Harry Truman assumed office on 1945 April after the death of President Franklin Roosevelt. There was then an agreement between the secretary of the war then Henry Stimson and the president on the use of the bomb for them to restore sanity or these could even end up to a Third world war. The decision to use the bomb was made on August.
This write up has looked at the reasons for the use of the atomic bomb in ensuring that world peace prevailed thou it is destructive and most preferably not the best.
Argument for
This was the best decision that Truman made thou the scientist view it as a destructive and like it brought chaos in the world, this conclusion was arrived in due to the stubbornness of the Japanese. They had decided not to give up or accept defeat this was at a conference held on 8th August 1945.The Chief of the army then in Japan showed his confidence to the military in such a manner as to suggest his readiness for war. He even went ahead to show how ready they regarded weapons.
Something else that demonstrated the unlikeliness of the Japans surrender was the unconditional surrender demand by His allies including the demand for the removal of their Emperor whom the Japanese had held in very high regard.This meant that they couldn’t give up since they were not ready to adhere to the request thus requesting a more deliberate action from the United Nations or continuity of the war claiming more lives.
This was the trigger to the decision made by Truman in August 1945.The bomb destroyed 60% of Hiroshima city and killed an estimated number of 75,000 -100,000 people immediately. This brought an uproar in Japan while Truman just described this as a warning of things ahead yet to be released. This meant more lives and more property destruction if the Japanese still held on their firm stand. These were followed by a second bomb in Nagasaki killing more people and destroying more properties.
This Nagasaki bombing made Japan surrender thus this shows that this was the only effective way to in which peace could have been restored, and the World War II be brought to an end any other method suggested trial and error which meant continuity of the war and massive death of soldiers and civilians too. The use of bomb brought a quick end and saved so many lives most of the U.S people .were it not for the bomb may be Second World War could have escalated to even a Third World War.
Argument Against
The bombing was not necessary since Japan was pursuing peace negotiations and true indications were showing like the .U.S. would give more time for negotiations to see whether this could bear fruits. This did not show like they had any intentions of using such deadly weapons against a civilian population.
It was known the position of Japans military was so poor; this indicated that its leaders could easily surrender even without applying too much force to the use of the bomb.
If peace negotiations were followed it was established that lesser lives could have been lost compared to what resulted. A survey in 1946 about strategic bombing shows that Japan would have surrendered anyway even without the contemplated invasion.
The bombing leads to the unnecessary massive destruction of properties, death of people, radiation effects on human beings which could have been avoided if better ways of searching for peace were employed.
In conclusion, the bomb was necessary to ensure that the war would not escalate beyond what it was and we cannot deny that due to the bombing sanity was restored but then it is immoral and barbaric to use devastating weapons against the civilian population.
Works cited
Herken, Gregg. The Winning Weapon: The Atomic Bomb in the Cold War, 1945-1950. Princeton University Press, 2014.
Laurence, William L. Dawn over zero: The story of the atomic bomb. Pickle Partners Publishing, 2017.
