atomic bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki book

Compare this with the results of two B-29 incendiary raids over Tokyo. At Nagasaki the fatal casualties were 45,000 and the area wrecked was considerably smaller than at Hiroshima because of the configuration of the city. At Hiroshima the atomic bomb killed about 80,000 people, pulverized about five square miles, and wrecked an additional ten square miles of the city, with decreasing damage out to seven or eight miles from the center. Here are some comparisons of the atomic bombing with conventional bombing. W as the use of the atomic bomb inhuman? All war is inhuman. Let some of the facts speak for themselves. From this background I believe, with complete conviction, that the use of the atomic bomb saved hundreds of thousands-perhaps several millions-of lives, both American and Japanese that without its use the war would have continued for many months that no one of good conscience knowing, as Secretary Stimson and the Chiefs of Staff did, what was probably ahead and what the atomic bomb might accomplish could have made any different decision. Some of the Japanese whom I consulted were my scientific and personal friends of long standing. Finally, I spent the first month after V-J Day in Japan, where I could ascertain at first hand both the physical and the psychological state of that country.

In this way I learned something of the invasion plans and of the sincere conviction of these best-informed officers that a desperate and costly struggle was still ahead. Then, shortly before Hiroshima, I became attached to General MacArthur in Manila, and lived for two months with his staff. While my role in the atomic bomb development was a very minor one, I was a member of the group called together by Secretary of War Stimson to assist him in plans for its test, use, and subsequent handling. I can therefore speak without doing so defensively. I had, perhaps, an unusual opportunity to know the pertinent facts from several angles, yet I was without responsibility for any of the decisions. It is easy now, after the event, to look back and say that Japan was already a beaten nation, and to ask what therefore was the justification for the use of the atomic bomb to kill so many thousands of helpless Japanese in this inhuman way furthermore, should we not better have kept it to ourselves as a secret weapon for future use, if necessary? This argument has been advanced often, but it seems to me utterly fallacious. He replied: 'We would have kept on fighting until all Japanese were killed, but we would not have been defeated,' by which he meant that they would not have been disgraced by surrender. I think the attack would have been made on such and such beaches.' 'Could you have repelled this landing?' we asked, and he answered: 'It would have been a very desperate fight, but I do not think we could have stopped you.' 'What would have happened then?' we asked. He replied: 'You would probably have tried to invade our homeland with a landing operation on Kyushu about November 1. We asked him what, in his opinion, would have been the next major move if the war had continued.

Truman responded to this article in the weeks after it was published.Ībout a week after V-J Day, I was one of a small group of scientists and engineers interrogating an intelligent, well-informed Japanese Army officer in Yokohama.

Atomic bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki book