Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The Terrible Truth behind a Shocking Decision - Research Paper Example

Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The Terrible Truth behind a Shocking Decision Table of Content Table of Content 1 Abstract & Overview 2 Introduction 3 The Bombs 6 The Targets 8 August 6th, 1945, and Beyond 12 Conclusion 13 Table of Contents 1 Abstract & Overview 2 Introduction 3 The Bombs 5 The Targets 8 August 6th, 1945, and Beyond 10 Conclusion 12 Outline 14 Works Cited 17 Abstract & Overview The following analysis will seek to engage the reader with an overall understanding with regards to a historical interpretation of the decisions that led to the United States dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagaski in 1945. Though this is a topic that has generated a wide level of scientific and sociological discourse, it must be noted that a great level of disagreement continues to exist with regards to the ultimate purpose of utilizing the atomic bomb on the Empire of Japan as compared to a more conventional style of warfare that had previously defined the way in which the United States had engaged in combat within the Second World War. Furthermore, the analysis will seek to question whether or not the official understanding of why the atomic bomb was used in the final days of the Second World War is realistic or whether the use of atomic weaponry was motivated by other more complex realities of that time. Introduction “On August 6, 1945, I was a 13-year-old grade 8 student at Hiroshima Jogakuin and a member of The Student Mobilization Program. I was one of a group of 30 students assigned to help at the army headquarters … At 8:15 a.m., I saw a bluish-white flash like a magnesium flare outside the window. I remember the sensation of floating in the air. As I regained consciousness in the total silence and darkness, I realized I was pinned in the ruins of the collapsed building. I could not move. I knew I was faced with death. Strangely the feeling I had was not panic but serenity. Gradually I began to hear my classmates’ faint cries for help, “Mother, help me!”, “God, help me!” … By the time I got out, the ruins were on fire. This meant that most of my classmates who were with me in the same room were burned alive. A soldier ordered me and a few surviving girls to escape to the nearby hills … Streams of stunned people were slowly shuffling from the city centre toward nearby hills. They were naked or tattered, burned, blackened and swollen. Eyes were swollen shut and some had eyeballs hanging out of their sockets. They were bleeding, ghostly figures like a slow-motion image from an old silent movie. Many held their hands above the level of their hearts to lessen the throbbing pain of their burns. Strips of skin and flesh hung like ribbons from their bones. Often these ghostly figures would collapse in heaps never to rise again. With a few surviving classmates I joined the procession carefully stepping over the dead and dying” (Thurlow). In a day – a minute, a flash – a whole city full of innocent civilians was incinerated into near oblivion. The preceding quote was but one account of a young girl named Setsuko from the city of Hiroshima who lived through the horror of the bombing that ultimately brought the Empire of Japan to its knees after nearly 45 years of continuous war and conquest. Her beloved city of 360,000 people was reduced to nothing but heaps of burned-down buildings, ashes, charred skeletons and bodies of the dead and dying. Although she survived, many others her age were not so fortunate. That day, around 7,000 to 8,000 high school students of grades 7-8 were mobilized to help clear the city’s fire lanes. These children were all busily working in the city center at the moment the bomb was dropped. In the instant of that million-degree-centigrade explosion, almost all of them were incinerated and vaporized without a trace. Most of the rest of the students died within a few days, leaving Setsuko’s age group almost completely wiped out within the city (Thurlow). In the United States, the dropping of the nuclear bombs has long been looked upon as a glorious victory. We are taught that it helped cut the war short, saving hundreds of thousands of American and Japanese lives, and finally ridding the East of the terrors of Japanese imperialism. However, although this may well be true, the fact of the matter is that there are several alternative explanations for why the United States was keen to utilize the newly developed and recently tested atomic weapon upon the Empire of Japan. Accordingly, this analysis will seek to integrate with several alternative explanations for why the United States used nuclear force as a means of bringing the Second World War to a conclusion. Ultimately, none of these rationale which will be discussed are quite so noble minded as the explanation which is been reiterated hundreds and thousands of times within the textbooks of American history. Nonetheless, these alternative explanations should be considered and weighed with respect to what degree they served as an impetus