At the end of World War II, America proposed the Potsdam Ultimatum to Japan. It was a choice of unconditional surrender or ultimate destruction, but Japan did not accept it. In August of 1942, the United States government began a top secret project called the “Manhattan Project,” designed to create a super weapon like none ever seen before. The bombs produced by this project were originally for use against Germany.. Just 3 years later, America used the two atomic bombs they created to fulfill their promise of destruction in Japan, dropping the devastating bombs in August of 1945. This was the wrong decision. America should not have dropped the atomic bomb. Firstly, the use of the atomic bombs caused trauma and suffering to millions of people around Japan. When America dropped the Hiroshima bomb, 13 year old Yoshitaka Kawamoto was in his classroom, when suddenly he was …show more content…
However, this simply isn’t true. Japan would have surrendered much earlier if we offered them a conditional surrender. America has been regularly fire bombing around Japan to island-hopping and slowly taking away their territory. A U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey from 1956 says that, “Japan was near surrender before the atomic attacks.” This tells us that the dropping of the atomic bomb was not necessary. Thousands of lives could have been spared if President Truman thought about his decision a bit more. Moreover, military historian Hanson W. Baldwin writes, “It wasn’t the use of A-Bombs that got the Japanese to surrender, but rather the US offer of a conditional surrender.” Japan concurred with America’s conditional surrender due to the promise of keeping their emperor. All the atomic bombs did was create destruction, not aid in the effort to get a surrender from Japan. Japan would have surrendered without the use of the atomic bombs if America had just offered a conditional surrender earlier in the