The Pros And Cons Of The Atomic Bomb

Atomic Bomb: Was it morally and mathematically justifiable?

September 1, 1939, was the start of a tragedy to come. Adolf Hitler, the dictator of Germany, invaded their neighbor, Poland; it led Great Britain and France to declare war on Germany. Hitler had plans to consolidate Europe and eventually world domination. In 1941, Japan attacked US Navy Port, Pearl Harbor, that ultimately made the United States enter the war. The main protagonist in the war was the “Axis Powers”— Germany, Italy, and Japan — against “the Allies”— Great Britain, Soviet Union, and the United States. The intervention of the United States ultimately turned the tides of the war in Europe and helped the allies defeat the Germans and Italians. While in the Pacific, the United

The scientists sent the key material for the nuclear weapon to Los Alamos, New Mexico where a team, led by J. Robert Oppenheimer, worked to turn it into a workable atomic bomb. It was soon discovered that an insider, Klaus Fuchs, in fact, turned out to be a soviet spy. The first bomb dropped used uranium and it was dubbed “little boy” for its relatively small size compared to the plutonium type bomb dubbed “fat man” for its big round shape. The first bomb was dropped on August 6, 1945, on Hiroshima, Japan. The second bomb was dropped on August 9, 1945, on Nagasaki, Japan. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen because they were pivotal to the Japanese military machine at the time. They were also chosen because they were cities that were in range for the B-29’s to reach with the heavy bombs they were

That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians. But that attack is only a warning of things to come. If Japan does not surrender, bombs will have to be dropped on her war industries and, unfortunately, thousands of civilian lives will be lost. I urge Japanese civilians to leave industrial cities immediately, and save themselves from destruction.

The bomb not only had short term consequences with death and destruction of thousands of people but long term consequences for the survivors. Dr. Masao Tomonaga, an atomic bomb survivor, sat down with Vincent Bernard in an interview speaking about his experience with the second atomic bomb. Vincent Bernard asked, “As a doctor and a scientist, you specialized in the effects of radiation. What are some important findings on the health consequences of the atomic bomb?” To which Mr. Tomonaga replied:

Research shows that “short-distance survivors” – those who were located within 1.5 km of the hypocenter of the blast – have an average rate of leukemia about fifty times higher than the average rate of leukemia occurrences among distant survivors. This was the first finding of an atomic bomb radiation-induced disease,