and rationale for the destruction that was affected on Japan to a greater and more widespread scale than had ever before been evidenced on the face of the earth. Ultimately, it is the understanding of this author that the use of atomic weapons upon the Empire of Japan hoped to affect three specific goals. The first of these is with regards to making a statement the rest of the world regards to the power the United States now had. The second is with regards to seeking to dominate the Asian theater by reducing the likelihood Soviet Union would enter the war and divide Japan the same way Germany had been divided in the months previously (Yass 9). Finally, with nothing more than a gruesome understanding of human experimentation, the utilization of the atomic bombs can be understood from the perspective of those within the United States military and scientific structure that sought to understand and experiment with regards to what these weapons were ultimately capable of doing. Likewise, in order to better understand the specific topic, the following analysis will briefly engage the reader with a discussion of the bombs themselves, the selection of the targets, and the impacts of both 1945 and beyond that this choice had. The Bombs Begun in the year 1939, a multi-nation research and development program, inclusive of the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, was dubbed the Manhattan project. Ultimately employing 130,000 individuals costing estimated US$2 billion (27 billion USD by today’s standards), it was one of the largest research and development projects ever before conducted by the United States (McEachin 1). Accordingly, the size and scope of such a massive project made it difficult to keep secret; however, for the most part, with the exception of spying by the Soviet Union and the eventual thefts of many sensitive processes by which fissile material was created, the project was a resounding success. As the project progressed, it eventually necessitated that it move from its headquarters in New York and relocate in the deserts near Los Alamos. Whereas only two bombs were dropped on the Empire of Japan in late 1945, three specific designs were entertained and ultimately built within the Manhattan project. These three types include the following: a plutonium implosion type, a uranium gun type, and a uranium gun type bomb. Believing that the plutonium implosion type and plutonium gun type with the most practical to utilize, the Manhattan project originally began to focus upon these. However, as time went on, it came to be clear that the plutonium gun type bomb, codenamed “Thin Man”, was ultimately infeasible. Accordingly, a new level of focus was given to the uranium gun type bomb. In this way, both types of nuclear devices were brought to production and fruition. Neither of these bombs underwent a thorough level of testing; however, the developers underscored the fact that further testing was necessary and required. Although a test of the so-called “Fat Man” bomb was affected in the deserts in early 1945, no such tests of “Little Boy” were conducted due to the expectation that its relative simplicity ensured effective detonation (McEachin 3). With respect to the atomic bombs that were ultimately dropped, there were two. The first two of these was codenamed “Little Boy” and was dropped on August 6 of 1945 by the Enola Gay – a B-29 bomber. Likewise, the second was known as “Fat Man”. Unlike “Fat Man”, “Little Boy” was relatively of a simple construction and prototypes were never tested prior to its deployment on August 6 onto the city of Hiroshima. It is estimated by scholars that “Little Boy” detonated with a combined force of around 16 kilo tons of TNT. Scholars put the total death toll that “Little Boy” incurred somewhere between 90,000 to 150,000 individuals. Comparatively, the much larger and more complex “Fat Man” was deployed three days later and is estimated to have caused approximately 65,000 casualties and detonated with the force of 65 kilo tons of TNT over the city of Nagasaki. Although “Fat Man” was a much more complex weapon and greatly more powerful than that of “Little Boy”, it nonetheless generated fewer overall casualties than the first atomic bomb. This was mainly due to the fact that a high level of cloud cover obscured the intended target and most certainly spared several tens of thousands of lives that would have been lost had the bomb landed closer to its intended target. As it was, both weapons detonated at altitudes between 1,500 to 2,000 feet. This was done on purpose as a means of maximizing the blast radius and affecting the greatest number of overall casualties and damage within the intended targets. Although many Americans might wish to surmise that the Manhattan project was a result of strictly American ingenuity and scientific achievement, the fact of the matter was that a number of multinational contributions facilitated the process (Morton 12). Moreover, allied interception of German communication and technology during the beginning years of the Second World War helped to inform the Manhattan project with the level of specific scientific research that Nazi Germany had been conducting with regards to atomic weapons. The Targets Although the technical specifications and overall level of destruction that these weapons were able to generate is profound, a more important question exists with regards to how these two targets were ultimately selected. As has been discussed in the introduction, the reasons for dropping the atomic bomb have multiple explanations. However, through seeking to understand these specific explanations, the reader can come to a more informed understanding of why Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen. As was illustrated within the introduction, the first rationale for utilizing the atomic bomb was with regards to making a statement to the rest of the world with regards to power in the United States could now exert. The second was of course with regards to reducing the likelihood that the Soviet Union would enter the war and divide the same way that Germany had previously been divided. Thirdly, the rationale for utilizing these cities as an experimentation point is the final determinants all stop With respect to the first and third of these determinants, the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen due to the fact that these cities have sustained little damage during the prior years of firebombing that had defined the existence of life within the Japanese home islands. Whereas Tokyo had frequently been the target of extensive American firebombing campaigns, neither Hiroshima nor Nagasaki had experienced much if any aerial bombardment. As a function of this, these two cities provided something of a pristine environment upon which the United States could test these weapons as well is illustrate to the world the new power that the United States could bring to bear. More specifically, the United States wished to select a region/city that would allow them to fully analyze the before and after effects of the usage of the atomic bomb. In such a way, it was necessary to choose a rather pristine environment that had not previously been firebombed as a means of sending a very clear signal to the rest of the world with regards to the absolute and complete annihilation that the United States was now able to bring to bear (Mathews 7). Similarly, although this message was broadly intended with regards to illustrating to the world the power of the United States, it was specifically utilized with regards to forming a very clear and understandable message to the Soviet Union. As the war in Europe wound to a close but a scant four months prior to the usage of the atomic bomb in Japan, the allies, as well as the United States, working the aware of the fact that the world had suddenly been differentiated into a bipolar situation. True, the Empire of Japan remained a threat; however, with the decline and collapse of Nazi Germany, it was clear that it was only a matter of time until the Eastern conflict was also concluded. What this ultimately portended was a situation in which two of the most industrialized and military powerful nations would be left standing; the United States and the Soviet Union. Furthermore, due to the realities of the way in which the war in Europe was fought, Germany was ultimately partitioned between East and West (Malloy 43). What this affected was a situation in which the Soviet Union claimed dominance and control over a large percentage of Germany whereas the allies, to include the United States, exerted influence and control over the Western portion of Germany. With the conclusion of the European campaign, all of the Soviet Union’s available manpower in resources could of course be directed towards the eastern conflict. Although Roosevelt, and later Truman, implored Joseph Stalin to enter the war in support of the United States, such an action became far less attractive to the United States upon the defeat of Germany. Ultimately, the United States was in something of a race against time to defeat Japan utterly and entirely without the participation and partition that the Soviet Union would necessarily bring. Accordingly, it comes as little surprise that the United States was so feverishly anxious to utilize the atomic weapon as a means of bringing the conflict to a rapid conclusion (Morton 17). It should herein be noted that the desire to bring the war in Asia the close was not based upon the overall number of Japanese or American life would be saved in the event of a mainland invasion; rather, it was predicated on the understanding that Soviet involvement with infinitely complicate the means by which the United States would be able to express a degree of control within Asia. In such a way, the reader can and should understand that the United States was ultimately interested in not only proving the power and might that their military possessed, they were also attempting to send a very clear and pronounced signal to the Soviet Union with regards to the new power that existed upon their eastern border. August 6th, 1945, and Beyond The price of devastation that these weapons effected was nothing short of surreal. Even a crew