Blog #74 – The atomic bomb
As of today, the United States has been the only nation to use an atomic weapon in war. I, for one, hope it stays that way because the newer bombs today are so much more powerful than the Hiroshima-type bomb (1000x more powerful, the hydrogen bomb is).
It is easy to look back some seventy years later and talk about what should have been done, what could have been done differently to save lives. Did almost 200,000 Japanese have to die in the two nuclear attacks? Morally, now, we can say that these attacks or any other kind of weapon of mass destruction should never be used. There were some back in 1945 who expressed reservations about the use of the bomb, but most, especially President Truman saw the bombs as a tool to end the war more quickly. Truman’s primary concern was saving American lives, and it’s safe to say, given the horrific death tolls from the Iwo Jima and Okinawa battles (where ten Japanese died for every one American on average), that Truman was also worried about the intense fighting that would have occurred had the US invaded Japan. Many more than 200,000 Japanese would have died in an invasion of the main islands of Japan.
Remembering the context of the time period, do you think President Truman made the right decision to use both bombs on Japan? In answering this, please use at least three examples from the article. “the Biggest Decision” to back up your opinion.
Minimum of 300 words. Due Wednesday, April 15 by class.
Click on link http://goo.gl/forms/jpfaOQl7bf to vote on which review day works best for you (I will pick the two most popular days).
I believe they shouldn’t have dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japanese were already in a bad position after America’s island hoping campaign. According to the portrait of The Biggest Decision the Japanese couldn’t stop the American forces. They suffered a great loss in planes and pilots. The most shocking statistic was that for every ten Japanese deaths there was one American that died. Japan was already on its last legs before the bomb was dropped anyways. Dropping the bomb was like kicking them when they were already down. The Decision to Drop the Bomb portrait said that Truman claimed that with dropping the bomb it saved America from an invasion killing 500,000 of our own. I personally believe that Japan didn’t have the power to inflict such casualties on America. The exaggerated number from Truman and the JWPC insignificant number of fatalities made many even more upset causing controversy of dropping the bomb. Based on the portrait, Japan just couldn’t surrender for it was against their sacred code of honor. They felt that their main purpose was to serve their emperor. America continuously pressured Japan and they themselves looked for answers in Russia. We didn’t give them quite of an option for all they knew was to fight. America was quite fearful for the Soviet Union to enter the war because they could’ve seized power and territory but with dropping the bomb we had done the same. Even without surrendering the Japanese wouldn’t have lasted long. I believe dropping a demonstration bomb to show how catastrophic it was would’ve made the Japanese question surrendering. I believe Japan had a hard decision like us but for them it was either to continue fighting or conditional surrender. Fighting was all they had known. It’s not right to kill thousands of non-American lives just to save our own and it should never be justified. Due to the decision of dropping the bomb it will sit on the American conscience for several years to come.
In my opinion, I think that the decision to drop the atomic bombs onto the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the wrong choice. To orchestrate an operation to kill over 200,000, and maim and ruin hundreds of thousands of innocent civilian lives along with obliterating countless buildings and nature, requires, in my mind, overwhelming information that inherently proves the alternative would ruin or take away more lives. In the case of the position America and the rest of the world were in at this point in World War II, there was just way too much speculation for the dropping of the atomic bombs to be reasonably justified. There is no way to determine that casualties would have been higher if the bombs were not dropped. The decision was just flat out rash. Instantaneously causing the amount of destruction the bombs induced just could not and should not have happened without substantial evidence proving it would save more lives, and that was just not present. Some may argue that the dropping of the bombs was justified as retaliation to the bombings at Pearl Harbor, or that it resulted in thousands of, specifically, American lives saved. The retaliation explanation should just be thrown out, as, although uncalled for, the death toll was minuscule compared to the death toll in Japan, and Pearl Harbor was also a military base rather than a city inhabited with almost 100% civilians. Yes the dropping of the bombs resulted in tons of American lives saved, but in my mind valuing American lives over the lives of any other human being is flat out wrong. One innocent life being taken is just as bad as any other innocent life being taken, and I really disagree with any other outlook on that topic. The dropping of the atomic bombs may have indeed caused less deaths than if we let the war play out, but the only problem is, we didn’t and still don’t know if that’s true or not.
