Was the atomic bomb a military necessity or …



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WWII Journal #5

Should the USA have used the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Instructions

Read the following information and primary resources. Make notes and highlight key phrases while reading. Then write Journal #5 and state your opinion on the matter. Make references back to the reading. For example, “Source 1 suggests that….” or “I disagree with Source 2 that states…” Make sure to read all sources – in order to have a good debate, you must understand both sides!

Information

In the Potsdam Declaration, President Truman demanded the unconditional surrender of Japan. When Japan attempted to surrender, they did have one condition: to keep the emperor. Hiroshima was chosen as the primary target because it was a minor supply base for the military and the city was practically untouched by previous bombing, so the damage could be accurately measured. When the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, somewhere between 75,000 and 175,000 people died instantly. An exact total can never be known, since many people were simply vaporized in the blast, leaving no bodies to count or bury. Seventy-five percent of the structures in the city, about 90,000 buildings, were destroyed. More than 140,000 additional people died from the effects of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs due to radiation poisoning. Overall, an estimated 350,000 people have died as a result of the bombings – and 90% of them were civilians.

Yes, the US should have dropped the bomb…

Source 1: Statement of President Harry Truman, August 6, 1943

Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese army base. That bomb had more than 200,000 tons of TNT. It had more than two thousand times the blast power of the British “Grand Slam,” which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare.

The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many fold. And the end is not yet. With this bomb we have now added a new and revolutionary increase in destruction to supplement the growing power of our armed forces. In their present form these bombs are now in production and even more powerful forms are in development…

It was to spare the Japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum of July 26 was issued at Potsdam. Their leaders promptly rejected that ultimatum. If they do not now accept our terms they can expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.

Source 2: James F. Byrnes, secretary of state in 1945, Speaking Frankly, 1947

In these two raids, there were many casualties but not nearly so many as there would have been had our air forces continued to drop incendiary bombs on Japan’s cities. Certainly, by bringing the war to an end, the atomic bomb saved the lives of thousands of American boys.

No one who played a part in the development of the bomb or in our decision to use it felt happy about it. It was natural and right that men should worry about performing duty that would cost so many human lives.

Source 3: Secretary of War Henry Stimson, On Active Service in Peace and War, 1947

Two great nations were approaching contact in a fight to finish which would begin on November 1, 1945. Our enemy, Japan, commanded forces of somewhat over 5,000,000 armed men. Men of these armies had already inflicted upon us, in our break-through of the outer perimeter of their defenses, over 500,000 battle casualties. Enemy armies still unbeaten had the strength to cost us a million more. As long as the Japanese government refused to surrender, we should be forced to take and hold the ground, and smash the Japanese ground armies, by close-in fighting of the same desperate and costly kind that we had faced in the Pacific Islands for nearly four years.

In light of formidable problem which thus confronted us, I felt that every possible step should be taken to compel a surrender…before we had commenced and invasion…The bomb seemed to me to furnish a unique instrument for that purpose.

My chief purpose was to end the war in factory with the least possible cost in the lives of armies which I had helped to raise…I believe that no man in our position and subject to our responsibilities, holding in his hands a weapons of such possibilities for accomplishing this purpose and saving those lives, could have failed to use it and afterwards looked his countrymen in the face…The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki put an end to the Japanese war. It stopped the fire raids, and the strangling blockade; it ended the ghastly specter of a clash of great land armies.

Source 4: British scientist P. M. S. Blackett, Fear, War and the Bomb, 1948

The hurried dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a brilliant success, in that all the political objectives were fully achieved. American control of Japan is complete, and there is no struggle for authority there with Russia…So we may conclude that the dropping of the atomic bombs was not so much the last military act of the second World War, as the first major operation of the cold diplomatic war with Russia.

Source 5: Interview of James F. Byrnes, US News & World Report, August 15, 1960

Q: Governor Byrnes, in light of what we now know, was it wrong to use the atomic bomb against Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

A: I do not think so. Of course, Monday morning quarterbacking is a very pleasant pastime, but it is not a fruitful one…

Q: Do any of the alternatives proposed in 1945 look any better today than they did then?

A: Again, my answer is that I do not think so. For instance, I recall, among the alternatives suggested at that time to the Intern Committee of which I was a member, the suggestion that the bomb be dropped on an isolate island with representatives of Japan and other nations invited to witness the test. This was rejected.

Then there was the question of giving the Japanese fair warning about the time and place of the explosion, but we rejected it because we feared the American prisoners of war would be brought into the designated area. We were told by experts too that whatever the success of the test bomb, they could not guarantee that another bomb would explode when dropped.

Q: Was there a feeling of urgency to end the war in the Pacific before the Russians became too deeply involved?

