Effects Of The WWII Atomic Bombs

Want to read the rest of this paper? Join Essayworld today to view this entire essay and over 50,000 other term papers

devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door." The decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japanese citizens in August, 1945, as a means to bring the long Pacific war to an end was justified-militarily, politically and morally.
The goal of waging war is victory with minimum losses on one's own side and, if possible, on the enemy's side. No one disputes the fact that the Japanese military was prepared to fight to the last man to defend the home islands, and indeed had already demonstrated this determination in previous Pacific island campaigns. A weapon originally developed to contain a Nazi atomic project was available that would spare Americans hundreds of thousands of causalities in an invasion of Japan, and-not incidentally-save several times more than that among Japanese soldiers and civilians. The thousands who have died in the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were far less than would have died in an allied invasion, and ...

Get instant access to over 50,000 essays. Write better papers. Get better grades. Already a member? Login

but were compelled to "do something" to roll back the Japanese militarists. Victims of aggression have every right both to end the aggression and to prevent the perpetrator of it from continuing or renewing it. Our natural right of self defense as well as our moral duty to defeat tyranny justified our decision to wage the war and, ultimately, to drop the atomic bomb. We should expect political leaders to be guided by moral principles but this does not mean they must subject millions of people to needless injury or death out of a misplaced concern for the safety of enemy soldiers or civilians.

President Truman's decision to deploy atomic power in Japan revealed a ...

Succeed in your coursework without stepping into a library. Get access to a growing library of notes, book reports, and research papers in 2 minutes or less.

CITE THIS PAGE: