Dropping The Atomic Bomb
Uploaded by Hammerdin123 on May 18, 2008
Was America justified in dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima?
With the war in Europe ending shortly after Adolf Hitler committing suicide in his office, America is under pressure to end the war in Asia but Japan is still putting up fierce resistance. On August 6, around 8:00 AM, an American B-29 flew over Hiroshima, Japan carrying the world’s most feared weapons, a weapon which can flatten a whole city in seconds, Equivalent to 13 kilotons of TNT. This new technology is called an atomic bomb. The primary target of “Little Boy” (the atomic bomb) was Hiroshima, Japan. Hiroshima was of industrial and military significance. A number of military camps were located nearby, including the headquarters of the Fifth Division and Field Marshal Shunroku Hata's 2nd General Army Headquarters, which commanded the defense of all of southern Japan. Hiroshima was a strategic military position and it was critical that America captured it. Hiroshima was one of several Japanese cities left deliberately untouched by American fire-bombing, so America could measure the damage caused by the atomic bomb.
As the pressure is building up in the war in Asia, the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was more necessary because it will bring the war in Asia to an end so American troops can go home along with troops from Europe. America had calculated that 500,000 to 1,000,000 American troops would be killed in order to mount a successful full scale invasion of Japan. Those figures do not include Japanese troops and civilians which could be killed during the fighting in Japan. Also, America wanted revenge from the Japanese for the surprise bombing at Pearl Harbor. Immediate use of the atomic bomb after it being invented convinced the world of its horror and prevented future use when nuclear stockpiles were far larger. Along side with that reason, the two target cities would have been firebombed anyway and it was only a matter of time that Hiroshima would be destroyed entirely. With only two bombs ready and one under construction by late August 1945, it was too risky to “waste” one in a demonstration over an unpopulated area. The final and most important is that America had to keep the USSR military forces out of Asia incase of the USSR spreads communism throughout China, Manchuria and Korea whilst moving towards Japan.
America should not have dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima because the bomb had...