Essay on Harry S Truman's Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb

📌Category: Asia, Government, President of the United States, War, World
📌Words: 708
📌Pages: 3
📌Published: 06 April 2021

The Atomic Bomb was one of the most influential developments in the course of history. It destroyed anything in its path… Twice during WW2. Killing over 1 million Japanese civilians almost instantly. If put in the wrong hands the world could have been much different than the world we know today.

The Atomic Bomb is a tool that now many countries have because of the Manhattan project. It is a devastating weapon of mass destruction that would only have been made because of the dire circumstances. The Atomic Bomb may have ended the war, but it started the race to build another Atomic Bomb. The decision to drop the Atomic Bomb was to try end the war quickly and smoothly to stop the Japanese from fighting to the death, and to stop the Soviet Union from join the war in Japan to stop them from spreading communism to the Pacific. The threat of the Atomic Bomb towards the Soviet Union was only to scare the Soviet Union away from trying to attack the United States to gain control of a large part of the world.

Before Truman ordered to drop the bomb, the United States sent an ultimatum to the Japanese emperor who promptly declined the offer causing the United States to take matters into their own hands and end their “power to create war” as stated in the press briefing a few days later. The question of a land invasion was still on the table “[if] there are any alternatives to such a forceful occupation of Japan which will secure for us the equivalent of an unconditional surrender of her forces and a permanent destruction of her power again to strike an aggressive blow at the ‘peace of the Pacific’.” Truman chose the Atomic Bomb over the Land invasion because he favored saving many Americans lives because of the 300,000 lives lost to the Germans and the other Axis powers.

The Atomic Bomb saved over 500 thousand American lives, but it had lasting impacts on the relationship between America and Japan. While Truman believed that he was getting “revenge” for something that Japan started. On the other hand, Japan did not take kindly to the United States for a while after, until the Korean War when Japan and America signed a “peace of reconciliation” security treaty. 

The Atomic Bomb is still one of the deadliest bombs in the entire world and only one other compares to the amount of destruction that it has caused through the entire world. If America did not make this bomb, then there would most likely be much more world peace but then again there will always be someone who wants to have the most power and it would most likely have been produced by someone or maybe they might have skipped a few steps and made a hydrogen bomb which would have nearly twice the power and caused twice the destruction somewhere else. 

If the Atomic Bomb had not been created, then there would probably not be much stress about the Cold War (within reason) and the Cuban Missile crisis and threats of terrorist getting the weapons might not have been such a threat to governments and the UN.

Japan was basically devastated before Nagasaki and Hiroshima but then the United States destroyed everything including their local shops including the local shopkeepers. Ruining their economy and lowering the population in Japan by about 1 million. This devastated their economy, but Japan rebounded quickly, the Real Capita GDP rate rose at an average of 7.1% in the following year and followed a rapid growth era, the attack on Nagasaki and Hiroshima might possibly have helped the economy. The dropping of the bomb then made the longest era of peace in human history. But there is a downside to everything like some US troops were caught by the bomb and killed. The cancer rate rose dramatically over the following year and some newborn babies suffered from radiation diseases like non-malignant thyroid nodular disease, parathyroid adenoma, posterior subcapsular cataracts, and Tumors of the brain and central nervous system.

I think that Truman should have not dropped the bomb at that moment and just threatened Japan with it by dropping the bombs off the coast of Japan where there are no fishing places or oil rigs and showing Japan the enormity of the bomb and what they could do to Japan with a flip of switch. Although Japans economy thrived after the war, I personally do not think that it was worth all the death and destruction that came as a result of the bomb being dropped.

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