A: There certainly was on my part, and I’m sure that, whatever views President Truman may have had of it earlier in the year, that in the days immediately preceding the dropping of the bomb his views were the same as mine – we wanted to get through with the Japanese phase of the war before the Russians cam in.

No, the US should not have dropped the bomb…

Source 6: Report of US War Department’s Strategic Bombing Survey, 1945

Certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.

Source 7: Hanson Baldwin, Great Mistakes of the War, 1950

By August, 1945, more than 16,000 tons of bombs had ravaged Japanese cities. Food was short; mines and submarines and surface vessels and plans clamped an iron blockade around the main islands; raw materials were scare. Blockades, bombing, and unsuccessful attempts at dispersion had reduced Japanese production capacity from 20-60%. The enemy, in a military sense, was in a hopeless strategic position by the time the Potsdam demand for unconditional surrender was made on July 26.

Such, then, was the situation when we wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Need we have done it? No one can, of course, be positive, but the answer is almost certainly negative…

But in fact, our only warning to Japan already military defeated, and in a hopeless situation, was the Potsdam demand for unconditional surrender issued on July 26, when we knew Japanese surrender attempts had started. Yet when the Japanese surrender was negotiated about two weeks later, after the bomb was dropped, our unconditional surrender was made conditional and we argued for the continuation of the Emperor upon his imperial throne.

We were, therefore, twice guilty. We dropped the bomb at a time when Japan was already negotiating for an end to the war but before the negotiations could come to fruition. We demanded unconditional surrender, then dropped the bomb and accepted conditional surrender, a sequence which indicated pretty clearly that Japan would have surrendered even if the bomb had not been dropped, had the Potsdam Declaration included our promise to permit the Emperor to remain on his imperial thrown.

It is quite possible that the atomic bomb shortened the war by a day, a week, or a month or two – not more. But at what a price!

Source 8: Editorial, Nippon Times, Tokyo, August 10, 1945

How can a human being with any claim to a sense of moral responsibility deliberately let loose an instrument of destruction which can at one stroke annihilate an appalling segment of mankind? This is not war; this is not even murder…this is a crime against God and humanity which strikes at the very basis of human existence…

The crime of the Americans stands out in ghastly repulsiveness all the more for the ironic contradiction it affords to their lying pretensions. For in all their noisy statements, they have always claimed to be the champions of fairness and humanitarianism…This hypocritical character of the Americans had already been amply demonstrated in the previous bombings of Japanese cities. Stewing explosives and fire bombs indiscriminately over an extensive area, hitting large cities and small towns without distinction, wiping out vast districts which could not be mistaken as being anything but strictly residential in character, burning or blasting to death countless thousands of helpless women and children, and machine-gunning fleeing refugees, the American raiders.

Source 9: Imperial Japanese government’s protest, through the Swiss government, August 10, 1945

The US air force on August 6 dropped a new type of bomb on the urban area of Hiroshima city, thereby killing or injuring a large number of citizens and destroying the major part of the city in an instant. Being an ordinary city not possessing any particular military defense facilities or equipment, Hiroshima as a whole cannot be taken as a military object.

Upon inspecting conditions in the area stricken by the bomb, it was found that the damage was widespread and that everyone in the area, combatants and non-combatants, irrespective of age and sex, were killed or injured by the bomb blast and its radiant heat. From the size of the stricken area and the number of casualties, the bomb can be called the most atrocious and barbarous weapon ever produced.

Since the outbreak of the current World War, the US government has declared time and again that the use of poisonous gas and other inhuman war methods are unlawful for civilized societies and that the US will not resort to those methods unless her opponent uses them first. But the new type of bomb far surpasses in effect poisonous gas and other arms, the use of which has hitherto been prohibited on account of their barbarous character.

In utter disregard of International law and the fundamental principles of humanity, the US has been carrying out extensive wanton attacks upon cities in the Nippon Empire, thereby killing or injuring numerous old men, women, and children and destroying or burning down shrines, temples, schools, hospitals, and houses of the people in general. Now she has begun using this new type of bomb, which is incomparable to any hitherto existing arms and projectiles in its indiscriminate and atrocious character.

The Imperial Nippon Government does hereby accuse the US Government in its own name as well as in the name of entire mankind and its civilians.

Source 10: Howard Zinn, Postwar America: 1945-1971, 1973

The motivation behind dropping the bomb on Hiroshima, despite the death and suffering of the Japanese…was political. That political motive was to keep the Russians out of the Pacific war so that the US would play the primary role in the peace settlement in Asia. The circumstantial evidence for this conclusion…is that the strictly military need to end the war did not require such instant use of the bomb. Admiral William Leahy, Truman’s chief of staff; General Henry Arnold, commanding general of the air force; General Carl Spaatz, commander of the Strategic Air Force; as well as General Douglas MacArthur, commander of the Pacific theater; and General Eisenhower, did not think use of the bomb was necessary.

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