Herbert Feis’s book, The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II, offers an enlightening view of the entirety of the United States and Japan conflict. In doing so, he offers his unique perspective; he poses questions relevant to the topic and answers them in an intricate yet easy to understand way. Feis also does a phenomenal job of providing the reader with a myriad of sources, research, and perspectives from all sides of the conflict. Though the author’s outlook can be easily recognized as “American-centric”. This is shown specifically with the pronoun usage of we, us, and our, featured within the text when referring to the United States. This aspect plays into one of the weaknesses distributed by Feis throughout the book. He provides the …show more content…
His arguments on why dropping the bomb was “strategically the right thing to do” seem a bit lackluster when paired with the insufficient content related to the perspectives of the Japanese people. Throughout the book, Feis seems adamant that the decision to drop the bombs was a worthy one, a definite way to force Japan to surrender. He routinely brings up the pressure enforced by Japanese culture and how it influences their decision-making skills. He notes that Japanese culture is very proud and very stubborn. Even if the Japanese were losing as badly as they were, they would rather go down with their country than surrender. This put the United States and Japan in an awkward stalemate with no real solution, but to keep fighting. The use of the atomic bomb was justified in these regards, according to Feis. The atomic bomb would be the ultimate shock, such a shock that the Japanese would be forced to surrender, as Feis put it. This is a controversial standpoint to be taken by Feis, especially when the situation comes down to the morally ambiguous use of atomic