The decision to use the two bombs on Japan was best for the nation because not only did it end the Pacific War, it prevented large numbers of Japanese citizens and American troops from losing their lives from a possible invasion by the U. S. on Japan. Japan was threatening the United States with their prepared high numbers of soldiers and prolonged the Pacific War by not agreeing to have an unconditional surrender. The first bomb, which attacked Hiroshima of Japan, was reasonable because the US had earlier warned Japan and gave them a chance to surrender unconditionally before the attack. The atomic bombs could’ve been prevented if Japan had surrendered because all the US wanted was a quick end to the Pacific War before more lives are sacrificed and wanted peace with Japan but all of the conditions the Japanese wanted, like keeping their political system and prewar empire, were too risky for the US because all dictators and empire ruling leadership lead to potential future wars. The second bomb on Nagasaki was also needed because many Japanese still didn’t believe in the disastrous power the US had on Japan because of the bombs. So without the second bomb, the first bomb wouldnt have had an impact as big as it was for Japan to agree on unconditional surrender. The number of casualties may have been lacking in accuracy but it represented how many lives that would’ve been lost if the US invaded Japan. If the estimates were accurate, the numbers would still be very high because both Japan and the US had prepared military supplies and troops that would have prolonged the war and eventually lead up to deaths more than the death toll from the bombs. The result was deaths in Japan(that would’ve been lost regardless of the bombs if they were invaded intead), the end of the Pacific War, and a ruthless US that will remain powerful. Therefore, I believe the use of the bombs were necessary in the well being of American soldiers and citizens and the citizens of Japan.
I believe that the decision to either drop the two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki or invade the mainland of Japan was a decision that had to be made between the best of two evils. I think Truman made the right decision by using the atomic bomb to end the war with Japan as soon as possible. Japan was making it quite clear that they were not having this war end without America giving them what they want. While the portrait brings up that Japan was “welcome” to a homeland invasion on their islands, Truman weighted the severity of the two decisions and chose the better of the two. Invading Japan became a not so good solution, and would have extended the war for much longer because the invasion of Japan wouldn’t be easy by any means. In the portrait, “The Biggest Decision: Why we had to drop the atomic bomb”, it was made clear that Japan was not open to just blatantly surrendering. They weren’t willing to give America what they wanted, an unconditional surrender. Maddox brings up the escalating threat of kamikazes and how Japan was willing to do anything to receive their requirements. Knowing how brutally and extensively the Japanese were fighting during the war, there would have been thousands more casualties than the atomic bombs inflicted on Japan. Japan started to look to Stalin and the Soviet Union for help with the issue with the US, but Stalin knew better than to get involved in the war in the Pacific. The bomb doesn’t seem like the morally right thing to do now that we’re looking back on it, but I see it as Truman trying to make the best of the terrible situation he was put in. The Manhattan Project had been going on for a bit, and he had that option of dropping these atomic bombs to bring a destructive end to this world war.
I agree with Truman’s decision to drop the bombs on Japan because it saved American lives and helped end the war faster. According to the article, “The Biggest Decision, Why we had to drop the Atomic bomb” Truman believed invading Japan would cost around 500,000 U.S. soldiers. The invasion of Kyushu would estimate 40,000 dead, 150,000 wounded, and 3,500 missing soldiers coming to a total of 193,500 casualties (pg. 245). That island of Kyushu is the very southern tip of Japan with is roughly ¼ or 1/3 of the island. Imagine the casualties that would pile up if we invaded the whole island. Along with American casualties the Japanese had more than 2,000,000 troops on the home island (pg. 243) that would fight till the death according to their sacred code of honor (pg. 245 picture). One invasion could lead to 500,000 American deaths, hundreds of thousands of Japanese deaths, a destroyed island, and more and more money. Dropping the bomb saved lives, approximately 200,000 died from the atomic bombs and roughly 500,000 soldiers (not counting Japanese deaths from invasion) would have died from an invasion. According to the estimates dropping the atomic bombs saved about 300,000 lives (not counting Japanese soldiers in the invasion). According to the article the Japanese did not want unconditional surrender. They even went to the Russians to talk about peace talks with America which would let Japan keep their prewar empire (pg. 247). Invading Japan would have taken months and months to complete and would need lots of non-existing money to fund. Dropping the atomic bombs on Japan saved months of fighting and shortened the war months. Truman made the right decision to drop the atomic bombs because it saved hundreds of thousands of U.S. and Japanese soldiers and civilian lives. On top of saving lives it shortened the war by months and forced the Japanese to surrender.
