Was the Dropping of the Atomic Bomb Justified?

When Harry Truman, the American President, heard of the bombing, he said, “This is the greatest thing in History.” Yet over 40 years later people were still dying from the after effects. The results of the atomic bomb explosions were so terrible that we have to ask why the bombs were dropped when the war was almost over.

There have been several reasons suggested for the Americans dropping the bomb:

1) The Americans believed that the Japanese would never surrender. If the atomic bombs had not been used hundreds of thousands of Americans would have been killed in an invasion of Japan.

2) The bomb had cost a lot of money to develop and the Americans wanted to see how it would work.

3) The bomb was used to show the USA’s military strength to the communist USSR (Soviet Union).

4) The Japanese had done several things that the Americans were not happy with:(a) The bombing of Pearl Harbor.(b) The treatment of prisoners of war.

The Americans wanted to teach the Japanese a lesson!

Source 1: From a newspaper called the Atlanta Constitution.

If it were not for the treachery of Pearl Harbor; the horrible cruelties of the Death march of Japan; the stories told by starved, filth-encrusted, dazed American prisoners coming out of Japanese prison camps, we might have felt sorry for the Japanese people.

Source 2: From the memoirs of Harry Stimson, the American Secretary of War.

…Beyond all other considerations the importance of taking this action against Russia…any nations who have not demonstrated their potential powers, in my opinion, would not be taken seriously by the Soviets.

Source 3: From a booklet published by the campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in 1985.

General Groves, the director of the Manhattan Project, was desperate to see the fruits of his labors before the end of World War II. The bomb had been developed at a tremendous cost of $2000 million. It would have been difficult to justify not using it after such a large financial investment. Two types of bombs had been developed. Nagasaki was simply an experiment to try out the second type.

Source 5

Source 4: By Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister, in 1953.

To quell the Japanese resistance man by man and conquer the country yard by yard might well have required the loss of a million American lives and half that number of British. Because of the bomb, that nightmarish picture vanished.

Questions – DUE AT END OF CLASS ON FRIDAY:

You have been asked to prepare evidence for an investigation into the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and whether it was justified. You have been given sources 1-5.

1) What reasons do each of the sources support? Fully explain each of your answers. Hint: You should divide your paper up into two columns and then list your evidence that way.

2) Looking at the evidence you have collected rank the four reasons in the order of the most true to the least true. Explain your ranking order.

3) Do you think the Americans could ever justify dropping the bomb, regardless of the reason? Explain your answer.