Was Truman right to drop the atomic bomb on Japan?

The Second World War started in 1939's. In the beginning it was a war only in Europe, but as the time passed on, all world was getting involved in it. Some countries weren't happy about their situation and one of them was Japan. In this essay I am going to discuss why Japanese attack the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Japan getting stronger, about atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was Truman right to drop it.

War in Pacific began when General Tojo, Chief Minister of Japan, on Sunday 7 December 1941 decided to attack Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii.

USA was not at the war that time and no one was at the anti-aircraft guns. Meanwhile, 300 kilometers to the north, 183 Japanese fighter-bombers were taking off from aircraft-carriers. They headed to Pearl Harbor. Within minutes they arrived to their target and bombing began. Within two hours, five battleships had been sunk, another 16 damaged, 188 aircraft destroyed and 2403 American people had been killed and another 1,178 injured.

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This attack also killed less than 100 Japanese.

No more than chance saved three US aircraft carriers, usually stationed at Pearl Harbor but assigned to a different place on the day. Japanese before attacking knew that it was a big gamble to attack strongest nation in the world. But they also believed that if their country was to survive as a proud, independent notion they would have to fight the USA sometime. This shows that Japan knew what they are doing and they thought that it is the best time to attack Pearl Harbor while Europe was busy in the war and they would not help America with supplying with aircrafts and worships.

This proves us that Japan was very weak and they really needed to do something about it, because they had large growing population, their land was infertile and they didn't have good supplies of raw materials.

When Nazi Germany was in the middle of its Blitz in the Europe, Japan was able to enlarge her control over a great territory by August 1942. They colonized Taiwan and Manchuria, the Japanese Army invaded and jailed most of the coastal Chinese cities and occupied French Indochina, British Malaya and other places in Dutch East Indies They had also reached the borders of India and Australia. Japan very fast established an empire which was nearly all through Pacific Ocean. But General Tojo's gamble failed because most important ships weren't there - they were out to the sea.

The USA recovered from its losses at Pearl Harbor much more quickly than Tojo thought. Only six months later, in June 1942, the US fleet defeated Japan in the Battle of Midway. In my opinion the gamble failed because he took a great risk in trying to guess that all the ships and airplanes for war supply were there but America is very big and it doesn't mean that all needs must be in Pearl Harbor. This shows us that they succeeded in what they wanted to do because they had a big empire over Pacific Ocean but Americans recovered fast and decided to do something about what Japan did.

By the summer of 1945 Japanese were clearly defeated. huge air raids were launched on Japanese cities - in Tokyo in the raid 84,000 people died on 9 March 1945. But Japan still didn't want to surrender. The obvious next move was to invade Japan, but Japanese fought to the last man and for US if they would try to take some action and land on Japan it could take Americans years to defeat them and it would cost hundreds of thousands lives. There was another option for Americans. Allied scientist, many of the refugees from Nazi Europe, had been working in the USA on the "Manhattan Project". Their task was to develop a bomb which used atomic fission to release huge amounts of energy in a single reaction. In July 1945 they exploded a test bomb in the New Mexico desert. The ball of fire rose 12,000 meters above the site.

They had enough material for two more bombs. The US President, Harry S. Truman, ordered one to be used on Hiroshima. On 6 August 1945 a simple plane, the Enola Gay, dropped the bomb, timed to explode 570 above the ground. About 80,000 people were killed. The total number of deaths in Hiroshima was around 200,000 After this Truman wrote a statement:This source tells us what Harry S. Truman's fateful words after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. This source proves us that Truman wanted to use this bomb in my opinion, because of the attack in Pearl Harbor and the loss of Japan's The Battle of Midway Japan still didn't want to surrender and because of Japanese people who fought to the death like in Iwo Jima, Americans found the best way too finish the war with atomic bomb which also brought to a scientific world lots of success. This shows us that Truman was even proud of himself to do this because he thought this stopped the war and it destroyed enemy's usefulness.

Three days later a second bomb was dropped on Nagarski. In Nagasaki, the total number of deaths from the atomic bomb was 73,884 people, with another 25,000 dying in the years to follow. The blame for this event can be placed on two different nations. One would be the United States for of course, it dropped the bomb. However, the Japanese are also at fault, because they didn't surrender after the first 130,000 died in attack in Hiroshima. In my opinion another reason for Americans dropping second bomb was that they did not want to let their money go to waste and wanted to show the former USSR that America was militarily superior.

The affects of this bomb were a disastrous thing. Lots of people died for a war actually which wasn't needed, but on the other hand this saved also lots of lives because if the bomb would not be dropped millions of civilians might have died in the war with Japan and America. This atom was more destructive than any before in History. Ninety-five percent of the people within 800 metres of bomb died at one and so did many more further. People simply evaporated at the temperature which was calculate to 6000Cº.

Others were killed by burning or collapsing the buildings. There were other diseases like diarrhea and leukemia were increased over the territory of Japan. In the ten years after1945, 60,000 more people died from Radiation sickness. However US scientist didn't know what the long effects of bomb will be. This shows us that this atomic bomb was just tested and people didn't now what are effects of it and Truman didn't know about it a lot but he believed this to stop Japan's leaders and make Japan surrender because from the evidence here we now that Truman didn't like that way that women and children had to suffer all this bombing which gave very bad causes for the next long time of period.

ConclusionIn my opinion Truman was right to drop the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagarski. Japanese took a great gamble in attacking a Pearl Harbor which brought America to the war that's why he had a good reason, because Japanese are these people that they can fight until the death which would bring more victims than causes of these two bombs. Japanese also didn't want to surrender after first bomb was dropped which means that if they would have done that they would have saved lots of their peoples lives. I think these casualties are justified. So many things in this world could be prevented if the time was taken to investigate the situation.

Bibliographyh

ttp://www.trumanlibrary.orghttp://www.yale.eduwww.wikipedia.comwww.spartacus.comwww.bbc.comThe Twentieth Century- Christopher Culpin