History Atomic Bomb Essay

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it was necessary to use atomic energy to win the war.
The war in Asia had its roots in the early 1930s. Japan had expansionist aims in Eastern Asia and the Western Pacific, especially in Indochina2. In July of 1940 the United States placed an embargo on materials exported to Japan, including oil in the hope of restraining Japanese expansionism. Nevertheless, tensions remained high in Asia, and only increased in 1939 when Germany ignited World War II with an invasion of Poland. America’s determination to remain isolated changed abruptly following Japan’s “surprise attack” on Pearl Harbor on December 7th 1941. Military strategists and politicians poured the majority of American war effort into the European theater, and before the United States could fully mobilize most of South-East Asia had fallen to Japan, including the Philippines. Slowly, the United States recaptured the many small islands invaded by Japan, including Guadalcanal, Bougainville, Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo Jima, ...

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emperor. This awe-inspiring army included “so-called ‘Sherman Carpets,’ children with dynamite strapped to their bodies and trained to throw themselves under American tanks.” 6
In the end, these final preparations were not employed. On August 26th, 194 the American B-29 bomb, named Enola Gay by the Pilot Paul W. Tibbets, dropped the “little boy” uranium atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. Three days later a second bomb, made of plutonium and nicknamed “fat boy,” was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. On August 14th, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally and the war in Asia ended.
Truman’s monumental decision to drop these bombs was born out of the complex background discussed ...

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