Bombing Of Hiroshima

Introduction

The nuclear bomb called 'Little Boy' was dropped on Hiroshima by an American B-29 bomber on Monday, August 6, 1945. The decision to do so has become one of the most controversial topics in scholarly debate. The two major arguments among historians, such as Herbert Feis, Barton Bernstein and Martin Sherwin, are that on the one hand, the atomic bomb was dropped to end the war with Japan and on the other, that the bomb was dropped by the Truman administration to make the Soviet Union more manageable. I am in more agreement with the former and this essay will argue that the decision to drop the atomic bomb was an American attempt to bring the war to a quick end.

Discussion

The American decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan was without doubt influenced by the desire to end the war since that is what it accomplished. Truman assured after the bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima that “the dropping of the bombs stopped the war and saved millions of lives.” The dropping of the atomic bombs prevented an American invasion on Japan, the approximate cost for this exceeded $500,000 and more than a million lives would have been lost. Herbert Feis argued that many in the Truman administration believed that a land invasion of Japan would not have been sufficient enough to cause Japan to surrender quickly and unconditionally and thus Truman's decision to use the atomic bomb was a quick solution to ending the war with Japan and a way to prevent further loses of American lives (Ross, 37). This argument is certainly plausible, however, the extent to which ending a war that was almost over was more important that intimidating the Soviet Union is what many dispute. It can effectively be argued that Truman dropped ...