Yet, this is not to say that they were not conscious of the race with the ussians or the advantages of being able to demonstrate the destructive power of the new super bomb. Yet such a view has not been in doubt by most recent traditional historians, who have seen Truman as a practical statesman with one eye on the post-war world and already dealing with problems with Stalin over Eastern Europe. The administration evidently saw advantages in possessing and even using the new bombs, but the issue was what primarily motivated them to do so in August 1945 (Bastian, n.d.).
Those who dispute in favor of the decision to drop the atom bombs argue that massive casualties on both sides would have occurred in Operation Downfall, the planned invasion of Japan. The U.S. side estimated losing many soldiers in the planned invasion of Japan, although the actual number of…...
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References
Bastian, Peter. (n.d.). Dropping the Atomic Bomb. Retrieved March 16, 2010, from American
Atomic Bomb and Nuclear Power - Blessing or Curse
DANNENBEG, Germany, Nov 14 (euters) - A force of 15,000 police sealed roads in part of northern Germany on Wednesday in a crackdown against protesters trying to disrupt the final leg of a shipment of nuclear waste. The security operation, one of Germany's biggest in peacetime and likely to cost at least 50 million marks ($22.52 million), entered its third day with the highly radioactive waste set to make a 20 km (12-mile) road trip to a storage site at Gorleben. (Blenkinsop, 2001)
Like fire, radiation should be respected but not feared. All life has evolved in a sea of radiation that existed from the start of time. To ensure the safety of the public and of workers, and to protect the environment, the federal government regulates the ELECTICAL UTILITIES and the hospitals, universities and other institutions, which use nuclear energy and radioisotopes.…...
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References
Blenkinsop, Philip (11-13-2001). German Police Mass For Final Leg Of Nuclear Convoy. Reuters.
Not Available (09-16-1997). Nuclear Nonproliferation And Safety - Concerns With The International Atomic Energy Agency's Technical Cooperation. Government Accounting Office Report.
Not Available (10-18-2002). Powell Says Force Not Contemplated North Korea's Nuclear Program 'Troubling' Bush. The Washington Times.
Not Available (10-23-2001). UN: Nuclear Power Alternative To Fossil Fuels, IAEA Director Informs General Assembly; Following Introduction Of Agency's Annual Report, Most Speakers Express Support For Non-Proliferation, Additional. M2 PressWIRE.
Atomic Bomb
Historians like Gar Alperovitz and Martin Sherwin have known for many years, based on declassified U.S. government documents that Japan was going to surrender in 1945 even if the atomic bombs were no dropped and that no invasion would ever have been necessary. Their only condition was that the United States "guaranteed the safety of the Emperor Hirohito," and in the end the Truman administration agreed to this rather than prosecuting him as a war criminal (Sherwin xviii). At the time in the summer of 1945, all the top military and civilian officials of the administration except Secretary of State James Byrnes had already advised Truman to accept the Japanese surrender on this condition. Yet when the Potsdam Declaration was issued in July 1945, Truman and Byrnes removed the condition that would have allowed the emperor to remain in power. As Herwin put it, "for forty years, the American…...
It was much later in 1996 that World Court took up the case of the use of nuclear weapons and declared their use illegal under The Hague and Geneva Convention. "In July 1996, the World court took a stand in its first formal opinion on the legality of nuclear weapons. Two years earlier, the United Nations had asked the Court for an advisory opinion. The General Assembly of the United Nations posed a single, yet profoundly basic, question for consideration. It the threat of use of nuclear weapons on any circumstances permitted under international law? For the first time, the world's pre-eminent judicial authority has considered the question of criminality vis-a-vis the use of a nuclear weapon, and, in doing so, it has come to the conclusion that the use of a nuclear weapon is 'unlawful'. It is also the Court's view that even the threat of the use of…...
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Reference:
Kai Bird. Hiroshima's Shadow (Writings on the denial of history & the Smithsonian controversy) Pamphleteer's Press; 1ST edition (May 1998)
" The difference in the Manhattan Project and other companies that were very similar in function was due to the need to become quickly successful and investments of "hundreds of millions of dollars in unproven and hitherto unknown processes and did so entirely in secret. Speed and secrecy were the watchwords of the Manhattan Project." Gosling states that the "one overwhelming advantage" of the project's inherent characteristics because it became possible, under the cloak of secrecy to "make decisions with little regard for normal peacetime political considerations."
Gosling relates the following of the Manhattan Project:
The need for haste clarified priorities and shaped decision making. Unfinished research on three separate, unproven processes had to be used to freeze design plans for production facilities, even though it was recognized that later findings inevitably would dictate changes. The pilot plant stage was eliminated entirely, violating all manufacturing practices and leading to intermittent shutdowns and…...
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Bibliography
Abshire, David (2002) Vulnerability and Surprise: December 7, 1941. September 11, 2001 Lessons for the 21st Century 2 Mar 2002. Center for the Study of the Presidency. Washington, D.C.
Amato, Ivan (1996) Seventy-Five Years of High Stakes Science and Technology at the Naval Research Laboratory. Pushing the Horizon.
Correll, John T. (1994) the Decision that Launched the Enola Gay Part II the Smithsonian and the Enola Gay. Air Force Association. Online available at http://www.afa.org/media/enolagay/03-02.asp
Frank, Sandy (1993)Atomic Bomb: Ultimate Failure of Diplomacy. Deense Information Systems Agency. The Industrial College of the Armed Forces
However, the dangers of nuclear explosions were not fully understood, and Miss Atomic Bomb represents the epitome of nuclear testing in the Nevada desert, when bombs were tested above ground and hundreds would flock to Las Vegas to watch for the exploding white light and mushroom cloud. Sexuality goes hand in hand with power, and so, mores were beginning to change in America, the most powerful country on earth.
In conclusion, the atomic bomb changed culture throughout America and the world. Americans became more fearful in many ways. This caused accusations, distrust, and a feeling of fear throughout the country that spread to the government and society. It helped create the global Cold War, and led to the war with North Korea and the Vietnam War. It gave America a technical advantage for a while, and helped the growth of technology. Ultimately, it ended the war, but created decades of…...
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References
Bert the Turtle Public Service Announcement." Civil Defense Administration. (1950).
Graphic Illustrations of How to Respond to a Nuclear Attack." Major Problems in American History Since 1945. 135-136.
Mass. Gov. John Volpe Constructing Brick Bomb Shelter, 1961." Boston Herald.
McCarthy, Senator Joseph. "Speech at Wheeling, West Virginia. (Feb 09, 1950)." 210-214.
bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, being one of the events that vastly shocked the world, had several consequences in the immediate history at the moment of the bombing and the after years to the contemporary times. It is widely known that it was the bombing that made Japan to surrender and effectively ending the WWII, which was the intended impact at the moment, but it also had several consequences thereafter.
Nations across the world started scrambling for stronger and more lethal weapons and ammunitions after the Hiroshima bombing. The number of nations owning the weapons of mass destruction has increased over time with the nuclear race being the latest of the cravings of nations. The U.S. indeed still leads in the ownership of the warheads and other legally recognized countries to own warheads being China, UK, France and ussia (Macias, A. (2014). These are fevers from the large scale deaths…...
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References
Macias, A. (2014). Nine Nations Have Nukes -- Here's How Many Each Country Has.
This denotes that Japanese culture had been significantly altered
both by its defeat at the hands of the United States and by the occupation
which were to follow. But in reality, the changes in Japan would only be a
first chapter in the narrative of atomic power. Indeed, the devastating
detonations on the ground in Japan were a window into a new frontier in
making warfare. Indeed, on August 6th, 1945, the world entered a new age.
The end of orld ar II, presaged by the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, introduced the world to the nuclear era. The next five decades,
unfolding under the shadow of the Cold ar, would be underscored by the
continuing threat of nuclear war. ith major conflicts in such settings as
the Korean Peninsula, Cuba and Vietnam functioning as remote nation-
building contests between the world's two major superpowers, the United
States and the Soviet Union began a race for the accumulation of nuclear
weapons that…...