I agree with the fact that Truman had made the right decision to use both atomic bombs in Japan to end the Pacific War. In the portrait The Biggest Decision: Why We had to Drop the Atomic Bomb it states what Truman wrote in one of his memoirs in which he claimed that using the bombs would save 500,000 American lives. Truman’s top military advisors didn’t argue against the estimate and the use of the bombs which was undoubtedly reasonable considering the subsequent Japanese troop buildups on Kyushu. The Kyushu operation alone estimated to be about 389, 859 battle and non-battle casualties. With those statics and the the way the Japanese fought with no signs of surrender I would have to agree with dropping the bombs in order to reduce further significant amounts of casualties that would have occurred in the next invasion. I could argue that the use of the second bomb was barbaric but I must agree with what Maddox conveys in the portrait: more than one bomb was necessary because Japanese hard-liners minimized the first explosion as some sort of natural catastrophe, meaning they had no plans of giving up. The Japanese minister of war refused to even admit that the first bomb was even atomic. The portrait also states that by the time the first bomb had fell, ULTRA indicated that there were 560,000 troops in southern Kyushu (the actual figure was closer to 900,000), and projections for November 1 placed the number 680,000. If I were Marshall I would’ve suggested the use of the bombs instead of the invasion too to MacArthur. Yet, I suppose America could’ve offered conditional surrender such as retaining the emperorship since the emperor was prerequisite to the Japanese polity. Innocent civilians shouldn’t have been vaporized by the bomb and erased from the world in a matter of seconds. In the portrait Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson empathetically said, “…the bomb would kill thousands of civilians…it would shock Japan into surrendering and save thousands of Americans lives.” Truman had a duty to consider the soldiers that may have died from combat and even American prisoners of war, and he chose the to end a bloody war that most likely could’ve ended in more bloodshed if the bombs had not been dropped. It was a tough decision but he chose the best out of the two.
I think that America should have dropped at leas one atom bomb. I think this for two main reasons: Dropping at least one bomb would save more lives than lost because of the bomb, and dropping at least one bomb would help prevent a future nuclear war.
I think that dropping at least one atomic bomb would save lives because, as Robert James Maddox writes in “The Biggest Decision: Why We Had to Drop the Atomic Bomb”, “Most Japanese Soldier refused to surrender – it violated their sacred code of honor – and fought to the death” (Maddox 122). If America had to invade Japan, the Japanese soldiers would fight to the death, and would suffer many casualties. American soldiers fighting these un-surrendering Japanese soldiers would also suffer higher casualties. Truman, who thought that an invasion of Japan “…would cost approximately 40,000 dead, 150,000 wounded, and 3,500 missing in action for a total of 193,500 casualties,” (Maddox 245) could not sacrifice so many American lives to invade Japan, especially at the end of such a long and gruesome war. I think that dropping the atomic bomb was necessary “…to end a bloody war that would become far bloodier had invasion proved necessary” (Maddox 249). I think that Truman, to save more Japanese lives, could have dropped the first bomb not on a city. If Japan did not surrender after that show of force, I would drop another bomb closer to a big city. If they did not surrender after two atomic bombs, then I would give Japan a month’s notice, then bomb a city. I think that this strategy would minimize Japanese civilian casualties as a result of the atomic bombs.
I think that dropping the atomic bombs helped prevent an atomic war because it showed people the devastation and suffering that an atomic bomb would cause. This would have the effect of making people a lot more hesitant of dropping a bomb in the future, especially in a war where both sides have atomic bombs, where both countries want to be the first to bomb the other in order to get ahead.
Although I think that dropping the atomic bomb was cruel and inhumane, I do believe that dropping it was a necessary event in ending war with the Japanese. At this point in the war, the United States would only accept unconditional surrender from the Japanese, and the Japanese would not give the Americans that without one final beating, this is exactly what the bomb provided. In the article, “The Biggest Decision: Why We Had to Drop the Atomic Bomb,” by Robert Maddox, the reasons in which these actions occurred were laid out and proved that the bomb need to be dropped. One reason given by Maddox was that reports from Japan showed that they were not going to accept unconditional surrender until we had completely beaten them. There were also alleged reports talking of an invasion. An invasion of the Japanese could kill hundreds of thousands of American citizens and many Japanese citizens as well. Although the bombs drooped on the islands caused many Japanese casualties, it saved many American lives and had a lower death toll that an invasion would have. Another reason given by Maddox was that if we had sent our troops to invade these islands that many would not come back alive. Therefore, an invasion of the Japanese islands would accomplish nothing but American deaths. Finally, Maddox claims that the Japanese soldiers were not going to break their code of honor by surrendering themselves. These men were willing to do whatever it took to save their country, thus we needed a quick plan to get as of the war as soon as possible. If President Truman had not decided to drop the bombs on the islands and waited them out, the war not only could have caused many more casualties but also had latest many more years. These reasons and many more are the reason I believe that even though the bomb was inhume and cruel, that it was the correct decision to end the war.
