America has been in World War II for 4 years and needed to defeat one more opponent, Japan. Research on a new weapon was being made in the United States known as the Manhattan project. Luckily this project was near finished when America was ready to invade the mainland of Japan. The President and Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson got a panel of scientist together in order to discuss the possible use of this Atomic Bomb. The scientists including Albert Einstein, Erico Firmi, and J Robert Oppenheimer, agreed that "there was no alternative to direct military use." They believed that this technology that they created would defeat the Japaneese and save American lives. Therefore the scientists strongly encourged the president to use it instead of using troups to invade Japan's mainland. Truman ended up listening to them and dropped the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima. In effect the bomb crippled the Japaneese port, but they did not surrender, and Truman was forced to drop a second Atomic Bomb on Nagasaki. This devistated Japan and caused their surrender, but I feel like this was a terrible decision in tactics. These two bombs killed over 150,000 people which were 100,000 civilians. I believe that this is terrible; the idea of war is to fight for a cause that you believe in, and do anything one can for that cause. However, why would the United States Government think that it was a good idea to kill thousands of civilians in order to take out the countries ports and factories. It is devistating to imagine the effect of a nuclear weapon detonating on our soil and killing 100,000 civilians. If you could believe that would be 100 times more civilians killed than on September 11. I feel like America made a bad decision on those days to bomb Nagasaki and Hiroshima because of the calateral damage. The countries kept making thier weapons stronger and more potent with technology, but this key incident illustrated to the world the importance of low callateral damage. Thankfully, technology has been altered to start using smart bombs which can be laser or gps guided. This dramastically decreases collateral damage and citizen deaths. I believe that this is what technology should have originally sought out to do instead of kill masses of people, but at least America can learn from our mistakes.
ABC-CLIO. "Background Essay." Issues: Understanding Controversy and Society. ABC-CLIO, 2010. Web. 28 Jan. 2010. http://www.issues.abc-clio.com/.
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Hey Jon, the atomic bomb was a really intresting topic for me too while starting off the science and technology topic. A really intresting thing I found was Truman's speech to the American Public a day after the bomb was dropped. You should give it a look, its a great primary document. http://www.worldhistory.abc-clio.com/Explore/Display.aspx?categoryid=13&entryid=1185821&searchtext=atomic+bomb&type=simple&option=all&filterid=
ReplyDeleteI really liked your take on the atomic bomb droppings in Japan. I love to learn about history and this look at the science aspect helped to put what happened in a different prespective. I agree that government should have taken a different course of action. All of those civilians did not have to die. The Ameriacn government needs to think of the people as well as the military outcome. Yes this may have been a victory in terms of War, but it was a step back in how America deals with other countries. I like how you ended by saying that America is working to build a smart bomb. This will help to make sure that the war is fought between the armies and not the army and civilians. This is how it should be and America should stick to this new research.
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