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The Pros And Cons Of The Bombing Of Hiroshima

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Imagine the sudden loss of 70,000 lives: 70,000 futures obliterated, 70,000 bodies decimated, and 70,000 families grieving. That was the impact of the bombing of Hiroshima. Similar results happened at Nagasaki. The decision of whether or not the United States should have dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been heavily debated for decades. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima was not a military necessity because there were other options, it was ethically wrong, and the United States was already winning.
First, the United States had various other options that would result in fewer total deaths. In fact, the president of the United States at the time, Harry Truman, had thought of many other solutions (Doc. 1). They could invade …show more content…

They were so desperate that they were sending kamikaze to U.S. ships in the Pacific (Doc. C). This action showed America just how desperate the Japanese truly were, meaning that they were already winning the war (Doc. C). According to the Air Force Strategy Bombing Survey, “certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945 (well before the date of the [proposed] invasion) Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped” (Doc. K). This means that the Survey agreed that the war would have ended even without the bombing. Furthermore, Dwight Eisenhower stated, “I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act.... first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and second because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face' (Beck). In simple terms, he concluded that Japan would have surrendered without the destructive bomb and that the bomb was not mandatory to end the

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