Dropping The Atomic Bombs: An Irresponsible Decision
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Dropping The Atomic Bombs: An Irresponsible Decision
"Ever since I have been in touch with this program, I have had a feeling that before the bomb is actually used against Japan that Japan should have some preliminary warning for say two or three days in advance of use" (Dannen, "Bard Memorandum" 1). If the men in charge of the "Manhattan Project" had listened to men like Ralph A. Bard, the Undersecretary of the Navy, many deaths could have been prevented.
On April 12, 1945, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage and Harry S. Truman became the president. After the defeat of Germany on May 7, 1945, there were pressures on both the leaders of Japan and the U.S. to end the war (Boyer 553-554). The two nations were involved in a bitter fight which began with Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 and included American air raids with incendiary bombs on the major cities of Japan. Although thousands of Japanese were without food and homes, Japan refused to surrender.
By mid-July two events occurred that enormously influenced America's decision to drop two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The first was the Potsdam Conference in Germany. During that conference, President Harry S Truman mentioned to "the allied rival" Joseph Stalin about a powerful new weapon; Stalin encouraged the usage of any weapon that would hasten the end of the war. Towards the end of the conference, Japan was given an ultimatum which Japan rejected. The other event was the successful test of the atomic bomb. This test gave the men in charge of the project the confidence that they knew everything about the effects of the radioactivity on the human body.
Finally, on July 24, 1945, Truman submitted his order to drop the first atomic bomb, "Little Boy" on the city of Hiroshima. Three days after the bombing of Hiroshima, August 9, the other atomic bomb "Fat Man" was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. Figure 1 shows models of the two bombs.
The dropping of the bombs had various beneficial effects. For...