I think Dropping the bomb was the right thing to do because truly seemed like one of america’s options. According to the portrait article Japan refused to partake in unconditional surrender which is what America wanted, however Japan wanted to attempt to make peace agreements. Because we were not going to do that Japan tried to cling on to Stalin an the soviets. to their dismay Stalin did not want to make peace agreements because they didn’t want to g involved in the pacific war. Even if the Soviets gave us Japan’s pace terms or is they asked for a peace treaty, I still don’t think this would have made much of a difference at all. I simply don’t think we would accept their offer.Japan lost our trust last time when a peace treaty was signed and then a bomb was roped on pearl harbor not much later. WE did have another choice, we could have invaded two islands, Kyushu and Honshu. But we decided against it for good reason. This plan was estimated to kill 193,500 people not to mention Truman’s semi outlandish estimation of 500,000 American deaths. Another reason why dropping the bomb was necessary is because Japan would not surrender to is not matter what. When we dropped the first bomb Japan realized what we had but still thought they could win and wants to fight. After the second bomb Japan fully understood that we could demolish their country with our bombs and airplanes. The bomb was the best way to end this war, Without it Japan may have gone on your years resulting in even more deaths.
Blog #74
Given the time period that we were in and the pressure on President Truman I believe that dropping the atomic bomb was the right thing to do. Truman wrote in his memoir that using the atomic bomb would have prevented an invasion that would have cost 500,000 lives. Now critics today believe that the number is not accurate and were used as a stunt by Truman to get more support for dropping the atomic bomb. This info is from in the Portrait: The Biggest Decision. Truman was under so much pressure to use the bomb and end the war. He had just been sworn into office and he himself said he had little knowledge about what was going on. Truman also had to watch out for the Soviet Union that was still in this war. They were very dangerous at the time. Some believe that the bomb was used to show “atomic diplomacy” towards the Soviets. Truman had all the support from his generals including MacArthur and Nimitz. MacArthur received a notification from the President days before Hiroshima that said bomb use was imminent. He later responded with a lecture about the future of atomic warfare fair and even with Hiroshima. Nimitz wanted a bomb strike earlier then when it was supposed to happen. This indicates that he was all for the idea. President Truman may be under a lot of scrutiny for the rest of his life for dropping that bomb but if you put yourself in his shoes you most likely would have done the same thing. You have just been sworn into office and you don’t know what is going on. Your army generals are telling you to go for it and don’t even think about it. Plus you have your country at war thousands of men dyeing and you can end it all with a simple push of a button.
I believe that Truman did make the right decision in dropping the bombs. Though I do not like how much destruction it caused, I think it was necessary for our involvement in the war at that time in U.S. history. If we would have chosen the alternative, which was to invade instead of the bombs, the loss of life on the American side would have been much greater. As it said in the portrait, it was estimated that the invasion would have cost 500,000 American lives, and even though that number was blown out of proportion and exaggerated, there would still be more casualties on the American side if we chose to invade instead of using the atomic bombs. Another reason I think the first bomb was necessary was because it ended the war faster than if we would have invaded from the coast. In the portrait it talks about the Japanese “sacred code of honor’ which means they would fight to the death. For the Americans this means a lot more loss of life and the fighting would go on for a long time. Truman didn’t want to have to keep sending more and more troops in so his alternative was to end the war as quickly as possible using the bombs. While a lot of people believe the first bomb was more necessary than the second, I believe that if the second bomb was necessary for ending the war than it should have been used. The portrait talks about how some historians believe the second bomb was unnecessary and ruthless, records show otherwise. It says that the Japanese minister of war didn’t even acknowledge that the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima was atomic, but after Nagasaki, he realized that it was atomic and told people that the Americans had many more to use against them. So that shows that along with the first bomb, the second was also necessary to show Japan that we meant business when we said we were ending the war.
