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Essay: Why the US Should Not Have Dropped the Atomic Bomb on Japan

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  • Subject area(s): Sample essays
  • Reading time: 3 minutes
  • Price: Free download
  • Published: 1 February 2018*
  • Last Modified: 23 July 2024
  • File format: Text
  • Words: 854 (approx)
  • Number of pages: 4 (approx)
  • Tags: World War II

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The atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki almost 73 years ago and the radiation from the atomic bombs is still present in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the amount of radiation left is almost equal to natural radioactivity. On August 6, 1945, President Truman decided to send a plane over to Japan and drop an atomic bomb. Instantly 70,000 Japanese people died. With the years 100 thousand more people died because of radiation sickness and burns. But before this all happened Truman told Japan to surrender and they did not want to so Truman decided to bomb them. The Japanese’s philosophy is that they will keep on fighting until they die and never surrender until they’re all dead. President Truman did not make the right decision by deciding to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki because Japan had no allies, their navy was almost destroyed, the atomic bomb caused a lot of Japanese civilian casualties, and the use of the atomic bomb was motivated racially.

Japan was the last country standing in World War 2, they had no allies. It didn’t help that their navy was almost destroyed. Japan was at its weakest, there was no need for us to bomb them with the atomic bomb besides trying to end the war faster (which is not a good reason). Over 130 thousand people had died due to the atomic bomb drops. The military did not care about who got hurt, just as long as they did not lose anymore soldiers; therefore they did not care they were going to ruin schools and hospitals and cause a ton of damage and casualties. The US could have used many different combinations of attacks like the B-92 bombs that they had. Japan’s weak military made it easy for us to invade them instead of bombing them.

The lives of innocent Japanese citizens were lost because of the US’s carelessness towards preparing an invasion on Japan. The use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was not a good decision made by the US because of all the lives lost, the Japanese people had nothing to do with the bombing of Pearl Harbor and they should not have been attacked. The US chose to bomb one of the most populated cities in Japan, if they wanted to make Japan surrender they would’ve went for somewhere where their military is located. The bombing of Pearl Harbor killed only 3,000 people that is nothing compared to how many deaths the atomic bomb caused. In total there was 200,000 civilian casualties. City of Fuchu had several Air Force bases, if the US wanted to protect their own citizens they would’ve bombed Fuchu/more military focused cities instead of more colonized cities. In the end, the United States was not using the atomic bomb to protect themselves but instead for bad intentions.

The use of the atomic bomb was for sure motivated racially. It was no secret that the US was prejudice towards Japanese citizens. It is believed they were not liked not because of their education in politics but because of their genetics, because of this Japanese immigrants in the US could not find jobs and Japanese children couldn’t attend school without being separated from the other kids. The Americans didn’t want their children to sit next to “yellow children.” After the bombing of Pearl Harbor the Americans rounded up Japanese Americans and put them in isolation camps, like Hitler did to the Jews. The Americans also denied them of their liberties and rights. The level of hatred that Americans had for Japanese citizens was almost as equal as Nazi hatred for Jews. There was anti-Japanese imagery everywhere in America. A lot of World War 2 propaganda posters were against the Japanese, some of the posters said “How to  Spot A Jap,” the posters were very harsh towards the Japanese people. Japanese were made to seem as the worst people, one of the posters made during WW2 said, “Jap Beast And His Plot To Rape The World.” This is what America was fighting against in World War 2 and yet we did the same thing to Japanese people. It is very clear that American people were racist towards Japanese people, so racist that they would drop atomic bombs on cities filled with civilians instead of military focused cities.

To conclude, Truman did not make the right decision by deciding to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki because Japan had no allies (they were basically an easy defeat at this point if they were to be invaded), a lot of Japanese deaths, and the fact they were racially motivated to bomb them. Japan was the last country standing in WW2 and had no allies and a weak military overall. Many Japanese lives were lost because of the US not wanting to plan an invasion and supposedly not wanting to have any more American casualties. The use of the atomic bomb was racially motivated, America did not like Japanese people and so they bombed them and this would have been completely different if they had to fight Germany instead of Japan.

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