The Atomic Bomb

In early August 1945, atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These two bombs quickly yielded the surrender of Japan and the end of American involvement in World War II (Findley, 2006). By 1946, the two bombs caused the death of perhaps as many as 240,000 Japanese citizens. The popular, or traditional, view that dominated the 1950s and 60s put forth by President Harry Truman and Secretary of War Henry Stimson was that the dropping of the bomb was a diplomatic maneuver aimed at intimating and gaining the upper hand in relations with Russia (Wainstock, 1996). Today, sixty-two years after the two bombings, with the advantage of historical hindsight and the advantage of new evidence, a third view, can be presented. First, the dropping of the bomb was born out of complex military, domestic, and diplomatic pressures. Second, many potentially viable alternatives to dropping the bombs were not explored by Truman and other men in......

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Title: The Atomic Bomb
Approximate Word Count: 1691
Approximate Pages: 7 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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