On August 6, 1945, the whole world realized the force of power the U.S. released on
Japan. This strategy was a completely new kind of warfare. This was the biggest devastation that anyone has experienced. The U.S. was right in bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki because it ultimately ended the war.
Many believe that the Japanese were ready to surrender. However, the Japanese were defending their territories with a fervor that Americans had seldom encountered. In fact,
“Soldiers were taught that surrender was worse than death,” yet this belief was new to
Americans; it was the way the Japanese lived (Connor 535). “Out of the five thousand Japanese force at Tarawa, only 17 remained alive when the island was taken over,” which is a great
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Furthermore, the Japanese were willing to die rather than surrender. As
John Connor says, “The willingness of the Japanese to die was more than the empty bravado”
(535). The Japanese would rather die in a battle than survive; therefore, they were training young boys ages 14 or 15 to meet the Americans with a little more than sharpened bamboo sticks
(536).
Of course, some believe that the United States could have ultimately ended the war without using the atomic bomb (Alperovitz 537). For one thing, the United States tried to elude to the idea that we had such a power that was never used before in conversation at Potsdam
(Conner 535). In addition, the United States had tested the bomb in the dessert in New Mexico
(“United States Conducts First Test of the Atomic Bomb"). Building the prototype for testing brought together scientists from United States, Great Britain, and Canada, so this prototype may not have been as much of a secret as the U.S. would have wanted it to be (“United States
Conducts First Test of the Atomic Bomb"). In any event, on July 16, 1945, the first atomic bomb was ready to be tested.
Indeed, some people believed that Truman had other options; however, he did not