INTRODUCTION

In August 1945, two atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. Temperatures in the city reached up to 80 hundred degrees Fehrenheit. Vehicles
frames were melted. The air contained drops of liquid glass. Citizens were running for their lives,
many were found dead from heat. Over a quarter milions of buildingas were destroyed. Mothers
were looking for their kids. But even when they saw their childrens faces, they could not
recognise them. Up to one hundred thousands people died. It was 2,000 times more powerful
than any bomb used in the world to date. Since the bombing of Hiroshima, the city has remained
effected by the atomic bomb. Two-thirds of Hiroshima was destroyed by the explosion. Over
50,000 thousand survivors still live in the city. It was President Harry S. Truman who made a
decision to drop the atomic bomb. He had only been in office for a little under four months.
I have decided to do this topic as a research paper because it is important to understand the
subject of the morality of the atomic bomb. Because we should be quite aware of the massive
destruction that was already being created. Bombing the cities along with mass civilian death had
become routine well before Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
These weapons are so indiscriminate, so murderous you have to ultimately conclude that these
are weapons of mass genocide.
Humanity is conducting an unintended, uncontrolled, globally pervasive experiment whose
ultimate consequences could be second only to global nuclear war.
Until we get rid of all the nuclear weapons in the world, we are always going to be balanced on a
knife edge. In fact even without nuclear weapons we are always going to be balanced on a knife
edge because we know how to make them.
The purpose of war ethics is to help decide what is right or wrong, both for individuals and
countries, and to contribute to debates on public policy, government and individual action. It is
logical that war and violence are unjustifiable and that conflicts should be settled in a peaceful
way, but if the war uses nuclear or chemical weapons of mass destruction, is that kind of war
winnable? Is it right or wrong?

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WAS IT RIGHT TO DROP THE BOMB?

The Second World War hits the United States against Japan in some of the bitterest fightings in
the history of the warfare. On both sides thousands of lives were being sacrificed. America's
answer was to develop a weapon so awesome that it would end the fighting. Billions of dollars
were plowed into ensuring that the USA would be the first nation in the world to have the atomic
bomb. What the Americans did not know and what many are unaware of to this day, was that
they were actually engaged in a race. Their enemies Japan was also working on a nuclear
program. The Western Allies had no linking that the Japanese program was so advanced. The
Second World War ended when the United States used atomic bombs against the Japanese cities
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The devastation was so complete that the Japanese surrendered
within a days of the second strike.
But why did America decide to drop the bomb?
This is the question over which there is a sharp disagreement. There are many historians with
different opinions over this question. Different historians will come up with different links,
factors or reasons why the bomb was dropped. Even if they come up with the same list they may
give different emphasis or way too different factors and these things would probably never be
settled. It seems to me that the autor of book called 'Prompt and Utter Destruction', Samuel
Walker probably has the best summary. He lists five reasons why is bomb dropped: 1) Truman
wanted to end a war earlier as possible the idea is that you drop this new weapon and you
shocked the Japanese and make them to surrender, because up until that point everything else
they tried had failed, Japanese were hanging on, even they have clearly lost the war. So tactic
was about shocking the enemy and make it to surrender, so than you saved american lives. This
is something that many historians have criticised. The USA were trying to create an impression,
in August 1945 they only had two bombs but they wanted Japanese to think that they have a lot
more. You do not create the right impression if you bomb, wait a long time and then bomb again.
It has been called The Shock Doctrine. Also the question there is how many american lives
would be lost in invasion of Japan.

