In fact, Truman mentions this in his memoirs, recalling his worry that, should American atomic tests fail, the Soviet ground invasion of Japan would precipitate the Japanese surrender, thus amplifying Soviet influence in East Asia. There is no truth to the common argument that the United States military had to use nuclear bombs on Japanese civilians to end World War II.Īmerican leaders at the time understood well that they had other options. Did the US have to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the war? In this short primer, Jacobin briefly describes the attacks, their aftermath, and the continuing relevance of nuclear weapons on the global stage today. Often they are dismissed as acts of simple naivety - as if President Truman were unaware of the murderous potential of his Space Age super-weapons - or alternatively as an act of wanton callousness, evacuating these events of their political content. Perhaps because of this lingering shame, they are too often left understudied. The nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain two of the most shameful moments in US history. Therefore, they have to take this into consideration in their calculus.” It was a brutal show of force that announced the arrival of the new American superpower and helped establish the stakes of the Cold War.Īs a Defense Department official later explained, “the Soviets know that this terrible weapon has been dropped on human beings twice in history and it was an American president who dropped it both times. The United States political and military establishment unleashed all the destructive power of the most potent weapons ever created on two civilian populations of little strategic importance. It was one of the greatest wartime atrocities ever perpetrated. Between 90,000 and 170,000 people died in that attack. The first time had occurred three days before, when the United States dropped a uranium gun-type atomic bomb on Hiroshima. It was only the second time an atomic weapon had been used in warfare. Seventy years ago today, the United States detonated a plutonium implosion-type atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Nagasaki, killing between 40,000 and 80,000 people.
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