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Mogilevsky 1Miriam MogilevskyMr. AhrnsAP US History21 December 2007Pure Nihilism“Pearl Harbor has now been partially avenged,” said Admiral ChesterNimitz after the Battle of Midway, in which the Unites States inflicted acrushing defeat on Japanese forces. For the U.S., World War II started andended with two terrifying attacks – the first being Pearl Harbor; the second,the atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To some Americans, and much of the American government at the time, thefirst attack was unprovoked and monstrous, while the second was reasonableand rational as a strategy for war. However, historians, scientists, andlaypeople have all challenged the Unites States’ actions against Hiroshimaand Nagasaki. They assert that the atomic bomb attack should not havebeen carried out for moral issues, that Japan was about to surrender anyway,and that the second bomb should not have been dropped. The ethics of dropping a bomb that will surely kill thousands of innocent civilians are difficult and complex. Over 180,000 people died fromboth atomic bomb attacks. Many were women, children, and the elderly – aswell as men who had never personally taken any action against the UnitedStates. The Japanese citizens had no warning, and no real way to avoid theattack. Furthermore, even if they survived the explosion, many died years
 
Mogilevsky 2later from radioactive fallout. The Japanese considered this an attack notonly on their nation and people, but on God and humanity itself. As a Japanese newspaper put it, “This is not war; this is not even murder; this ispure nihilism.” They also felt that the Americans were being hypocriticalbecause they had opposed Japan’s military actions against China, eventhough they certainly had not involved the instant annihilation of hundreds of thousands of citizens. Many Americans, too, opposed the attacks on moralgrounds. The Christian Century, an American Protestant journal, claimed that“the use made of the atomic bomb has placed [the United States] in anindefensible moral position.” Such opponents of the bombing thought that, if demonstrating to Japan the power of the United States was really necessary,they could have simply dropped the bombs in Japan’s countryside, where fewpeople would die, but the terrifying effects of the weapon could be witnessednonetheless. Indeed, even simply explaining the bomb to the Japanese mayhave sufficed; after all, despite America’s warning that the Japanese faced“complete devastation” if they did not surrender, they did not know that theUnited States had nuclear weapons. In addition, historians have added moremoral implications for the bombings by suggesting that Truman carried themout in order to coerce Stalin of the Soviet Union to cooperate with him.Clearly, killing hundreds of thousands of people in an act of war is one thing;killing them in order to attempt – unsuccessfully, at that – at passive-aggressive diplomacy with another nation is something different. Similarly, Truman may have decided to drop the nuclear bombs because he wanted to
 
Mogilevsky 3prevent the Soviet Union from truly entering the war in the Pacific, becausethe entrance of the Soviets would also enable communism to gain a footholdin East Asia – an occurrence that Truman feared greatly due to his mistrust of communism. For these reasons, from a moral standpoint, the United Statesshould not have dropped atomic bombs on Japan.Aside from issues o f ethics and humanity, critics have also pinpointedwhy the bombings were logistically unnecessary and excessive. After all, thebattles of Leyte Gulf and Okinawa had left the Japanese military forcesdevastated and almost nonexistent. The Americans, of course, werecompletely aware of this – American battleships and bombers attacked Japanese industrial centers without any retaliation from the Japanese.Clearly, Japan could not inflict serious damage to the U.S. military, so anuclear bombing could not be considered an attack of preemption. Also, atthe time, factions within the Japanese government were struggling forcontrol. Moderate leaders demanded peace at almost any cost (the onestipulation being that the emperor must remain in place). However, Japan’smilitary leaders refused to give up the fight. Furthermore, the United Statesrefused to allow the emperor to remain (even though this decision was laterreversed and the emperor remained on the throne), and many Japaneserefused to surrender without this one compromise. The most reasonablecourse of action for the United States would have been to wait for the Japanese factions to finish debating, because they would almost certainlyeventually agree to surrender, making the bombings obviously unnecessary.
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