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2) Justifing the cause of the Manhattan project two bilion dollars this is far less important
reason than number one. But it is important particulary in this sense: If Truman had waited with
using the bomb after it was ready and later on the American public found out, then the war would
have gone a little bit longer. And imagine what would happened if Truman did not used this
weapon. What would parents of american sons who died at the very end of the war have to say
to a president - that he had a fantastic new weapon and had not used it. 3) Impressing the Soviet
Union very controversial issue but it seems quite clear that this was big factor. The Cold War
had not started yet but relations between America and Russia had already began to be strained.
The idea was that the bomb would make Soviet Union more manageable in Post War
negotiations and also Soviets were scheduled to declare a war to Japan also in August. Russia
was not in a Pacific War yet, they were going to come into the war, and if you drop the bomb and
end up war quickly, than Soviets will not have a roll in occupying Japan which would be sort of
the bonus. 4) Not to use a bomb there were no military, diplomatic, political or more of
considerations that undermine the assumption of the bomb that it would be used. Truman and his
advisors were not asking themselves is there any other way to end a war without using the bomb.
5) Desire for revenge - a lot of Americans were very keen not only winning the Japan, but
punishing Japan because of Pearl Harbour. There were significant minorities of Americans that
said they wished the war had lasted longer so they could have dropped more atomic bombs on
Japan.
Many historians think that the primary motive was to save american lives and end war qucikly.
This sould not be suprising because any president in that situation would have come to the same
conclusion. And in national sense this is a moral thinking. President's obligation is to save
american lives, so this was motive.
Some negotiate that Truman had no choice, that any president would have dropped the bomb
because the any other alternative was the invasion of Japan with all its incredible costs. This is
simply not true. Truman had at that time other options, which were discussed in the highest
circles of government. Maybe they could show a demonstration of the bomb to Janapese or
waited to see what the affect of the coming Soviet attack on Japan would have been. One of the
reasons the Japanese were not surrendering is because they were holding out for a negotiated
peace and the path to that negotiated peace was through the neutral Soviet Union.
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Japanese were trying to establish a diplomatic channel to the Soviets and to negotiate about
better terms than unconditional surrender. But maybe this options might not have worked, the
demonstration might have failed to impress the Japanese, but the risks of trying some
combination of this options were not enormous. If these other options have failed, especially
demonstration on a non city or some empty area like desert, USA could have said: 'We tried the
demonstration first, still they did not get the message and kept on fighting, therefore we had to
start bombing cities with this weapon.'
But how did Harry Truman feel about his use of the bomb?
Truman's views were marked by moral ambiguity. He was complicated person and he issued
contradictory statements sometimes about having dropped the bomb. On a one hand, he claimed
to have few or no moral scruples about dropping the bomb. He was very intrested in building
image and identity of himself as a decisive non sense leader. In 1959 he said: 'I have never lost
any sleep over my decision.' In October 1945 he met with the scientific head of the Manhattan
project, J. Robert Oppenheimer, appointed as technical director of the Manhattan Project. Under
his guidance, the creation of the first atomic bomb occured. And he came to the White House and
said: 'Mister President, I feel I have blood on my hands.' Later on Truman said: 'Blood on his
hands damn it. He has not have as much as blood on his hands as I have, you just do not go
around and complain about it.'
On August 11, few days after Nagasaki, Truman responded to a letter he recieved from one of the
top church leaders in the USA, which complained about morality of the attack. Truman replied:
'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. The only language they seem to understand is the one we have been using to bombard
them.When you have to deal with a beast you have to treat him as a beast. It is most regrettable
but nevertheless true.'
The bomb was revolutionary if you look at its destructive power and implications for humanity.
And Truman knew it at the time. President Truman told his diary on July 25, 1945, that he had
ordered the atomic bomb used. Emphasis has been added to highlight Trumans apparent belief
that he had ordered the bomb dropped on a purely military target, so that military objectives
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and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. He said: 'We have
discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. It may be the fire destruction
prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era, after Noah and his fabulous Ark. This weapon is to be
used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to
use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and
children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the
world for the common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital or the new. He
and I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning
statement asking the Japs to surrender and save lives. Im sure they will not do that, but we will
have given them the chance. '

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PREPARATIONS AND CONSEQUENCES

