FREE ESSAY ON ATOMIC BOMB

ATOMIC BOMB

When the atomic bomb went off over Hiroshima on Aug. 6th, 1945, 70,000 lives were ended in
a flash. To the American people who were weary from the long and brutal war, such a
drastic measure seemed a necessary, even righteous way to end the madness that was World
War II. However, the madness had just begun. That August morning was the day that
heralded the dawn of the nuclear age, and with it came more than just the loss of lives.
According to Archibald MacLeish, a U.S. poet, What happened at Hiroshima was not only
that a scientific breakthrough . . . had occurred and that a great part of the population
of a city had been burned to death, but that the problem of the relation of the triumphs
of modern science to the human purposes of man had been explicitly defined. The entire
globe was now to live with the fear of total annihilation, the fear that drove the cold
war, the fear that has forever changed world politics. The fear is real, more real today
than ever, for the ease at which a nuclear bomb is achieved in this day and age sparks
fear in the hearts of most people on this planet. According to General Douglas MacArthur,
We have had our last chance. If we do not devise some greater and more equitable system,
Armageddon will be at our door. The decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japanese citizens
in August, 1945, as a means to bring the long Pacific war to an end was
justified-militarily, politically and morally. The goal of waging war is victory with
minimum losses on one's own side and, if possible, on the enemy's side. No one disputes
the fact that the Japanese military was prepared to fight to the last man to defend the
home islands, and indeed had already demonstrated this determination in previous Pacific
island campaigns. A weapon originally developed to contain a Nazi atomic project was
available that would spare Americans hundreds of thousands of causalities in an invasion
of Japan, and-not incidentally-save several times more than that among Japanese soldiers
and civilians. The thousands who have died in the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki were far less than would have died in an allied invasion, and their sudden
deaths convinced the Japanese military to surrender. Every nation has an interest in
being at peace with other nations, but there has never been a time when the world was
free of the scourge of war. Hence, peaceful nations must always have adequate military
force at their disposal in order to deter or defeat the aggressive designs of rogue
nations. The United States was therefore right in using whatever means were necessary to
defeat the Japanese empire in the war which the latter began, including the use of
superior or more powerful weaponry-not only to defeat Japan but to remain able following
the war to maintain peace sufficiently to guarantee its own existence. A long, costly and
bloody conflict is a wasteful use of a nation's resources when quicker, more decisive
means are available. Japan was not then-or later-the only nation America had to restrain,
and an all-out U.S. invasion of Japan would have risked the victory already gained in
Europe in the face of the palpable thereat of Soviet domination. Finally, we can never
forget the maxim of Edmund Burke: The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is
that good men do nothing. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought us into a war which
we had vainly hoped to avoid. We could no longer do nothing but were compelled to do
something to roll back the Japanese militarists. Victims of aggression have every right
both to end the aggression and to prevent the perpetrator of it from continuing or
renewing it. Our natural right of self defense as well as our moral duty to defeat
tyranny justified our decision to wage the war and, ultimately, to drop the atomic bomb.
We should expect political leaders to be guided by moral principles but this does not
mean they must subject millions of people to needless injury or death out of a misplaced
concern for the safety of enemy soldiers or civilians. President Truman's decision to
deploy atomic power in Japan revealed a man who understood the moral issues at stake and
who had the courage to strike a decisive blow that quickly brought to an end the most
destructive war in human history. Squeamishness is not a moral principle, but making the
best decisions at the time, given the circumstances, is clear evidence that the decision
maker is guided by morality. The atomic bomb was considered a quick and even economical
way to win the war; however, it was a cruel and unusual form of punishment for the
Japanese citizens. The weapon that we refer to as quick was just the opposite. On one
hand, it meant a quick end to the war for the United States, and on the other hand, a
slow and painful death to many innocent Japanese. According to a book called Hiroshima
Plus 20 the effects of radiation poisoning are horrific, ranging from purple spots on the
skin, hair loss, nausea, vomiting, bleeding from the mouth, gums, and throat, weakened
immune systems, to massive internal hemorrhaging, not to mention the disfiguring
radiation burns. The effects of the radiation poisoning continued to show up until about
a month after the bombing. In fact the bomb also killed or permanently damaged fetuses in
the womb. Death and destruction are always a reality of war; however, a quick death is
always more humanitarian. When this powerful nation called the United States dropped the
bomb, we sent out the official go ahead for the rest of the world that nuclear weapons
were a viable means of warfare. We unofficially announced that it was O.K. to bomb women,
children, and elderly citizens. The thought that atomic weapons are needed to keep the
peace is exactly the idea that fueled the cold war. Albert Einstein said in a speech, The
armament race between the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R., originally supposed to be a preventative
measure, assumes hysterical character. On both sides, the means of mass-destruction are
perfected with feverish haste . . . The H-bomb appears on the public horizon as a
probably attainable goal. Its accelerated development has been solemnly proclaimed by the
president. In short, according to Hiroshima Plus 20, by now, the military has at least
50, 000 nuclear warheads in storage and ready with a handful of people in charge of them.
In the words of James Conant, President of Harvard, The extreme dangers to mankind
inherent in the proposal wholly outweigh any military advantage. Has the atomic bomb
introduced the fear of total annihilation ...that has forever changed world politics?
That seems to be the main point of the argument against dropping the atomic bomb on
Japanese cities in August, 1945. Yet this judgment completely abstracts from the concrete
circumstances in which the decision was made-a world exhausted by war; an implacable,
cunning and ruthless enemy; hundreds of thousands of casualties in an allied invasion of
Japan; permanent strategic considerations; and the like. In other words, the reply fails
to meet the argument for dropping the bomb and changes the subject from the immediate
decision to the long-term consequences of the decision. But even if one grants the point
about fear of annihilation, it is not clear that the world has fundamentally changed nor
that the whole world is always in danger of nations from time immemorial. For example,
ancient Rome sacked Carthage, plowed it under and salted the earth. Medieval and modern
religious wars have annihilated millions. More recently, there was Hitler's genocidal
six-million-death final solution to the Jewish problem, and the Communists' ten of
millions of mass murders continue to this day. All this has been done without benefit of
nuclear power. Gen. MacArthur's comments came at the beginning of the atomic or nuclear
age, and while the source and the judgment deserve respect, experience has shown that
nuclear power in Western hands deterred a third world war and ultimately caused the
collapse of the greatest threat to world peace since World War II, namely, the Soviet
Union. But even during the much-decried arms race of the Cold War years, both East and
West refined their crude nuclear technology to suit the requirements of waging war, e.g.
targeting the enemy's missiles, aircraft and submarines, rather than putting all their
eggs in the nuclear annihilation basket. War is a terrible thing but the fear of
annihilation will curb even the greatest tyrants' bloodlust. In short, fear is part of
the human condition and those peaceful nations which learn to live with the destructive
potential of nuclear power are capable of great good. Great evil is more likely to be the
result of unchecked nuclear power in hands of lawless nations. As ever, peace and safety
depend upon military power being in the right hands.