NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote
As I thin the President had surely two reasons for using these new and, as it turned out, enormously destructive weapons. 1. The way in which the Japanese armed forces, principally the Japanese army, had conducted World War II. The barbarities of the war had their beginnings in Japan's war against China, which began in 1937. That same year, when Japanese troops occupied Nanking, the human cost was extraordinary: Between 100, 000 and 200, 000 people were killed by the occupying troops for no reason at all except what may only be described as blood lust. 2. The "sneak attack"-without a declaration of war-by Japanese carrier planes upon Pearl Harbor resulted in the deaths of 1, 000 men on the battleship U.
S. S. Arizona, which sank so rapidly that the sailors sleeping below deck could not escape, and nearly 1, 500 other deaths aboard ships in the harbor, on the surrounding airfields, and among civilians caught in the machine-gun fire and exploding bombs. 3. At the beginning April 9, 1942, 72, 000 exhausted Filipino and American defenders of the Bataan peninsula were marched for four days a distance of 5 O miles without food and water, while Japanese soldiers shot or bayoneted hundreds of stragglers.
All of the above, moreover, were instances of maltreatment of only American prisoners; these instances were multiplied into the tens of thousands when one considered British, Dutch, and other Allied prisoners taken mostly in the war's first months at Hongkong, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, and in Burma. Japan's conduct of the war, in violation of the Geneva conventions drawn up in a series of international meetings but affixed most recently in international law during the mid- 1920 s, (The provisions of Part II cover the whole of the populations of the countries in conflict, without any adverse distinction based, in particular, on race, nationality, religion or political opinion, and are intended to alleviate the sufferings caused by war... ) was akin to Nazi Germany's treatment of Soviet prisoners during the war and of the Holocaust itself, the genocides that came out of Germany's appalling racial policies under the Nazi regime. The invasion of Iwo proved extremely costly: 6, 200 U. S. Marines died on that small island that was so valuable as an airbase for B- 29 s involved in the bombing of Japan. Some of the bombers that were unable to make their runs or upon return were crippled by antiaircraft or other damage or mechanical failures, were able to land there.
The American preponderance over the Japanese defenders at Iwo Jima was four to one. The invasion of the large island of Okinawa, which was 350 miles south of the southernmost home island of Kyushu, proved twice as costly: 13, 000 died, one-third of them aboard ship as a result of the dozens of kamikaze attacks. The pilots of these outmoded planes, which often had no ability to get back to their bases, sacrificed themselves and their planes as bombs. In the single most costly kamikaze attack (on the big carrier U.
S. S. Franklin), the cost in U. S.
deaths was 1, 000 men, and the attack turned the ship into a flaming near-wreck, useless for any further campaigns. By mid-June 1945, the huge question in the minds of American commanders and members of the Truman administration was whether it was possible to persuade the Japanese government and military to surrender. The Japanese military (though clearly beaten) was not willing to surrender. If the decision could have been made by Japan's civilian leaders or even the Japanese people, the war probably would have come quickly to an end, but unfortunately the decision was not theirs: It lay in the hands of the military, and particularly in the hands of army leaders. (By this time the Japanese Navy had virtually ceased to exist, almost all its ships having become either unserviceable or having been sunk. ) The struggle, in the early summer of 1945, could not be waged in the manner of past struggles-through man to man clashes-but had to be fought in the twentieth-century manner with weapons, did not concern the Japanese military leaders. They would fight with whatever lay at hand. And the defensive weapons they did have, which was an array of artillery pieces and about 5, 000 planes that could be used as kamikazes, were bound to cost the attackers heavily, as on Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
By mid-June American military leaders were becoming fearful of what their military services might be up against, and calculations of a tentative sort were made, all of them frightful in their implications. A joint war plans committee, army and navy, came up with an estimate that 25, 000 men would be killed in an invasion of Kyushu on two fronts; 40, 000 might die if an invasion on a single front was followed by invasion of the island of Honshu, on which Tokyo was located; and 46, 000 deaths were estimated as a result of a two-front invasion of Kyushu followed by an invasion of Honshu. A more likely figure for casualties was advanced at this meeting by President Truman's personal chief of staff, Admiral William D. Leahy, who said that he thought casualties in an attack upon Kyushu and Honshu would be about the same as on Okinawa-that is, about 35 percent of the U.
