafterthe war was over. He was run out of town before he could even start, and was relocated to New Jersey, where he was to work on a farm owned by Eddie Kowalick. A failed demonstration might even serve to increase Japanese resolve. In the 2003 documentary The Fog of War, Robert McNamara, the former US defence secretary who had been LeMays military aide during the Second World War, reflected on the question of war crimes: LeMay recognised that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. The atomic bombs did little to bring the war to an end. In his 2005 milestone study titled Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan, historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa critically examines the threefold wartime relationship between America, Japan, and the Soviet Union. President Truman did not see the petition until after the atomic bombs had been dropped. Was it justifed to drop the atomic bombs on Japan? There is no definitive answer IMO. So, the arguments can be split in that way and one could support the first dropping, but not the second. Some critics have pointed out that three days was simply not enough time for the Japanese to even confirm what had happened in Hiroshima, which appeared to them to have simply blinked off the map. It was already known in Washington that the Japanese had reached out to the Russians earlier to try to arrange some form of mediation with the U.S. After the war, the United Statesdidconduct numerous atomic bomb tests on small volcanic atolls in the Pacific. President Truman's Decision: Why The Atomic Bomb Was Justified Some believe that the bombings were fair, while others believe it was morally wrong and inhumane. professional specifically for you? They were interned, but Mr. Yamamoto applied for a relocation program, was cleared by the US government as loyal and trustworthy, and was packed off to Delaware to find work. Dropped Atomic Bombs on Japan, Political Background of the Nagasaki Bombing, Work-Related Stress: Impeding Organization's Success, Male Dominance as Impeding Female Sexual Freedom, Thank God for Atom the Bomb by Paul Fussell: Arguments for Nuclear Bombing, The Causes and Consequences of World War Two, Critical Analysis of Walking Since Daybreak: A Story of Eastern Europe, World War II, and the Heart of Our Century by Modris Eksteins. In a June 27 memo to Stimson, Bard wrote: During recent weeks I have also had the feeling very definitely that the Japanese government may be searching for some opportunity which they could use as a medium of surrender. Despite the much emphasis placed on this matter, there has been little attention directed on the role played by the Japanese in ending the war. The dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are still one of the most controversial happenings in recent history. Last week marked the 75th anniversary of the worlds first nuclear attacks. Such inflated figures, along with Japans presumed rejection of surrendering is usually a part of the debate on why the atomic bombs were necessary but from the proffered evidence, these claims are highly questionable. Lewis donated money on behalf of his employer for operations to help remove the scar tissue of young Japanese women horribly disfigured by the bomb ten years earlier. Seventy-five years ago, LeMay was not alone in his verdict. The logical conclusion to the list of arguments against the bomb is that use of such a weapon was simply inhumane. The second reason that makes the American bombing unjustified is the deeply flawed casualty claims. The answer should be never. Byrnes has been discussed in detail above, but a summary of the key moments where his influence was most critical is appropriate. But with bad weather in the forecast, and with the Russians suddenly declaring war on Japan after the Hiroshima bomb, General Groves moved up the date to make sure that the plutonium bomb was field-tested before the war could end (Hiroshima had been hit with a Uranium bomb). He writes in his diary, I casually mentioned to Stalin that we had a new weapon of unusual destructive force. But Truman did not say it was an atomic bomb. There are many of us who believe, quite sincerely and simply, that Japanese immigrants to the US and their American-born children will deliberately live an impeccable American life while awaiting an opportunity to perpetrate a Pearl Harbor of their own dimensions. Was the US justified in dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki Decent Essays 318 Words 2 Pages Open Document Essay Sample Check Writing Quality Show More Check Writing Quality You have heard two reasons why dropping the atomic bombs in Japan was not justified and unnecessary. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?. For the full History Unplugged podcast, click here! President Truman had four options: 1) continue conventional bombing of Japanese cities; 2) invade Japan; 3 . DOC Dropping the Atomic Bomb was Unjustified In the early morning of August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The JIC believed as early as April 11, 1945, that a Soviet declaration of war on Japan would satisfy the first necessity: By the autumn of 1945, we believe that the vast majority of Japanese will realize the inevitability of absolute defeat regardless of whether the U.S.S.R. has actually entered the war against Japan. I was not taught to make wars in that fashion, and that wars cannot be won by destroying women and children. Hell be in the Jap War on August 15th. On July 25, Truman describes in his diary some of the details he had just received about the test bomb in Los Alamos. Truman replied that he had purposefully delayed the meeting for as long as possible to give the Manhattan scientists more time.
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