Effects of henry truman's decision

‘ Fighting fire with fire, causing deaths to prevent deaths’. On the 6th of August 1945, Henry Truman made ultimate decision to flip the switch, and drop the first know to man atomic bomb on one of the Japans highly concentrated cities, Hiroshima, in an act of attempting to conclude the costly World War Two. Truman’s justifiable action of dropping the bomb was an act of preventing the imminent invasion by the Japanese. Was this though the opinion of society at the time? If the invasion by the Japanese had occurred, this could have seen a multitude of deaths as a result, and in turn increased what was an already high death count. But does it make it right? Think of the millions more who could have lost their lives. As Truman had already offered a warning towards the Japanese, and they failed to comply, the dropping bomb was inevitable.

Truman’s judgement and ultimate decision to go ahead with dropping ended out being an intelligent call. The United States, much as the remainder of the war fighting world was, were trying to soldier on after the largest amount of deaths in the history of mankind. At that time, USA experienced little over an approximate 500, 000 lives lost, with an extra 135, 000 just from their top ranked militants. “ The bomb saved many thousands of American troops that would be killed by invading Japan” – President Truman. This statement was the driving force for dropping the atom bomb, and though it was an horrid, they felt justified. Many other world leaders such as Winston Churchill believed America did the right thing by committing to such bomb, as quote, “ To conquer the country, might have required the deaths of a million American lives, half of that being British. The bomb vanquished that nightmarish picture”. As a matter of fact, the United States had killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese people prior to the bombing, but because they were done with ‘ normal’ artillery, people barely flinched an eye. A study conducted at the University of Louisiana states, “ if the war were to have continued, we could have seen tens of millions more Japanese deaths then what we have already”.

The atomic bombings gave the Emperor of Japan the perfect reason to subside to the united states. As the Japanese head of actions and military personal/war was insisting to continue to fight on and not give in to the Americans, after the dropping of the bombs and the mass amounts of deaths that came with them, the Emperor made a speech stating to the nation that Japan has surrendered. Furthermore, the Allied forces were fighting off Japanese militants as they attempted to invade both Australia and China. At the time, the Japanese had made progress on Australia conducting bombing runs on the Northern Territory, and gaining ground in the fight at Kokoda. Whereas the Japanese had made immense ground on the Chinese and began wide spread murdering of civilians, and many thousands more held as POW. The bomb which forced Japan into surrender eliminated the Japanese’s possibility of any type of invasion occurring.

The complete opposites in the way their political systems ran, kept the two from ever reaching a point of unity. The United States government was extremely belligerent to the Soviets after they took Russia, and was against the idea of communism. Approaching World War II both superpowers were far from ‘ allies’ and the risk of war between the two was becoming ever so likely. After the United States dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not just the Japanese nor the Germans were afraid, but so was the Soviets. This action of dropping the bombs brought together the world’s leading military superpowers, and destructed the inevitability of the two superpowers attempting to take each other out. This brought them both into alliance, and hence benefitted the Allied forces as they attempted to defeat Nazi Germany, and halt the Japanese’s aggression in foreign lands. All in all, the statement made by the Americans when dropping the bomb ensured that the military superpowers known as the Soviets halted their dreariness towards the Allied forces, and fully fledged against Nazi Germany. This alliance inevitably brought an end to the war with the Japanese, and eventually Nazi Germany, saving tens of millions of lives.

To conclude, what could Truman have said to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Americans who lost a loved one in an invasion of Japan if they knew that could have ended the war? In the dead of the night when sleep was the last thing on his mind, and as he stared into the souls of millions of dead Americans, what could he have said? I chose the Japanese lives over yours? Truman did what he had to do, dropping the atomic bomb ultimately, saved tens of millions of lives, ended the war with the Japanese, created peace with the Soviets, and brought an end to Nazi Germany.