Was The Atomic Bomb Justified Dbq Research Paper

The atomic bomb is a weapon of mass destruction that was tested successfully on July 16, 1945. Nuclear weapons caused many doors to be opened in the weaponry industry that could cause many international incidents or even a nuclear war. On August 6th and 9th of 1945, the 33rd president, Harry Truman, ordered two atomic bombs to be dropped on Japan as an effort to weaken the country to lead to its surrender, and the operation was successful. While the attack led to the Allied powers winning the war, debates started popping up all over the country and even the world questioning if the atomic bombing was necessary. Based on my interpretation of the evidence provided to me, I believe that the use of the atomic bomb was not justified because of the

First, in an excerpt from Protection of Civilian Populations Against Bombing from the Air in Case of War, the League of Nations stated that all intentional bombings on civilians are illegal. “Recognizes the following principles as a necessary basis for any subsequent regulations: 1. The intentional bombing of civilian populations is illegal;” (Document 1) The League of Nations clearly stated that civilian bombings that are intentional are illegal and the United States broke that rule and still got away with a war crime. The quote alone made President Truman’s decision to bomb Japan wrong and unjustifiable because he committed two war crimes within a couple of days. Moving onto the next quote, the League of Nations made another mention of how the military base was the intended target of the bombing but was also near a civilian neighborhood that ultimately suffered the same destruction as the military base the military intended to hit. “Any attack on legitimate military objectives must be carried out in such a way that civilian populations in the neighborhood are not bombed through negligence;” (Document 1) The League of Nations declared that any bombing that appeared to endanger civilians or other non-military targets beyond the intended military base was illegal. The quote proved that accident or

In 1963, President Truman wrote a letter to Irv Kupcinet explaining his reasoning behind dropping the atomic bombs. “...Altogether, there were between 3,000 and 6,000 youngsters killed at that time without any declaration of war. It was plain murder” (Document 6). Truman states how some people in a military base were killed before war as an intimidation factor to make the United States set into a panic. The quote stated above does not justify his decision to drop the atomic bomb because the nuclear weapon had much more power and force than the smaller bombs dropped on Pearl Harbor. Moving on, conditions were tougher to survive in Hiroshima and Nagasaki than in any other bomb strike in history. Eyewitnesses from the novel Hiroshima recalled the deadly and scary sight and described the horrible conditions. “They looked like so many codfish spread out for drying. What a pitiful sight it was to see them lying there in the hot sun. Even I could tell they were all going to die.” (Document 5) The author describes the wasteland and the victims as “codfish” because they look like dead fish moving around about to suffer a terrible fate. The quote proves my point that the president's decision to call in an atomic bomb was not justified because the number of people who died in other bombings in the United States does not