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Works Cited:
Biswas, S. (2001). 'Nuclear Apartheid' as Political Position: Race as
Cook, T.F. (1993). Japan at War: An Oral History. New Press.
Debat, A. & Gvosdev, N.K. (2006). America the Vulnerable. The NationalInterest. Online at Dower, J.W. (1974). Ground Zero 1945. MIT: Visualizing Cultures.http://nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=12036 .
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's executive order to contain Japanese-Americans in internment camps could have created mistrust in the Japanese and their descendants in the U.S. Such racial antagonism could have made many Americans feel justified to drop the atomic bomb on Japan.
Earlier Presidential Statement and Other Motivations
The decision to bomb Japan's cities may not be deduced from documents during President Truman's presidency or blamed entirely on President Truman. A respected oston University attorney, Harvey undy, on March 3, 1945, presented to his boss, the Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, the draft of a three-page memorandum by then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt eight weeks before his death. It was to be issued when the atomic bomb was used. It appeared to have been the basis for later statements issued on August 6, 1945 from the White House and the War Department after the bombing of Hiroshima.
President Truman's own decision…...
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Bibliography
Bellis, Mary 2003. The first atomic bomb blast, 1945. Eyewitness to History. Available from
1945, President Truman authorized the detonation of an atomic bomb comically nicknamed "Little Boy" on Hiroshima, Japan. Just three days later, the United States launched another atomic bomb called "Fat Man" on Nagasaki. About a week after the Nagasaki explosion, Japan surrendered and the Second orld ar officially came to an end. The two atomic bombs resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians, and many who did not instantly perish suffered long-term ill effects from radiation exposure. However gruesome and catastrophic the event, the dropping of the two atomic bombs on Japan is justifiable because it definitively ended a brutal and ongoing war and it also helped to solidify the United States as a global superpower dedicated to defeating nefarious states including the Soviet Union.
One of the most cogent reasons why the bombs were justified is rooted in the fact that the war had been dragging…...
Indeed, there is no moral argument to justify the use of weapons against possible civilians. The nuclear bomb lacks any precision in targeting solely military targets without causing casualties. Although its use cannot be justified from a moral perspective, it can be seen as a means to put an end to a war that had taken millions of lives up to 1945. The impact the attacks had on Japan determined, or at least influenced, the Emperor's decision to surrender unconditionally. In this way, the death of approximately 200 thousand people can be pragmatically viewed as a price for the survival of possibly other millions of people that would have lost their lives should the war had continued.
Overall, it can be concluded that, despite the tragic loss of human lives, the nuclear attacks from Hiroshima and Nagasaki could find justification in the historical context, the economic and geopolitical framework of…...
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Bibliography
Calvocoressi, Peter. World politics since 1945. Budapest: Open Society Institute, 1996.
Goldschmidt, Bertrand. Le complex atomique: histoire politique de l'energie nucleaire. Paris: Librairie Artheme Fayard, 1980.
Kissinger, Henry. Diplomacy. London: Simon & Schuster, 1995.
Newman, Robert P. Truman and the Hiroshima Cult. Michigan State University Press, 1995.
Anscombe and Truman’s Decision to Drop the Bomb
As G.E.M. Anscombe notes in his essay criticizing Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the intention was “to kill the innocent as a means to an end” (3)—the end being the unconditional surrender of the Japanese and the termination of WWII in terms favorable to the West. The question of whether those means were moral meets with another question: whether the desired end of the West could have been achieved by any other means. Anscombe points out that Truman’s policy to make war on the innocent stood out in stark contrast to his earlier policy of ensuring that “civil populations would not be attacked” (1). With the war almost at an end, Truman decided to show the full force of American military might and detonate two atomic bombs over Japan. The act was merciless and oriented towards a…...
The Reflective Essay
President Harry Truman's decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan during World War II
Introduction
The United States remains the only country in the world that has ever made use of an atomic weapon against another country during a war. In 1945 the U.S. bombed two Japanese cities – Hiroshima and Nagasaki – in what effectively informed the surrender of Japan during World War II. It is important to note that over time, the use of an atomic bomb by the U.S. against Japan has been debated widely. Was the U.S. justified in the deployment of the atomic bombs? What escalated the wartime circumstances to dangerous levels, and could the massive devastation that came about as a consequence be prevented? These are some of the questions that scholars have grapples with on this front. This text revisits the debate and highlights President Harry Truman's decision to drop atomic the bombs…...
