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Manhattan Project Facts

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On December 7, 1941 Japan attacked the Pearl Harbor Naval Base in Hawaii out of nowhere. The U.S. had no warning and suffered heavy casualties as a result. This event forced the U.S. to retaliate by joining the Allies during the Second World War. As the years went on and the fighting continued, around August, 1945, it was clear Japan was out of the picture and had lost. Although they did not want to admit defeat, Japan was going to do one of two things: surrender or fight to the last man. Unfortunately for them, they never surrendered. Japan chose to fight. Midway through July, President Harry Truman was told of the success of The Manhattan Project. The Manhattan Project was an atomic research program that began in 1941. The goal of the project …show more content…

After Truman was notified of its success, it was up to him to decide if the nuclear bomb would be used against Japan. The President wrote ,”It is an awful responsibility that has come to us.” and awful it was indeed. President Truman had four options when it came to ending the war: option one was to continue to conventionally bomb Japanese cities; two was to conduct a full-scale invasion of Japan; three was to demonstrate the bomb to Japan in an attempt to scare them into submission; or option four, which was to drop the bomb onto an inhabited city in Japan. As you can see, none of these options were necessarily easy to choose. All of them had consequences. Again, the first option was to continue conventional bombing of Japan’s cities. The U.S. had been bombing Japan since 1942. Between April of 1944 to August of 1945, an estimation of around 333,000 Japanese citizens were killed, and 473,000 more people were wounded. Truman provided his opinion on the matter: “Despite their heavy losses at Okinawa and the firebombing of Tokyo, the Japanese refused to surrender. The saturation bombing of Japan took much fiercer tolls and wrought far and away more havoc than the atomic bomb. Far and away. The firebombing of Tokyo …show more content…

It was the first time in all of history that something like that had happened. The second bomb was later dropped on Nagasaki on August 9. Around 80,000 people, including civilians, died from the initial blasts. Approximately 35,000 were injured, and after that year, 60,000 more died from the effects of nuclear fallout. On, August 14, 1945, Japan surrendered and the deadliest conflict to ever happen in human history had finally ended. Truman’s Opinion on His Decision President Truman never took responsibility from dropping the bombs, and he did not apologize for it either. After the second bomb was dropped, a Protestant clergyman by the name of Samuel McCrea Cavert asked the President to, “..stop the devastation against Japan’s people.” Truman’s reply was, “When you have to deal with a beast you have to treat him as a beast.” meaning Japan was too uncivilized and cruel in warfare, that he had to put an end to it. Truman was the only leader in history to drop not one bomb, but two, on an opposing country. Every President after Truman has had the same power to drop one, but not one of them has used that power since

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642 Words | 3 Pages

More people died during the bombings than they would have if America invaded Japan. In Hiroshima and Nagasaki almost two-hundred thousand people were injured or killed. There are still people suffering the effects of the atomic bombs today. Many people that lived near the impact sites and survived have been entered into a radiation study.

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As stated in document A, President Truman believed that it was his duty as president to use every weapon available to save American lives. By making the decision to employ atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it successfully brought an end to World War II. Now, while these bombs did ultimately spare thousands of American lives, it did also put an end to about 200,000 lives as shown in document E. Document A stated that Admiral William Leahy, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, opposed using the bomb because it killed civilians indiscriminately. He believed that an economic blockade and conventional bombing would convince Japan to surrender. As an opposite end of the spectrum though Truman’s advisor, James Byrnes thought that the use of “the A-bombs would not only cause Japan to surrender, but also impress the Soviet Union, and hopefully stop its expansion” (Doc C).

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On August 6, 1945, the U.S. made history with a fatal blow to the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended WWII. To this day there is a controversy on whether the dropping of the atomic bomb, ordered by President Harry S. Truman, was justified or not, but in fact, it was. Thousands of Japanese would perish, but this act would, in turn, saved American lives and end the war. Throughout various battles, the Japanese consistently crossed lines of ethics of warfare, and in an attempt to bring justice and an end to the war Truman put forth a plan to bomb Japan. President Truman warned Japan of the upcoming attack and gave demands, but in the end, the Japanese denied those negotiations which led to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

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"There was a very strong possibility that the Japanese government might choose to resist until the very end"(Doc B). The argument for dropping the atomic bomb is strong because Truman knew that the war was going to cost and last way more if he didn't just use the bombs to end the war with them. This shows that he had all the right to just stop this madness and end the war quickly, easily, and fast. He knew that Japan wasn't going to surrender most likey so he was sick of his troops dying for no

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World War II has been going on for 10 years and for the war to be over Japan or the Allied Powers would have to surrender. The United States and the Soviet Union were super powers with tension that stayed beneath the surface for the duration of the war. The two were in a race to invent and use the first atomic war head. After ten years of war the conditions of Japan were poor and not likely to withstand much more conflict. Yet on December 7, 1941 the Japanese bombed an American naval base in Hawaii.