member of the Enola Gay, the plane that was responsible for carrying and dropping the first atomic weapon on Hiroshima noted: “My God, what have we done?” (Yass 15). Of course it is simple to review the situation in retrospect and assume that each and every member of the military was fully aware of the destruction that they were raining down upon the inhabitants of the cities. However, the fact of the matter is that many of these stakeholders were horrified with the instant an unimaginable carnage that such a new weapon ultimately affected. As planned, the United States military created a series of photos, surveys, observational reports, and even interviews which within filed under top-secret and unavailable to the general public for a number of years. This of course helps the reader to understand the level to which the military was intent upon gaining a degree of inference with regards to this new super weapon that they had created and utilized. Only a few days after the dropping of these atomic weapons, the Empire of Japan did the previously unimaginable and surrendered. Accordingly, this action of surrender has long been viewed by individuals within historical research as well as societal shareholders as proof positive that the decision to drop the atomic bomb was indeed the correct choice. Accordingly, between the days after the drop of the atomic weapon and the surrender of the Japanese Empire, the Soviet Union nonetheless entered the fray and seized the Kiril Islands; also known as the Sakhalins (Malloy 28). This response by the Soviet Union was most certainly unpredicted by the United States and worked to undermine the extent and level to which utilization of atomic weaponry would serve as a deterrent for the Soviet Union with regards to operating within the Eastern front. Naturally, one cannot discuss the means by which the atomic weapons were used against Japanese Empire without noting the very clear and present understanding that within the 60+ years since atomic weapons were introduced, the only nation to have used them in an aggressive posture has been the United States. Furthermore, although the utilization of atomic weapons were horrifying beyond all imagination and belief, it should not be lost upon the reader that the extensive fire-bombing campaigns that had been ongoing over the major cities of Japan for a period of nearly a year at that point were equally if not more disastrous with regards to overall level of casualties and destruction and carnage as well as horror that they affected (Yagimi 301). Conclusion Ultimately, two atomic bombs were dropped on civilian targets within the Empire of Japan with the main intent to test the differences and effectiveness of these weapons. Although there are many costly mistakes made in history, the loss of nearly 200,000 Japanese civilians does not justify, nor will it ever justify, the level of experimentation which was performed by the United States in the summer of 1945 (Yagimi 4). Beyond the 200,000 individuals that were killed within these cities upon the impacts of these respective weapons, untold thousands suffered the aftereffects of these bombs for several decades. Vastly increased rates of cancer, birth abnormalities, and a litany of other health defects have plagued Japanese society for many years after the destruction in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Regardless of the point which the United States military was trying to prove, the stance that they wanted to take with regards to the Soviet Union, or the intrigue and interests that existed within the scientific and military communities with regards to how these weapons would behave in a populated center, there is ultimately no excuse for the way in which these weapons were used. Moreover, the utilization of atomic weapons during a time of war opened Pandora’s box and has given us a global situation in which upwards of eight global powers are assumed to be in control of nuclear weapons. This has greatly enhanced the risk of cataclysmic conflict and destabilized the world for nearly 60 years since the fateful day in which these weapons were dropped. Furthermore, as a function of analyzing the evidence that is thus far been presented and discussed, the reader can and should realize that only a further understanding and appreciation for the way in which these weapons were used as well as the illogical and arrogant manner in which they were used can only be prevented by a further level of education to prevent similar inhumane disasters in the future (Mathews 29). Beyond the simple scope of horrific destruction that was effected onto the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this solitary action proved to the world that the United States was willing to go any lengths and devalue human lives as a function of winning whatever struggle they may find themselves in. Whereas the use of an atomic weapon may have been morally understandable in a situation in which the very future of a nation is at stake, but the time that this weapon was used, it was painfully obvious to all individuals involved in the conflict, as well as