Jessica Bagby
5/2/2011
ENG/HIS 112
Research Paper
To try and write a paper on many people’s opinions is rather pointless. Influential people like President Truman and Roosevelt were in favor of the atom bomb and others like MacArthur, Eisenhower, and Hoover were not in favor of using the atom bomb. But giving myself the final vote I will state that after the Soviet army joined the United States and declared war on Japan, Japan had already realized they had lost the war. So the use of such an extreme, powerful, and new weapon without knowing the long term effects was bad judgment.
When the Japanese kamikaze pilots attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 they could not have known that there had already been meetings by various scientists about atomic research and how the Manhattan Project was well on the way to becoming a reality. “On 2nd August, 1939, three Jewish scientists who had fled to the United States from Europe, Albert Einstein, Leo Szilard, and Eugene Wigner, wrote a joint letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, about the developments that had been taking place in nuclear physics. They warned Roosevelt that scientists in Germany were working on the possibility of using uranium to produce nuclear weapons.”(1.) But instead of neutralizing the United States Naval Fleet they just made the United States join in the war that led to the defeat of Japan and Germany.
The scientists behind the Manhattan Project came up with an idea to warn people before bombing them. “The procedure these scientists recommended was, first, to demonstrate the new weapon "before the eyes of representatives of all the United Nations on the desert or a barren island," and then to issue "a preliminary ultimatum" to Japan. If this ultimatum was rejected, and "if sanction of the United Nations (and of public opinion at home) were obtained," then and only then, said the scientists, should the United States consider using the bomb. "This may sound fantastic," they said, "but in nuclear weapons we have something entirely new in order of magnitude of destructive power, and if we want to capitalize fully on the advantage their possession gives us, we must use new and imaginative methods."(2.) Needless to say the United States didn’t go this route. They didn’t want to prepare the Japanese of what could come if they didn’t surrender.
“In early May of 1946 Hoover met with General Douglas MacArthur. Hoover recorded in his diary, "I told MacArthur of my memorandum of mid-May 1945 to Truman, that peace could be had with Japan by which our major objectives would be accomplished. MacArthur said that was correct and that we would have avoided all of the losses, the Atomic bomb, and the entry of Russia into Manchuria."(3.), and Eisenhower saying “"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude...".(4.). “On the clear morning of August 6, the first atomic bomb, nicknamed Little Boy, was dropped on the city of Hiroshima. Leveling over 60 percent of the city, 70,000 residents died instantaneously in a searing flash of heat. Three days later, on August 9, a second bomb, Fat Man, was dropped on Nagasaki. Over 20,000 people died instantly.”(5.)
Soon after President Truman addressed the world letting the people everywhere know what had happened and why. “The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many fold. And the end is not yet.”(6.) President Truman was letting the people at home and in other countries know that retaliation will be swift and firm to those that attack the United States.
After the bombing of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki the emperor asks his military council to surrender. They agree to the Allies terms of surrender but the Japanese people get to keep their emperor. And for the first time the emperor addresses his people over the radio.” Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, it would not only result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization.”(7.)
When the Japanese attacked the United States it was a bad decision that cost them dearly in the end. However to use a weapon that we didn’t fully understand that is still hurting the new generations was a rather horrible decision on our parts. And if we don’t learn from past mistakes we as a human race are doomed to blow each other up with bigger bombs or maybe world peace is possible one day.
The Atom Bomb from Spartacus Educational:
The Decision To Use the Atomic Bomb by Louis Morton:
http://www.history.army.mil/books/70-7_23.htm he cited from: "Report of the Committee on Social and Political Implications,"
signed by Professor James Franck of the University of Chicago and
submitted to the Secretary of War, 11 June 1945, Bulletin of Atomic
Scientists, Vol. 1, No. 10 (May 1, 1946), p. 3; Smith, "Behind the
Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb: Chicago 1944-45," Bulletin of Atomic
Scientists, pp. 299-302.
[24] Ibid, pp. 3-4.
(3.) HIROSHIMA Who Disagreed With The Atomic Bombing?:
http://www.doug-long.com/quotes.htm and he cited from: Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 350-351
(4.)HIROSHIMA Who Disagreed With The Atomic Bombing?:
http://www.doug-long.com/quotes.htm and he cited: Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380
(5.) Atomic Bomb-Truman Press Release-August 6, 1945:
(6.) Statement By The President Of The United States: http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/small/mb10.htm
(7.) Emperor Hirohito, Accepting the Potsdam Declaration, Radio Broadcast.
Transmitted by Domei and Recorded by the Federal Communications Commission, 14 August 1945
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