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162 Words | 1 Pages

There is ample evidence to support the position that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary in the surrender of Japan. It is seen that President Harry S. Truman had three reasons to proceed with the bombing. First, he assumed that the bomb would bring an end to the war. Second, Truman believed that the bomb would keep the USSR out of Asia. Lastly, he thought that dropping the bombs would be a way to test America’s new technology and observe the effects footnote 1.

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Moreover, after the first bomb was dropped in Hiroshima, the Prime Minister, Kintaro Suzuki announced to the Japanese Cabinet that they had no choice but to surrender (Blum 2). However, they would not have time to do so since the second atomic bomb was dropped that same day in Nagasaki. This leads me to question Truman’s real motivation behind his decision. Why would you drop a bomb on a country that was on the brink of surrender? Even more questionable, why would you drop a second without giving adequate time for a

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So, Truman made the difficult but necessary decision to drop the first atomic bombs. The mass destruction caused the Japanese to realize that they had already lost the war, and they needed to give up. All in all, the action taken by President Harry S. Truman was the right decision because it ended the war and saved American soldiers’

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By dropping the atomic bomb it ended the war and saved Americans lives. In document J the estimated total casualty of Japanese people was estimated to be 199,000 people that is to the estimated 1 million American casualties if we kept fighting until the Japanese surrendered. Also, in document I it says “His (Truman’s) advisors had warned him to expect massive casualties if the United States invaded Japan.” Truman didn’t do it out of revenge he did it out of protection for American lives. In document A it says “It was their (committee of top men) recommendation that the bomb be used against the enemy as soon as it could be done.”

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Truman was the president of the United States at the time, so its obvious why he choose to drop the bomb. It would save more American lives this way. “It would have been morally wrong if we’d have had that weapon and did not use it and let a million more people die” (Doc L). If he didn’t drop it, about 400,000 to 800,000 American lives would have been lost (OI). If Japan couldn’t make war, there wouldn’t be war.

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Although Harry S. Truman said that the bombs saved the Japanese from thousands of casualties, it caused even more, and especially worse suffering. In Hiroshima, the death toll was between 80,000 to 120,000 people. The Nagasaki bomb killed 35,000 to 74,000. Even after the bombing there were more people dying from radiation, scarcity of food, and overall horrible living conditions. John Hall on Daily Mail showed pictures of the aftermath of the bombings, and corpses lying in rubble, other people barely surviving.

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In the short story “The Cask of Amontillado” Edgar Allan Poe uses many techniques to create and heighten the suspense of the story. In the article "Poe and the Gothic of the Normal: Thinking 'Inside the Box'" written by Elaine Hartnell-Mottram says, “this tale is told by an unhelpful first-person narrator, who is also the protagonist, to an addressee who is not directly involved in the action of the narrative and about whom we can deduce nothing with any certainty”. Nothing is certain in this short story. Poe uses many sources of irony and foreshadowing during the short story as well. As the story begins, there is suspense built up between the two main characters, Montresor and Fortunato.

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The Drop of Atomic Bombs “Purely Military” In the diary page of the president Harry S. Truman on July 25, 1945, he wrote that the atomic bombs were ordered as a “purely military” target, “I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children.” (Truman 1945). However, behind his decision of the drop of two atomic bombs had controversies: a race against Germany of the development of the atomic bomb, to destroy completely Japan’s power, and not only to avoid death of thousands American soldiers but also, revenge of Japan’s attack in the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor. First, the Manhattan Project was the scientific top-secret project that a team of scientists and some of the world’s best-known physicists such as Enrico Fermi, Robert

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863 Words | 4 Pages

However, the Japanese were committed to fight to the bitter end of the war and see it all the way through, regardless of the fact that the United States demanded unconditional surrender from the small country of islands. This further emphasizes that since the Japanese were not simply going to give up, Truman came to the conclusion that in order to save millions of lives, he had to take thousands. President Truman decided to drop the atomic bomb on Japan to warn the world about the new found power of the United States, force an unconditional surrender of the Japanese, and save millions of lives. With the controversy over whether or not Truman should have dropped the bomb, some consider the decision irrational and unnecessary.

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President Truman and his associates believed that if they dropped the bomb they would receive surrender from Japan. Thus, saving millions of American lives, and ending the war. Nevertheless, by saving American lives they would sacrifice thousands of Japanese civilians. They had other idea to have Japan to surrender, but were willing to take the one that would have the most consequences. They were thinking too much about the US instead of creating actually peace within the nations.

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