Atomic Bomb Dbq Essay

The atomic bomb dropping was the last resort for the Americans during the brutal pacific front warfare. Fighting the war on the pacific homefront was different than in Europe because the terrain was different, the weather was vastly different, and the jungles were booby-trapped. The Americans tried the strategy of island hopping, the goal was to take over the islands one by one, and work closer to the mainland. They also wanted to establish bases on those islands and be closer to the enemy. The Japanese had the bushido mentality; death before dishonor. This means that the Japanese would refuse to surrender, they would rather die than surrender and dishonor their families. They were difficult to defeat because they would never surrender, so

If the United States never dropped the atomic bomb then soldiers would have had to invade Japan which would result in a large number of casualties. “I have been convinced that we saved more lives than we took. It would have been morally wrong if we’d have had that weapon and not used it and let a million more people die”(Source 8). Due to the Japanese bushido mentality, they were never going to surrender, and they would fight until the last man was standing. “The Japanese had demonstrated near-fanatical resistance, fighting to almost the last man on Pacific islands, committing mass suicide on Saipan, and unleashing kamikaze attacks at Okinawa”(Source 11). After the atomic bomb was dropped and Japanese soldiers got the order to surrender, they started killing themselves because they did not want to surrender because of their bushido ideology. “ The notion that the atomic bombs caused the Japanese surrender on Aug. 15, 1945, has been, for many Americans and virtually all U.S. history textbooks, the default understanding of how and why the war ended”(Source 9). The atomic bomb convinced Japan to end the war, the bomb was catastrophic to Japan and immense damage was dealt in Hiroshima and

It is understandable as to why people believe that dropping the atomic bombs was inhuman, however, the pro’s outweighed the cons of dropping the bomb. The Manhattan project was the trials and tests that the US government was doing to try and create an atomic bomb. Without Truman’s intelligence strategy and his brilliant scientists led by Julius Oppenheimer, the bomb America would have not been able to end the war. Japanese soldiers were not going to surrender, and they would fight until the last man standing. The atomic bomb dropping was the nail in the coffin for the Americans during World War II in the Pacific. Overall, the gruesome war in the Pacific was ended by a tragic event that ultimately saved millions of lives by sacrificing a small portion. If the United States decided to not try and create the atomic bombs, how could that have affected America’s