The usage of atomic weapons by President Truman against the Japanese during World War Two was the best worst option available. Alternate methods of ending the war would have allowed the Japanese to remain a threat to the USA or they would have caused hundreds of thousands of American soldiers to die. In the final stages of the war, Japan was actively trying to get a mediator for peace discussions. A Japanese prince and other officials sought to use the Soviet Union as the mediator. The USSR was the only superpower who was not an ally of the USA at the time. The Soviet Union declined to be a mediator when then they heard the Japanese demands. Japan want to retain their emperor, colonies, and current political system. America only wanted unconditional surrender. The USSR realized any form of peace talks would be futile because each side was too stubborn to compromise. The original technique to defeat the Japanese was through invasion. Invading a country such as Japan possess many difficulties. First, you have to bring in all troops and materials through boats or planes. Secondly, the mentality of the Japanese was so extreme that surrender or defeat was not in their vocabulary. Almost every able bodied person on the islands of Japan was willing to fight to the death so that Americans would lose. Iwa Jima is a good example. Japanese would through themselves at the American line so much that 10 Japanese died for every one American. This would have made invading the islands of Japan very costly in terms of human lives lost. Atomic weapons presented Truman a tool that could easily end the war with no cost to American life. Additionally, if Japan had not surrendered after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the USA could have used them to aide and invasion.
I believe that’s dropping the atomic bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima was the correct choice. This is because it immediately ended the war in the Pacific region. Due to fear and devastation the bombs brought, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally and brought a swift end to the war. In the long run, the bombs saved the millions of American and Japanese lives that would have been lost had we gone through with our invasion in the Japan mainland. It also saved us from having to spend the money that would been needed to fund a full scale assault. It also was important to today’s peace, the term coined nuclear peace. Because of the demonstration of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, people immediately became hesitant to use it themselves. We must ask ourselves, if we hadn’t dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, would other nations be as hesitant to use them today? The dropping of the bomb that day practically stopped all large scale conflict that could have happened in the recent past and present. I do, however, believe that dropping the bomb was morally incorrect. Murder is murder, no matter how it’s hashed, but it was done with the right intentions. So I’m at a bypass as to whether I really stand behind the bombing. I know that if the same situation arose today, I would be against it. With all of the new nuclear weapons, such an action could have severe and unchangeable consequences.
I personally feel that there is no “right and wrong” in this situation. Truman had to make a very difficult decision and either choice he made was going to end up with lots of people losing their lives. As someone who thinks violence should only be used as a last resort (and whose biggest fear is nuclear bombs), I don’t like that Truman dropped an atomic bomb, but I understand why it was done. There is a very big difference between liking and understanding. When making the decision, Truman wanted to save the most amount of lives possible, American and Japanese. He knew that the Japanese were not going to surrender because of the importance of honor in their society and they believed that not fighting would be the biggest dishonor. He knew that the Japanese would fight to the last man. Truman was stuck between a rock and a hard place, drop the bomb and kill thousands of civilians or do a land invasion and kill thousands of Americans and civilians. To help him make the decision he looked to The Report of the Joint War Plans Committee who told him that there would be about 193,500 wounded, missing or dead from invading the Japanese homeland. So from Truman’s perspective, the only way to save the most lives would be to drop the bomb. We know now that the facts told to Truman are not entirely, or even remotely accurate, but Truman thought that they were and that, I think, is important to remember when discussing the bomb because it gives more of an explanation of why, even though we find the dropping of the bomb unreasonable today, it seemed reasonable then. In a nutshell, I think the dropping of the bomb was immoral and terrifying but I understand the reasoning behind why it was done.