Day before the attack, at the military base on Tinian island in the Pacific, the world's first combat
attomic bomb was brought out on the tarmac, in preparation for delivery. The weapon's code
name was 'Little Boy'. Its connception was the most covered operation ever undertaken by the
US military. Some said it holds the power of the sun, the stars, the cosmos, but to the crew the
bomb looked like something much less cosmic. It was ten feet long, weighing more than the
biggest pickup truck you can buy. On August 6, 194570 years ago todaythe B-29 bomber
Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. Mission of Enola Gay was to drop
'Little Boy' on japanese city. Bomb dropped on the Hiroshima was an experimental weapon and
that was the first test of this kind. Three japanese cities had been choosen as potential targets for
the attack. The primary was the port city of Hiroshima, located on the delta of the Ota river. A
city of considerable military importance it houses the communication center and an assembly
area for troops. But was far from just a military target. Eighty percent of the people there were
civilians. Since the march 1945, almost every major city in Japan has been firebombed, yet
Hiroshima remains untouched. The people that loved the city, worried about that. It was
something specially terrible for city.
One of the requirments for the target was that it had to be visible from the air, so weather planes
flown ahead to check the conditions over the three selected cities. And it was the clear sunny
morning in Hiroshima. Thousands of people were outside, on route to work and school. While
the Enola Gay was flying overhead, it looked nothing as the bombing plane, most mankind's fear.
People assumed it was weather plane and instead of doing what the scientists had assumed it
would happened, which is that they would run into the bomb shelters and be safe from the affects
of the blast, people came out to look. Mushroom cloud was ten miles high, spread three miles
over the city where was more than 350,000 inhabitants. On the day of the attack, the United
States has been in a war for four years and has lost over a hundred thousands men on the Pacific
front along. Despite losing over a milion men, the Japanese continued to fight. Some feared that
if the war goes on, milions more will be lost on both sides. This radically new bomb destorey the
city of Hiroshima and 70,000 human beings were dead instantly. Another 70,000 were injured.
It's the highest death toll ever caused by a single weapon.Three days later, on August 19th, the
United States dropped a second atomic bomb, this time on the city of Nagasaki and another
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40,000 died. Japan formerly surrenders three weeks later. The world's bloodiest war was finally
over.
When americans think about Hiroshima, for them the narrative stops as the mushroom cloud
erupts and the Enola Gay comes back home. For the japanese that is exactly the moment which
the narative begins. Just weeks after Japans surrender, president Harry S. Truman ordered a
report on the physical and medical damage inflicated by this new weapon. Hundreds of
scientists, engineers and military personnel are recruited for the job. They spent ten weeks
amidst the ruins gathering intelligence. The scientists described the affects of the first stage of
the explosion a thermal flash. The flash the explosion comited radiant heat travelling at the
speed of light. It generates temperatures up to 70 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit. It is impossible to
know exactly how many citizens are turned into simple piles of carbon.

The scale of destruction was so enormous, it is not just the tens of thousands of dead and
incinerated bodies, there were hardly any hospitals functioning, hardly any doctors functioning.
Of the area's 45 hospitals only three were usable, but more than the city's infrastructure was
wiped out. When you destroy a city, you are destroying the intricate web of social and personal
connections. One of the horrors for the survivors was that their world had been burned away
and they were left with their families trying to decide where the world was and where to go.
People who have managed to survive the attack were suddenly strucked down with a myterious
illness called Disease X. Thousands of survivors reported vomiting, purple stores and hair loss
in the days and weeks after the blast. Two years after the attack, the US government created the
'Atomic Bomb Basualty Commision' the ABCC. Their mission was not to treat survivors but to
observe and study them to see what radiation exposure would do to their health and mortality.
Many of the survivors carry around with the fear that the radiation is like a sort of time bomb in
their bodies. They have constant fear that they would come down with leukemia or cancer or that
they would give a birth to children with the birth defects.
Some aspects of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima are not easy to uncover. Secrecy has always
enshrouded the world of the atomic science, from the conception of the bombs even to today. For
years the US government confiscated and suppressed nearly all images first-person accounts of
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the bombing of Hiroshima and its immediate aftermath. It was not until the 1952, seven years
after the bomb fell, that these images, only photos taken on the of the bombing were made
public. Military censors were aware that public opinion back home could turn to some degree
against the bombing,if they were exposed to the images that are very painful to see of what
exactly did the atomic bomb done to a human bodies on a large scale.The military did not want
to share details of the aftermath with the public and they did not want public to understand the
power of these new weapons. By the mid-nineteen fifties, the US military was in a global nuclear
arms race with the Soviet Union and was testing nuclear weapons up to 1,000 times more
powerful than those used on Japan.

