the impact of the atomic bomb
At the end of the war in Europe, it seemed that the Japanese would continue to fight until the last man, even despite the crushing loss of their strongest ally, Germany. In order to end the increasingly bloody war as soon as possible, President Harry Truman ordered the atomic bomb to be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japanese surrendered (in principle, at least) just twelve days later.
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While Truman’s decision has been blasted by humanitarians for decades, it brought the war to a much quicker end and prevented the kind of long, bloody, and deadly battles the Pacific Theater was increasingly becoming known for. The Japanese people fought with a willingness to sacrifice themselves for their country’s islands, as evidenced by the kamikaze attacks. An attack on the Japanese mainland, the only island left at the time of the bombing, would meet even further resistance among all people, not just soldiers. Truman argued that he chose the lesser of two evils in dropping the bomb. At the same time, the bombs did kill hundreds of thousand innocent civilians. In the eyes of the millions of American soldiers awaiting a mainland invasion, however, the bombing was absolutely justified.
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