The Fat Bomb That Should Not Have Went Kaboom

By Matthew Mulderink
The atomic bomb was created by scientists in the code name Manhattan Project. These
scientists were located across the U.S. working at different laboratories. Only a few people
knew what the project was really about. In fact, President Truman did not even know about the
project until he became president (The Decision to Drop the Bomb). An atomic bomb causes
wide-range destruction and releases radiation that kills people because of the sickness it
creates. During World War II, the U.S. was beating Japan by a huge margin before the US
dropped the atomic bomb on Japan. Japan was ready to give up, and Japan was the only one
left in the Axis alliance. Even though the atomic bomb, dropped on Japan on August 6, 1945,
was created by the workers in the Manhattan Project to make the country surrender, Japan was
already about to raise the white flag.
The U.S. was defeating Japan before the atomic bomb was dropped. "By any rational
yardstick, they [Japan) were not [winning the war]. Japan already had been defeated militarily
by June 1945. Almost nothing was left of the once mighty Imperial Navy, and Japan's air force
had been all but totally destroyed" (Weber). That means that everything was completely
annihilated in Japans army. Even before the Hiroshima attack, American air force General
Curtis LeMay boasted that American bombers were driving them [Japan] back to the stone
age. Henry H. ("Hap") Arnold ... declared in his 1949 memoirs: It always appeared to us,
atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse. This was
confirmed by former Japanese prime minister Fumimaro Konoye, who said: "Fundamentally, the
thing that brought about the determination to make peace was the prolonged bombing by the B29s. (Weber). This shows real quotes from two different countries fighting against each other
before the bomb was dropped on Japan that they were defeated. Some military analysts insist
that Japan was on its knees and the bombings were simply unnecessary. The American
government was accused of racism on the grounds that such a device would never have been

used against white civilians (The Decision to Drop the Bomb). These statements indicate that
the U.S. was beating Japan by a huge margin. For example, in a basketball game, if you are
winning by 40 points, you do not need to put in your all-star lineup that you have never played
before. If you do play that squad though, then everyone will know about it and how good it is. In
a similar way, the winning team was the U.S. and the great all-star lineup was the atomic bomb.
The U.S. played their secret weapon even though they did not need to. Still, once they did,
everyone knew they had and how powerful it was.
Research shows that Japan was ready to give up before the atomic bombs were
dropped. What was left of Japan's factories and workshops struggled fitfully to turn out
weapons and other goods from inadequate raw materials. (Oil supplies had not been available
since April.) By July, about a quarter of all the houses in Japan had been destroyed, and her
transportation system was near collapse. Food had become so scarce that most Japanese were
subsisting on a sub-starvation diet (Weber). Most of Japans resources were gone so that
almost none of Japans fighter jets and tanks could go anywhere. Without the tanks and fighter
jets, there was no real way to be protected during a battle. The atomic bombing of Nagasaki did
not have much effect on Japans decision; (2) of the two factorsthe atomic bombing of
Hiroshima and Soviet entry into the warthe Soviet invasion had a more important effect on
Japans decision to surrender; (3) nevertheless, neither the atomic bombs nor Soviet entry into
the war served as a knock-out punch (Hasegawa). After World War II, Eisenhower wrote a
book called Mandate for Change. One of the things he said was, Japan was already defeated
and dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary (Eisenhower). With or without the atomic
bomb and the Manhattan Project, Japan was going to hoist up the white flag.
Japans alliances in World War II were defeated and Japan was alone before the atomic
bomb was dropped therefore having no one to get their backs against powerful countries who
were killing them on a massive scale. On May 7, 1945, seven days after Hitler committed

suicide, Nazi Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. Japan fought on alone,
surrendering formally on September 2, 1945 (Axis Alliance in World War II). This means after
Hitlers suicide, Japan was alone. The surrender of the Empire of Japan on September 2, 1945,
brought the hostilities of World War II to a close (Surrender of Japan). When Japan
surrendered, the main threats of World War II were over. Heavy casualties sustained in the
campaigns at Iwo Jima (February 1945) and Okinawa (April-June 1945), and fears of the even
costlier land invasion of Japan led Truman to authorize the use of a new and devastating
weaponthe atomic bombon the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August.
On August 10, the Japanese government issued a statement declaring they would accept the
terms of the Potsdam Declaration, and on September 2, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur
accepted Japans formal surrender aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay (World War II
History). Even while all of Japan's alliances had surrendered, the U.S. and its alliances were still
powerful. At that point with Japan alone, the war was basically a bunch of strong people being
the US and its alliances versus a weak person in a dodgeball game being Japan. Japans only
options was to then get bombarded by dodgeballs.
While much evidence shows that dropping the atomic bomb was not necessary, other
evidence suggests that the U.S. did need the atomic bomb to beat Japan. In an online debate,
someone said, yes we should [dropped the bomb] have because they had plenty of
opportunities to surrender and they didn't. We told them if they didn't surrender, there would be
utter mass destruction put upon them. They chose to ignore it and brush it off. If we had
invaded, then probably 1/4th of Japan's population would have been killed. Yes, it was terrible
that so many people died, but in the end, it was what the U.S. thought was necessary. Japan
still didn't surrender after the first bomb was dropped, only after the second one was dropped,
the emperor of Japan stepped in and gave the final decision of surrendering (Should the U.S.
Have Dropped the Atomic Bomb?). But when General Dwight D. Eisenhower, then the
Supreme Allied Commander, was informed by the Secretary of War that the atomic bomb was

going to be used, he later recalled saying it was unnecessary because Japan was already
largely defeated... At one point after the war he said bluntly, It wasn't necessary to hit them with
that awful thing (Alperovitz, Gar, and Samuel Walker). The U.S. gave Japan many warnings to
surrender, but even General (later president) Eisenhower agreed that the bomb was not
necessary to gain victory over Japan. It was not necessary to kill so many people that the U.S.
didnt need to kill. Also, many of Japans people wanted to surrender after the first atomic bomb
and even before that, but it was the emperor decision in the end to surrender.
The atomic bomb was dropped in Japan to make them surrender, but Japan was already mainly
defeated. The U.S. was beating Japan and Japan was about to give up. Also, Japan was the
only ones left in the Axis while the US was with many other strong countries. Even though
Japan did not take our opportunity to surrender seriously, they were largely defeated and did not
have much to lose. So Eisenhowers deadly decision to drop atomic bomb was not needed to
defeat Japan.