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ETHICS OF WAR
In the Middle Ages war was a matter of particular attention to the christian nations of Europe. An
early formation of Medieval Europe and one of their ideas was that christian nations are going to
be fighting with christian nations so then they have to make a warfare as human as it possible
can. Lot of the 'Shibari' codes that were put together throughout Europe became the basis of a
rules of engagement, rules of warfare, international treaties of war and so forth that would
develop later on. It actually put more human touch on war. The casualties of those wars were
relatively low and the kind of fallout that goes into the civilian population was also kept down to
a very low limit because war was considered that it needed to be done in its place and should not
be to the destruction of the city life and civilian life. But as we begin to move into the 'Industrial
Age', around the end of 18th century and throughout the 19th century and into the 'Napoleonic
Period', industry begins to change the way in which war is engaged, so there we had higher
casualty rate and a lot more technological developments that are being incorporated into a war
theory. This led us through the 20th century and culminated in World War First and World War
Second, which were highly technological wars. As more social developments took place in 20th
century leading to the socialization of America and the Cold War period where was not just
nuclear warfare, but nations were not totally sure of itself, not totally sure of theories that hold
that nation together. Paranoia begins to rise and basically you begin to look at the war not so
much as the last-ditch tool in international development, and as a tool for security. Security
developments in warfare have led to the theories of preemption, basically if there's a precieved
threat, than warfare is okay because of protection of your own security. Since there is an
international body that supports that idea, than you have various countries running aroung and
interfering in each others affairs in accordance with whatever the pattern of international law is
there.
1

A useful way into the ethical assessment can be via a consideration of Hiroshima and

Nagasaki. For those who considered the bombings from a just war perspecitve, the ius in bello
principle of discrimination was clearly violated: civilians were the target. Those who supported
the action pointed out that it brought the war to an end rapidly a war which would have
dragged on for some time and involved more casualties. It was in any case pointed out that the
1 The Ethics of War and Peace Nigel Dower; pg.164;
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targeting of civilian centres of population had already been a standard feature of the Second
World War, both in Europe, with direct attacks on cities such as Coventry in the UK, Dresden in
Germany, and indeed in Japan, where cities had been fire-bombed. The targeting of cities was
already an immortal feature of the war effort on both sides: in any case the bomb was different
because of the types of effects it had. They also said that a demonstration could have presuaded
the Japanese government, that concern over loss of life was focused more on limiting loss of life
on the Allies' side, not overall, since the total of all people killed would not have been as high as
all the direct and indirect deaths involved; and that a less public motive was a desire to get a
Japanese surrender before the Soviet army achieved it later. Defenders claimed that the breach
of non-combatant immunity was something justified by the necessity of such war; that saving
one's own soldiers' lives legitimately had priority; that getting a Japanese surrender to the
Americans rather than to the Soviets was a justified move for geopolitical reasons.

CONCLUSION
According to 'just war theory', the decision to use the bomb may have been considered immoral.
While the decision was made by legitimate, competent authority the president of the United
States, the actions were considered by some to be last resort with the high probability of success
the shock and awe effect was enough to force the Emperor to surrender, and the intention was
right ending the war quickly to prevent further damage down to the road, the morality falls
apart at the 'justice in war' level. It is arguable that the amount of damage done to both human
beings and property was unnecessary, thus violating proportionality of means. Above this,
however, is the lack of discrimination between civilians and armed forces. While both Hiroshima
and Nagasaki were industrial centers, and while their function was indeed to aid the Japanese
military, they were both still major civilian establishments. The number of civilians affected by
the attacks was far beyond the scope of what could reasonably deemed accidental, and it could
thus be argued that they were deliberately targeted, in clear violation of the rules of just war.
Hiroshima has become a metaphor not just for nuclear war but for war and destruction and
violence toward civilians. It's not just the idea we should not use nuclear arms. We should not
start another war because it's madness. - Max von Sydow
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LIST OF REFERENCES

1. Walker, Samuel Prompt and Utter Destruction: Truman and the use of Atomic
Bombs against Japan; 2012
2. Zaloga, Steven J. Defense of Japan 1945
3. Dower, Nigel The Ethics of War and Peace
4. Newman, Robert P. Truman and the Hirosima cult; 1995

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