Of course, the first nuclear test occurred before the 1950s and was part of the United States' effort to develop an atomic weapon during World War II. This test occurred at 5:30 A.M. On July 16, 1945, at a missile range outside of Alamogordo, New Mexico. Even that test was enough to convince a large group of scientists that the atomic weapon was a dangerous and powerful weapon. "The Franck Report," a petition issued by Leo Szilard and 68 other scientists urged President Truman to first demonstrate the capabilities of the atomic bomb before using it as a weapon against the Japanese, because of the mass destruction that came with the bomb.
This test, known as the Trinity Test, was a tremendous success. "The energy developed in the test was several times greater than that expected by scientific group. The cloud column mass and top reached a phenomenal…...
) Some even thought (rightly) that it was being spared for something big. However, no one in their wildest imagination was anticipating an atomic bomb attack. Hence, on the morning of the fateful day, the residents of Hiroshima were completely unprepared for an atomic bomb explosion.
Painting of Hell":
Many survivors of the atomic explosion on Hiroshima have likened the experience of the blast and its immediate aftermath to mankind's common perception of hell. A young Japanese sociologist, for example, described the scene of a nearby park after the explosion: "The most impressive thing I saw was some girls, very young girls, not only with their clothes torn off but with their skin peeled off as well...my immediate thought was that this was like the hell I had always read about." (Selden and Selden, xix) Another eye-witness, twenty-year-old Shibayama Hiroshi, recalled entering Hiroshima on foot from his suburban workplace within hours of…...
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Works Cited
Braw, Monica. The Atomic Bomb Suppressed: American Censorship in Occupied Japan. Armonk, NY M.E. Sharpe, 1991.
One of the most interesting issues in international relations is the role that nuclear weapons play in the effort to obtain peace. Many people suggest that nuclear weapons can preserve peace. The United States was the first country to actively deploy nuclear weapons in an effort to shorten a war by dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. The widespread destruction, which was unlike anything ever experienced in a war up to that point, is often credited with ushering in the end of World War II, at least in the Pacific....
The Rise and Fall of the Sumerian City-States The Indus Valley Civilization: Unraveling the Enigma The Ancient Egyptian Civilization: Pyramids, Pharaonic Power, and Daily Life The Minoan and Mycenaean Civilizations: Maritime Masters of the Aegean The Zhou Dynasty and the Birth of Chinese Civilization
Chapter 2: Classical Civilizations
The Athenian Golden Age: Democracy, Philosophy, and the Arts The Roman Empire: Conquests, Governance, and the Pax Romana The Mauryan Empire: From Chandragupta to Ashoka's Legacy The Hellenistic World: A Syncretic Blend of Greek and Persian Cultures The Han Dynasty: China's Ascendancy and Technological Innovations
Propaganda played a significant role in shaping public opinion during World War II, influencing the way people viewed the war, their enemy, and their own country's efforts. In Europe, Nazi propaganda was used to manipulate German citizens and justify their aggressive actions, while Allied propaganda aimed to boost morale and portray the Axis powers as the enemy. In the Pacific, Japanese propaganda portrayed America as a threat to their empire, while American propaganda highlighted the need to defeat Japan to protect peace and democracy.
The impact of propaganda on the outcome of the war was significant. In Europe, Nazi propaganda helped....
Central Thesis: The Dichotomy and Convergence of Religion and Science In Kurt Vonnegut's satirical masterpiece, "Cat's Cradle," the central thesis explores the complex relationship between religion and science, arguing that they are both human constructs that intersect and diverge in profound ways. The Dichotomy of Faith and Reason Vonnegut presents religion and science as distinct spheres of belief, each with its own set of assumptions and methods. Religion, often represented by the fictional religion of Bokononism, is rooted in faith and intuition. It provides solace and meaning through stories, rituals, and a belief in a higher power. In contrast, science, symbolized by Felix....
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