onlookers the world over, that the final days of the Japanese Empire were fast approaching; as such, the use of the atomic bomb upon civilian targets begs the question of ethics beyond merely the tens of thousands of deaths that it immediately affected. Outline Thesis: The public was lead to believe that dropping the nuclear bombs on Japan was a necessary evil in order to stop the war and save thousands of lives, but was that really the main motivation? POV: 3rd Person Audience: The general public, especially those interested in politics and foreign relations Voice: Approach of a narrator seeking to convince that the dropping of the nuclear bombs had the unethical motives of experimentation and “making a point” Section 1: Introduction The first atomic bombs are created The lives of average civilians in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are turned upside down, with long-lasting aftereffects Section 2: The A-Bombs The Manhattan Project was established and moved to the dessert for safety reasons Three kinds of bombs were being developed, a plutonium implosion type code-named “Fat Man,” a plutonium gun type code-named “Thin Man” and a uranium gun type code-named “Little Boy” Originally the project focused on developing the “Fat Man” and “Thin Man” bombs After realizing the infeasibility of the “Thin Man” plutonium gun bomb, attention was redirected to the development of the “Little Boy” uranium gun bomb Original plans were to use the bombs on Germany, but Germany surrendered before bombs were created Bombs underwent minimal testing for aerodynamics and detonation, but necessity for further testing was apparent The “Fat Man” bomb was much more complex, while “Little Boy” bomb was considered sure to work Bombs quickly shipped to and assembled at the airbase on Tinian Island of the Mariana Islands Why were the bombs in such a rush? To avoid loss of more lives or for other reasons? And why were two bombs dropped; would just one really not be enough? Section 3: Hiroshima and Nagasaki Brief overview of the geography and demographics of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: the bombs’ official targets The Manhattan Project was very secretive, and the executive government was kept in the shadows regarding the details of its findings In parallel, many studies on the effects of radiation were led, but the executive government was not aware of the devastating results After supposedly evaluating all possible choices in defeating Japan, the military proposed to drop the atomic bombs on Japan Truman received a vague bombing order calling to drop the atomic bombs on some of the cities in a list of proposed targets Scientists and surveyors were stationed in Japan ahead of time to be ready to evaluate the damage and effects of the two very different bombs The bombs were finally dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki after many other cities being ruled out due to weather and visibility conditions; the cities were completely annihilated (as apparent on the photographs) Section 4: August 6th, 1945 and Beyond After the bombs were dropped, empty space was left in their midst, with fires burning all over The crew of the bomber planes was not really aware of the destruction these bombs would bring, and the pilot of the Enola Gay, Robert Lewis, was famously quoted to say, “My God, what have we done?” Photos, surveys, and observational reports were created after the explosions, however they were made top-secret and unavailable to the general public for many years Russia finally entered the war only to see Japan already surrendering due to the bombings Conclusion Two bombs of very different design were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ultimately to test the differences in effectiveness of the two Hundreds of thousands of innocent lives were spent, with many more left effected by the long-term aftereffects of the bombs, all for the US military to prove a point to the world, especially Germany and Russia, as well as to have a field test of their amazing new weapon People must be educated to prevent similar inhumane disasters in the future Works Cited MacEachin, Douglas. "The Final Months of the War with Japan: Signals Intelligence, U.S. Invasion Planning, and the A-Bomb Decision." Central Intelligence Agency. CIA, n.d. Web. 20 Mar. 2013. Malloy, Sean Langdon. Atomic Tragedy : Henry L. Stimson and the Decision to Use the Bomb against Japan. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2008. Print. Mathews, G. "Nuclear Warfare: Lecture 7." University of Notre Dame. U of Notre Dame, n.d. Web. 20 Mar. 2013. Morton, Louis. The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb. Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1971. US Department of Defence. Web. 20 Mar. 2013. Thurlow, Setsko. Japan's longest day. Tokyo New York: Kodansha International, 2002. Print. Yagami, Kazuo. "Bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Gar Alperovitz and His Critics." Southeast Review of Asian Studies 31 (2009): 301. Academic OneFile. Web. 20 Mar. 2013. Yass, Marion. Hiroshima. New York: Putnam, 1972. Print. Read More