Why did Truman use the atomic bomb against Japan ?

Thèmes abordés

Hiroshima - Atomic bomb - Truman - Manhattan Project - Japan - Nagasaki - Groves - Oppenheimer

Résumé du document

This decision was actually matured behind closed doors, not only by the American President but also by his advisers, his ministers and a few scientific experts. Of the many reasons that they invoked during their secret meetings and revealed a posteriori, some of them were undeniably valid but others were more questionable. They were of all kinds : pragmatic, political, military, realistic, ideological, moral, psychological, tactic and diplomatic. Nevertheless, after examining them one by one, it will appear that the military one was the most important in the eyes of Truman, because it reflected the most immediate priority in American foreign policy.

Extraits

[...] Further sporadic bombings, sinkings, massacres, etc. in Japan, in China and in the Pacific ocean could be avoided. Thus, the main reason why Truman used the bomb corresponded with the highest priority at that time, which was shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans” in his own words.[6] Secondly, on top of permitting the end of the war, using the bomb, it was believed, could bring about an increased diplomatic prominence of the US on the international stage. [...]

[...] Paterson. Major Problems in American Foreign Relations, Volume II : Since 1914. 7th edition. Boston : Wadsworth Cengage Learning - Patterson, Thomas G., J. Garry Clifford, Shane J. Maddock, Deborah Kisatskyn and Kenneth J. Hagan, American Foreign Relations : a History, Volume 2 : Since 1895, 7th edition. [...]

[...] At the end of the day, after examining all these reasons individually, it seems that Truman's choice of bombing Hiroshima was widely justified, from his point of view and also in general, despite the very high number of civilian deaths it provoked on the Japanese side. The question raised by this study now would be about the reasons that prompted Truman to drop the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, three days later, given that at that moment, several of the reasons which could justify the first bombing were not valid anymore ! Works cited : - Hershberg, James G., James B. Conant Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age. New York : Alfred A. Knopf - Merril, Dennis and Thomas G. [...]

[...] The assumption that “Little should be used as soon as ready, lay on the diplomatic, political and military advantages it induced. And regarding the morality of such an act of destruction of human lives, it did not seem to be a problem, given that the whole world seemed to tolerate the escalating and routinizing violence which had been raging since the beginning of the war.[19] Everybody had tacitly admitted that from then on, there was no longer distinction between civilians and combatants . [...]

[...] On August he explained that he was very annoyed for having felt obliged to use the bomb, but he added that such cruelties were not peculiar to the US : “Nobody is more disturbed over the use of Atomic bombs than I am but I was greatly disturbed over the unwarranted attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor and their murder of our prisoners of war . Finally, the last reason that might have influenced Truman could be the “quasi-absence” of reasons which could have pushed him not to use the bomb on the contrary. [...]