Was The Atomic Bomb Justified Dbq Essay

Upwards of 70 million people died in WWII. Starting in 1939 the war ravaged the planet, millions upon millions of deaths, and no end in sight. It was clear that something needed to be done. Japan specifically showed no sign of surrendering, so to prevent the deaths of Americans, Truman made the executive decision to drop the atomic bombs. On August 6th and 9th respectively atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Although it was inhumane and horrific, we were justified in dropping the atomic bombs because American soldiers were being tortured, American bodies were disrespected after death, and the bombs ended the war preventing more American casualties. The first reason that America was justified in dropping the atomic bombs is that American soldiers that were captured in Japan were being tortured. When Japanese soldiers captured American soldiers, they needed some way of trying to get them to give up valuable information because the U.S soldiers wouldn’t just tell them for no reason. So they began torturing them in hopes they’d crack. Document 2 showed the numerous

Document 1 explains how some American soldiers, after being captured by Japanese soldiers, were murdered in grotesque inhuman ways. The document says, “We heard a dull thud, and the American was decapitated.” There is a difference between killing someone in a war and doing this. When you are in battle, you are fighting for your life and must kill or be killed, but this is a gross display of how the Japanese viewed Americans. The American soldier had his head chopped off like a chicken and then the Japanese men that did it laughed about it. Although dropping the bombs was inhumane in many ways, so was the Japanese treatment of the U.S, giving us a good rationale for dropping the