Cold War Dbq Essay

The Cold War period had been a time of great competition between the allied powers and there were arms and space races but once the Atomic bomb had been invented, there was no turning back. There had been quite a bit of history between the Americans and the Japanese but had it been enough to make the USA go ahead and bomb Hiroshima aswell as Nagasaki three days later. Had there been proper reason to go ahead with these actions or were there ulterior motives in the mixture too? At the end of it all, the Americans acted out of greed and vengeance while the Japanese were left to fend for their land.

The United States have had many impasses with the Japanese many years back into the 1800s. We see that the Americans wanted the land of the Japanese

The destruction that this sort of weapon causes is massive (Source A) and this nuclear power is enough to bomb many places in the world in a matter of days. (Source B) only after the bomb was used in a negative way, do we see the true damage it can cause by the millions of lives that were lost instantly aswell as the lives that were affected by the ongoing radiation. Many ordinary and innocent people in Japan relive this event and play it many times in their heads as if it were a nightmare. (Source Q) This new invention was kept from the world and only until the Hiroshima incident had happened followed by the Nagasaki incident, people around the world became shell shocked and realised how the world changed in hat instant. (Source C) The world was in a state of speechlessness and people knew that they had to re-evaluate the use of this new invention; the atomic bomb. People started to wonder whether this was a good thing or a bad thing for the future of the world and many were thinking that this nuclear power would be toxic for the world. (Source E) The public and the youth resisted the nuclear power greatly in their popular culture from art to even the humour at the time in order to stress the fears of which the people were experiencing. (Source L) People wanted peace and harmony and they wanted to feel safe

Truman had justified these attacks as acts of revenge and of victory. (Source J) This is further reinforced when Truman compares these acts to a sort of gambling expedition and once the deed had been done, it was labelled as a success and Truman strode off with the greatest of joy. (Source O2) Many are not sure of the exact reasons why the Americans did what they had done however there are a few accurate conclusions. It was believed that the Japanese and Americans shared a racial hatred among them which led to extermination desire yet the Americans were so advanced and had the mean sin which to wipe out a whole population. Perhaps the US saw the atomic bomb as an opportunity to fulfil this desire and it made it easy as the atomic bomb was uncritically accepted. (Source J) There were also a large amount of American prisoners imprisoned in the city of Hiroshima and this might have been an easy way to get rid of these prisoners. For the US government it might have been seen as a ‘kill two birds with one stone’ type of scenario. (Source P1) Many also believed that the USA was helping Japan in the long run by rebuilding a new life and starting fresh to achieve happiness again. (Source R) However the Americans have never really been good at winning the hearts and minds of people so therefore steered the Japanese to despise the Americans even