Unit 6 Opinion Paper

Okay, I will tell you right now, that I feel very strongly about this subject as I’ve studied it a lot for my Humanities class. My stance on these bombings will most likely be very clear by the end of this essay. Basically, I very much disagree with the whole decision to bomb Japan. I just, I feel like there were so many other alternatives aside from bombing them.

I do understand though, that they bombed us first. They bombed Pearl Harbor, I know that, but they bombed it once. One bomb that was not an atomic bomb in the slightest. Then we do multiple air-raids on the Japanese, then drop two bombs on them. Two atomic bombs. How does that make sense? We killed so many more innocent Japanese people than they did. And I have numbers, I can prove that they lost a lot more than we did. I’ll start, though, with giving the numbers for America. American military lives lost: 407,300. American innocent lives lost: 12,100. Total American deaths: 419,400. Out of a population of 131,028,000. Sounds like a lot of deaths, could be worse. But what about the Japanese side of things. Japanese military lives lost: 2,100,000 to 2,566,000. Japanese innocent lives lost: 550,000 to 672,000. Total Japanese deaths: 2,500,000 to 3,238,000. Out of a population of 71,380,000.

Their population was much smaller than ours, and yet they lost millions more people than we ever did. We devastated their whole way of life! Hiroshima lost about 60% of its land when we bombed it. And Truman said that he just wanted to end the war quickly. I think bombing an entire civilization was not the way to get the war to end. Truman had many options as this quote says “President Harry Truman had many alternatives at his disposal for ending the war: invade the Japanese mainland, hold a demonstration of the destructive power of the atomic bomb for Japanese dignitaries, drop an atomic bomb on selected industrial Japanese cities, bomb and blockade the islands, wait for Soviet entry into the war on August 15, or mediate a compromised peace.” But he chose the most destructive, the most inhumane, the most heartless option. I honestly don’t believe he wanted the war to end faster, though. I think he just wanted to prove a point. A point that America is the strongest country in the world. Little Boy and Fatboy were Truman’s way of saying, “Mess with us and this will happen to you too.

And who decided that Little Boy and Fatboy were “nice” nicknames? Does America really think that what we did to the Japanese was an okay thing to do? Do Americans still slap each other and themselves on the back for trying to destroy a different country? I’m surprised that the Japanese don’t absolutely despise us! I swear to god, if some country were to drop two atomic bombs and do multiple air raids on us we would despise that country! Truman shouldn’t have tried to make them surrender, he should have tried to compromise with them for peace. Any self-respecting country wouldn’t want to surrender, because that makes them look weak.

I just, I’ve studied this whole thing a lot. I’ve read stories, I’ve seen movies, I’ve researched it, and I hate what America did. I really do. There were so many other alternate routes that could’ve been taken, but Truman had to take the route that would hurt the most people. And I am a little bit biased, even though I myself am not Japanese, but I have my own reasons for being biased.

Works Cited

“Atomic Bomb.” Truman Library. Truman Press Release. 6 August 1945. Web. 29 November 2015.

“Hiroshima, Nagasaki...The Manhattan Project.” Orwell. 24 September 2015. Web 29 November 2015.

“Leaflets warning Japanese of Atomic Bomb.” PBS. 6 August 1945. Web. 29 November 2015.

“World War II Casualties.” Wikipedia. Wikipedia. September 2014. Web. 29 November 2015.

Reflection

Yea, so I've posted a lot based on the atomic bombs in Japan. If you look through my Humanities page you'll find two documents about stuff I read/watched about these bombings. Of course, they weren't necessarily about the bombs themselves, they're more about the personal stories, which hits me a lot harder than a bunch of facts and figures. But anyway, I do feel very strongly about this subject, and will probably continue beating myself up for something America did long before I was born.

#history #Fall2015