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Discuss Truman's Decision To Bomb Japan Twice

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Describe and discuss Truman’s decision to bomb Japan twice. Was it the right decision? The hot debate over the atomic bombings against Japan during World War II has been continued for a long period of time (Wilson). Yet, we are gradually adding more and more details to the full story of World War II. To give a brief description of what had happened in the year of 1945, the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th, and because the Japanese gave no response, the second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9th (Duiker, 141). Between the two bombs on August 8th, the Soviet Union entered in war against Japan (Weber). World War II was finally over when Japan surrendered unconditionally on August 14th (Duiker, 141). Although the two bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki forced an immediate termination of World War II, they were …show more content…

Instead, Truman decided to test two different types of atomic bombs, damaging beyond comparison with all weapons of the past, on humans that lived in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Cho). One of the survivors of the atomic bomb dropped in Hiroshima, Akihiro Takahashi, said “I’d like to ask why the U.S. dropped two different kinds of bombs, uranium type and plutonium type, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Why make two kinds? That was an American strategy to keep superiority over the Soviet Union after the war, because Americans knew that Japan would surrender soon anyway, so they wanted to experiment to see which type of bomb would be more effective. I think that’s evident, in that Truman told Churchill about the bomb but not Stalin” (The New York Times). As a result of dropping the atomic bombs, the innocent Japanese civilians were dehumanized, and the two cities were entirely destroyed. Since the bombing was a civilian death and not a military death, it cannot be

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(Doc B). However, In document G demonstrates in imagery detail how brutal the effect of the atomic bomb was on a survivor and what he had gone through, he had seen. Akihiro Takashi was only fourteen years old waiting to go to school till everything went blank from seeing himself, skin peeling to seeing a woman's eye sticking out. This was a child that had nothing to do with anything happening worldwide and Truman should have known that not only would they be killing and traumatizing the opponents but killing innocent

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