I believe that Truman made the correct decision to drop the bomb on Japan, the bomb, although criticized for its staggering amount of “effectiveness” at pushing for Japanese surrender was estimated to be less deadly and more effective and getting the Japanese to surrender than an assault on the homeland which was approximated from 200-500 thousand casualties on the American side alone. The two bombs dropped on Japan swiftly ended the war saving 100’s of thousands of lives for both sides, an assault on the mainland would have resulted in an awesome amount of casualties, far more than the total of deaths as a result from the two bombs. As said in the article, there was believed to be approx. 500,000 troops in Kyushu through MAGIC radio intercepts but the actual number of Japanese soldiers was close to 900,000 extremely passionate soldiers ready to die for their country, and as shown from their devastating kamikaze and ruthless fighting style the Americans only had a small taste of what could become if the invasion proceeded as planned. Because most Japanese soldiers fought by the “sacred code of honor” pushing inland in an invasion would be slow, tedious and would have been destructive in all aspects. And for those who say that the bomb should have been dropped and a assault on the homeland was a better option consider that the Japanese army would have had millions at their disposal and although it might not have been so suddenly dramatic like the atomic bombs, it would have killed more civilians over the course of however long that it required to secure Japan. Overall, although the use of the atomic bombs seem over excessively harsh and makes Truman look like he rushed and made an incorrect decision he manage to end a war that would have continued on for plenty more months and quite possibly years and would have been a bloodier than history remembers it to be today.
I believe that Truman should have used the atomic bomb and it was a great success in which is stopped the battle and the immediate stop helped save more lives and if he had not sent the bomb then people would have still been endangered. I also do believe that there could’ve been another way he could have talk to more people and got other decisions and maybe used more fire bombs and things that would not have lasted as long as the atomic bomb for such as the radiation that that harmed their crops and water supply and it is also still not helping and destroying a little bit of everyone lives today. Hopefully this will never happen hopefull hopefully this will never happen again because of the harsh wars that we have been in in the future and I know that there have been more dangerous bombs so she’s the hydrogen bomb that will cause much more damage than the atomic bomb and I also believe that since Truman use this bomb it made us very notified in informed about how dangerous a bath could be. If you had not use the bomb we may have used the atomic bomb another future wars and could have harmed more lives throughout the years after the war. The radiation was the most powerful thing in the atomic bomb that causes people to die not only during the war but many years after the war. Is why I believe it is a bad thing that we had used this bomb but is also good thing that brought the war to immediate stop so we could start a new beginning. This was one of Truman’s greatest decisions that helped America and everyone within it. I hope that nothing like this happens again but if it does I hope we have a president they could make a right decision for America.
I believe that Truman made the right choice in dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At the time theJapanese were willing to endure horrific losses to defeat the United States, and was never going to accept unconditional surrender. Inanition, the Japanese government was a puppet of the military. The atomic bombs had to be dropped for three reasons. The first is that, although it killed upward of 200,000 people, it saved many times that, both American and Japanese. The Japanese had resorted to the idea of Kamikaze planes, which meant suicide missions into American ships and bases/. The second reason was to end the fighting. America had seen almost five years of war after twenty three years of isolationism. More than 4 million American soldiers died in the fighting, and we were tired of war. The final reason was to show the raw power that atomic bombs had. The world needed to know how destructive they could be in order to appreciate the magnitude of dropping one. Because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, no nuclear bomb will be launched again. If a country decided to launch one, it would be obliterated within minutes. The dropping of the bombs was the final major act of war, because no war on that scale can ever be fought again. Truman made the right call to drop the bombs, because he ended World War 2 and all other wars of that size.
I think dropping both bombs was the wrong decision. It wasn’t just self defense. We went above and beyond defending our country and instead orchestrated a cruel attack on Japan. Japan, according to the article, Japan wasn’t at all prepared for an attack of this size and destruction level. Perhaps dropping one bomb would have been okay. Certainly not the right thing to do, but it would be doing what would be thought of as the right thing for our country’s safety and protection. However, dropping both bombs was, as I said earlier, cruel. Its the best word I can use to describe it. We’ve all seen the horrifying pictures of young children having their clothes disintegrated off by the blasts. It brings questions of our country’s morality to mind. The numbers predicted by Truman in the portrait were off. He predicted that it would save hundreds of thousands of American lives, which it did, but not to the extent that Truman originally estimated. Also, Truman accounted for some lives being saved because by dropping the bombs we would be preventing an attack from the Japanese. Personally, I don’t believe that the Japanese were planning an attack. Based on what rhe article said, they weren’t prepared as an army to force an attack sizable enough to hurt the American forces. I think Truman was unsure of the Japanese’s plans, so he wanted to scare them. I’m sure he thought that it was better to be safe than sorry. While I agree with this mentality, I don’t agree with the way he excuted it. His actions were tyrant-esq and not thoroughly thought over. Overall, I think the decision was made too quickly, and without proper thought. According to the article, there were many things overlooked by Truman and his staff, and that caused a more than devastating effect on Japan.