After watching many of the presidential debates and commercials, the subject of nuclear testing and warfare surfaces constantly. Donald Trump is in favor of further nuclear testing. This can not help but make me think of the United State's use of atomic bombs in World War 2. I decided to watch a documentary on this subject in order to reeducate myself. I always thought that it could not really have been the right decision to have dropped them, especially on largely civilian targets, but after having watched this documentary, I am pretty sure of this. I am of the opinion that there were other options that could have been pursued with less tragic effects than those of atomic bombing, and I especially think that everything surrounding Truman’s decision and his responsibility in it was pretty shady.
One option that could have ended the war without the atom bombs was to make a condition in the “unconditional surrender” allowing the emperor to remain, if only as a figurehead. The Japanese people believed that the emperor was godlike and their culture was to do everything and anything within their power to protect him. Just promising that the emperor would be left alone would likely have been enough to get Japan to surrender to the rest of our demands.
If that would not have been a good enough choice for us on its own, another option was to just wait until the Soviet army joined the war. It was a sure thing that Stalin planned to join us in the war against Japan, and he had agreed upon a date to enter the war, which was to be only a few days after the first bomb, and he fully intended to keep his word. Japan was considering the unconditional surrender, even without a clause allowing the emperor to stay in power, when word of the Soviet involvement began to circulate. If we had waited for Stalin’s troops, the Japanese would almost definitely have surrendered without the use of the atomic bombs.
The biggest reason we actually did use the bombs at all is that so much money had gone into their development that the people in charge of the project would not allow for them to not at least be tested on a major scale. Their targets were chosen almost entirely for this purpose as well. Truman was hardly the one that made the decision to drop the bombs anyway; he knew very little of the whole project in general, as he had not been privy to the information as vice president under Roosevelt, he was under so much pressure from other sources and was kept from hearing opposing views of the situation, and his signature was only needed once to authorize the drop of as many bombs as were seen fit, so he cannot be blamed entirely, if at all.
There were awful effects from the use of these bombs. One estimate states that around 200,000 people were killed between both bombs.Two entire cities were leveled. Whole families were killed. Many others were maimed. Radiation ruined everything over a vast area for long after the initial time of dropping. Americans, especially all those in direct contact with the bombs, had become mass murderers. The worst weapon known to man had become known to the world, beginning an age of nuclear development and fear. As far as I am concerned, nothing good came out of our dropping the atomic bombs on Japan, therefore the action was completely unnecessary, and further, wrong.
