Atomic Bomb Dbq Essay

World War II seemed close to an end in May of 1945 and Japan was not down yet, and still fighting. America faced a hard decision: how to send the war against Japan as quickly as possible and with the least casualties possible. Since 1939, America had been working on the Manhattan Project, a project aiming to create nuclear bombs. A single bomb could destroy an entire city and America yielded that power against Japan. Using incendiary bombs, 67 entire sections of Japanese cities were burnt out. The United States discovered that the Japanese approached the Soviet Union to negotiate surrender but despite this, on August 6th, 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, killing 66,000 people instantly, and over 200,000 overall. On the 9th a second

Document G tells the story of Akihiro, a survivor of the bomb. Akihiro passed away in 2011 and suffered permanent injuries from the bombing and permanent trauma. He describes the bomb and his experience as such, “I was actually blown about 10 meters…Everything collapsed for as far as I could see. I felt the city of Hiroshima had disappeared all of a sudden. Then I looked at myself and found my clothes had turned to rags due to the heat….My skin was peeling and hanging…I saw a man whose skin was completely peeled off the upper half of his body and a woman whose eyeballs were sticking out…The heat was tremendous. And I felt like my body was burning all over.” Takahashi tells the tragedy and devastation that the bombs caused, describing the complete indiscrimination they had that was previously stated in the Franck Report. The atomic bomb killed and devastated many innocent people in an attempt to end the war. Document G is a first hand source, giving a true insight into the complete wreckage and carnage the bombs caused. Document B argues that this was the only way to end the war because it was very hard to go against the suicide bombers and flyers in Japan but the bombs only caused more fatalities and destruction to the innocent lives of people across Japan, not leaving any person out of the utter desolation they

The background essay states that, “there was reason to believe that the war could be won without either the atomic bomb or a land invasion. This was because an allied naval blockade had already put a stranglehold on Japan. The Japanese people were facing the prospect of slow starvation.” The US military and government “understood that such an invasion might cost hundreds of thousands of lives,” yet they still chose to go through with the bombing. Anteceding this, the US had “cracked Japan’s diplomatic code and learned that the Japanese had approached the Soviet Union to help negotiate surrender.” The United States knew that Japan was suffering and nearing its end in the war. In a conference in Potsdam, Truman and Germany demanded that Japan agree to an unconditional surrender but no negotiations were made. After the bombings on the 6th and 9th of August and the Soviets engaging in war with Japan on the 9th, they surrendered unconditionally. Despite having previous knowledge that Japan was looking to negotiate surrender, Truman still authorized the bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, costing hundreds of thousands of innocent lives. Document C, a study conducted by the Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, aimed to understand the effect of allied bombing in WWII, especially the effects of the bombing of