S. attacking force. During this discussion the president remarked his horror at the possibility that an invasion would amount to another Okinawa from one end of Japan to the other. Any careful contemplation of the cost of an invasion would have shown a horrendous number of American casualties, as the attendees at the June 13 meeting knew, even though they did not make their points - even Leahy failed to say precisely the casualties he had in mind - as carefully as they should have.
If Leahy had extrapolated for the force the U. S. Army was proposing to put on Kyushu, he would have related a figure for casualties that would have been more than one-third of 767, 000, that is, more than 250, 000 casualties. And if one calculated the deaths from the casualties it would have been (figuring that the American troop strength on Okinawa had been as high as 150, 000, with deaths running to 13, 000, as mentioned) five times the Okinawa figure, which meant 65, 000.
All this, then, was the calculus as American officials, from the president on down, sought single-mindedly to save the lives of U. S. soldiers and sailors during the crucial days and weeks in the summer of 1945. As one may well imagine, they were willing to take almost any measure to end what had become a fight to the finish against the forces of Imperial Japan.
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. I'm sure they will not do that, but we will have given them the chance. It is certainly a good thing for the world that Hitler's crowd or Stalin's did not discover this atomic bomb. It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful. Despite of all this facts, only chemists and biologist could understand the real dangerous of atomic bomb.
Dr. Leo Szilard, Hungarian-born physicist who helped persuade President Roosevelt to launch the A-bomb project and who had a major share in it. In 1945, however, he was a key figure among the scientists opposing use of the bomb. Later he turned to biophysics, and this year was awarded the Einstein medal for "outstanding achievement in natural sciences. " In his interview his said it would be immoral to use them against the civilian population. We lost the moral argument with which, right after the war, we might have perhaps gotten rid of the bomb. The external injuries caused to the human body by the blast wind were all secondary injuries due to flying debris, especially glass splinters (60 %).
Some people suffered hundreds of cuts from small splinter while others lost the mobility of limbs when larger splinters severed major nerves. In some cases, grass splinters even penetrated the skull and lodged in the brain. The next most frequent external injuries were bruises (20 %) and contusions (12 %). Although fractures were rare (2 %), some victims suffered paralysis due to spinal injuries. Everybody understood that it was really terrible weapon cause that had fatal consequences. The USA didnt conform to the rules of Nuremberg Principles.
It was really crimes against peace and crimes against humanity namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian populations, before or during the war; or prosecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated. On the meeting of the Committee on Political and Social Problems the Chairman James Frank add that If the government should decide in favor of an early demonstration of nuclear weapons it will then have the possibility to take into account the public opinion of this country and of the other nations before deciding whether these weapons should be used in the war against Japan. In this way, other nations may assume a share of the responsibility for such a fateful decision. To sum up, we urge that the use of nuclear bombs in this war be considered as a problem of long-range national policy rather than military expediency, and that this policy be directed primarily to the achievement of an agreement permitting an effective international control of the means of nuclear warfare. The vital importance of such a control for our country is obvious from the fact that the only effective alternative method of protecting this country, of which we are aware, would be a dispersal of our major cities and essential industries. Worked Cite: web Geneva Convention IV, August 12, 1949 Nuremberg Principles, August 8, 1945 Resolution on Nuclear Weapons, United Nations, November 24, 1961 Report of the Committee on Political and Social Problems Manhattan Project "Metallurgical Laboratory" University of Chicago, June 11, 1945 (The Franck Report) Setting the Test Date, July 2, 1945 A PETITION TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES Leo Szilard, Interview: President Truman Did Not Understand Harry S.
Truman, Diary, July 25, 1945
Free research essays on topics related to: leo szilard, iwo jima, atomic bomb, u s s, political and social
Research essay sample on U S S Political And Social
