Untitled Essay, Research Paper

There has been a long standing debate on why the atomic bomb was used to

defeat

Japan. The threat of Russian advancement in Europe and in Asia was enough

to worry the top officials in the United States and British governments.

Wherever the Russians moved through they took for themselves. The imminent

invasion of mainland Japan and the allied casualties that came with it were

also a factor in the decision to drop the bomb, as said in document A. The

dropping of the bomb was not entirely used to stop the Russian advancement.

If the allied forces had invaded mainland Japan, many lives on both sides

would have been lost. Most probably more than were lost in the bombing of

Hiroshima and Nagasaki put together. The tactics that the allies had used

up to this point had cost hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides. This

was when the Japanese only had maybe two or three thousand men on an island;

whereas on the mainland millions of people who would fight until their death

to protect their country. Can you imagine if the Americans invaded mainland

Japan where they had not only soldiers to fight against but the citizens

of Japan loyal to Hirohito? Massive destruction, immense loss of life, and

prolonging of the war until late 1946, as stated in document A, would result

from invading on foot instead of using the bomb.

Revenge also played a role in the decision to bomb Japan. The Japanese were

not following the Geneva convention in regards to treatment of prisoners

of war. Which says that the prisoners are not to be put through torture of

the psychological or physical nature. The Japanese did these things

anyway, they would decapitate American prisoners, or they would shove bamboo

shoots under their fingernails. The American government also wanted revenge

for the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. No warning was given by the Japanese

to the Americans and no war was declared until after the incident.

The Russian territorial expansion definitely played a factor in the dropping

the bomb on Japan. The Soviet Union had already taken Poland and many other

countries during the war. The Soviets were helping the Chinese with the war

against Japan and later would get railroads in China and Manchuria when Japan

completely surrendered, as stated in document D. As said in document E, the

Americans did not want the Russians to get involved in the war against Japan.

The most obvious reasons would be to prevent the Russians from expanding

any more and to keep them out of Japan where they would hamper the peace

process and gain even more territory.

As president Harry Truman says in his radio address, document H, all of the

countries involved were trying to create the atomic bomb to use for their

efforts. Fortunately the Americans won the “race of discovery”. If

the Germans had won that race they probably would have used it continuously

in Russia and Britain until Hitler got what he wanted which was world domination

and the extinguishing of the Jewish and others and the ascent of his “superior

race” of Germans. The dropping of the atomic weapon on Japan was not entirely

to halt Soviet expansion although it did play a major role.