When I became President, the United States was in the middle of World War II. With my approval, on August 6th, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan during World War II. Three days later, On August 9, we dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki. These were the only atomic bombs ever used in war and against people. Authorizing the bombing was one of the toughest decisions I’ve ever had to make.
Ending the war and saving American lives were my main reasons for approving the decision. There was no plan to drop these atomic bombs until we pleaded for Japan’s surrender and were turned down. I believe that if it weren’t for this bombing, the war would have continued, and ended in destruction throughout America. This action ended the Pacific War, and therefore World War II. My first words to the citizens of America were, “The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many fold.”
The bombing in these two major Japan cities caused tremendous destruction. 90,000-166,000 people were killed in Hiroshima and 60,000-80,000 in Nagasaki. We dropped these atomic bombs on two of Japan’s main cities devoted to war work. Six days after the detonation over Nagasaki, on August 15th, Japan surrendered.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/teacher/abomb.htm
Vivian
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I can’t imagine what stress President Truman had to go through before making the decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The lives of more than 200,000 Japanese were in his hands. When Harry Truman finally made the decision to bomb the two large war production cities, I wonder if he had ever worried that he would regret his decision.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading this post and doing some research, I believe that he made the right decision. If we didn’t bomb Japan, we may have been bombed ourselves, and the war wouldn’t have ended as it did. Even though this was such a drastic measure, we warned Japan and they didn’t back down, so we had to make the tough decision in order to do what we thought was the right thing.
By:Katherine D.
I believe taht you made the right desicion (although it was a hard one) and bombed those two Japanese major cities. The bombing of these two cities was a major part of ending the ongoing war. If you didn't bomb those cities, then us, the Americans may have been put in danger. It's good that we made the first move before they did (if they bombed us).
ReplyDeleteRam R.
HI! I'm Andrew Jackson. You were in World War II? That's really cool! How did it feel to be fighting for your country, an to be out there against all those people?
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