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Christian Higbee
March 6, 2015
4B
English II Honors
The Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Nearing the end of World War II, the United States of America had to make an extremely
difficult decision. This decision would later on change the world forever. America had to decide
whether or not to drop the atomic bombs “Little Boy” and “Fat Man” on the Japanese cities of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since then, there has been a drastic amount of controversy surrounding
the decision. The bomb should have been dropped on the cities because if the US had not used
the bombs, there was no guarantee on whether or not the war would have ever come to an end.
On the morning of December 7th, 1941, the United States of America was plunged into
World War II. 360 Japanese planes dive-bombed the United States’ Pearl Harbor on the
Hawaiian island of Oahu. Pearl Harbor is on the southernmost side of Oahu. The attack lasted
roughly two hours, beginning at 7:45 A.M. and ending at approximately 9:45 A.M. The United
States was completely unprepared for the attack. Service men were still eating breakfast, just
waking up, or simply, still sleeping. Japan sent no warning of attack to the United States and it
came with a cost. The attack killed 2,403 Americans, with 63 of these deaths being Hawaiian
civilians. 1,178 Americans were injured by the attack on Pearl Harbor and 35 of the Americans
injured were civilians residing near Pearl Harbor (George). In comparison, for every one death of
a Japanese bomber, at least 37 Americans died with him. Only 65 Japanese soldiers were killed
in the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, a single Japanese soldier was apprehended.
The United States, aside from the loss of lives, also lost many ships in the attack. The
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U.S.S. California, Arizona, Maryland, Nevada, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and West
Virginia were positioned in Battleship Row. The Arizona, California, Oklahoma, and West
Virginia all suffered severe damage and sunk. The Arizona was hit by an armor-piercing torpedo
and exploded. 1,103 men died on the USS Arizona when it sank after being hit by the powerful
torpedo (Rosenberg). The day after the attack, the USA declared war on Japan and joined the
fight. This attack on Pearl Harbor was a leading cause to the atomic bomb being built.
Soon after the attack, the USA started work on the atomic bomb (The Independance Hall
Association ). In 1939, before the attack on Hiroshima, Albert Einstein sent a letter to the
president of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, urging him to look into trying to build
the atomic bomb before Nazi Germany could accomplish such a feat (Hanford Department of
Energy). Soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt recalled the letter that Einstein sent to
him 20 years earlier. Roosevelt immediately started to assign men to make the atomic bomb that
would be dropped on Hiroshima and, later, Nagasaki. This was the start of the Manhattan
Project, which was the code name for the task of creating, testing, and, eventually, using the
atomic bomb. Roosevelt assigned certain men to work on the bomb. These men include: Robert
Oppenheimer, Arthur Holly Compton, Philip Hauge Abelson, Ernest Orlando Lawrence, Harold
C. Urey, Leslie Groves, Vannevar Bush (Encyclopedia Britannica). After 4 years of constructing
and perfecting, the team was ready to test their first atomic bomb. It was tested in a desert in
New Mexico on July 16th, 1945. This test was thereafter known as the “Trinity Test”. Later, in an
interview with the leader of the Manhattan Project, Robert Oppenheimer, quotes Hindu scripture.
He says “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds” (Oppenheimer). The successful test
of the atomic bomb in the New Mexican desert lead to a day that changed the world forever.
Once President Harry S. Truman had given the order to drop the bomb on Japan, the U.S.
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began selecting cities to be possible targets for the atomic bomb. These Japanese cities include
Niigata, Yokohama, Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Kokura. The Enola Gay was a B-29 bomber that was
sent over Hiroshima and Kokura, the original target for the atomic bomb “Fat Man”, to drop the
two atomic bombs. On August 6th, 1945, the bomber left the island of Tinian headed for
Hiroshima. At 8:15 on August 6th, “Little Boy” was dropped from the Enola Gay on Hiroshima.
The bomb killed 60,000 to 80,000 Japanese civilians instantaneously. Roughly 100,000 more
Japanese men, women, and children died from burns or radiation sickness after the dropping of
the bomb. The Enola Gay then made its way to Kokura, the original second choice for the atomic
bomb; it was clouded over by smoke and fog and, therefore, was spared. The Enola Gay
proceeded farther south into the airs over Nagasaki and dropped the second bomb, “Fat Man”, on
August 9th at 9:15; this happened three days after the bombing of Hiroshima. 40,000 people in
Nagasaki were killed instantly and were followed by another 40,000 deaths from burns and
radiation sickness from the atomic bomb (George). Although the dropping of the bomb killed
thousands of people, hundreds of thousands more would have died if we were forced to invade
the island of Japan (Crane). Theodore Van Kirk, the navigator of the Enola Gay was interviewed
about the subject of dropping the atomic bomb and was asked whether or not he regretted the
mission of dropping the first and last atomic bombs on Japan. He answered simply, “I regret that
we had to do it, but I think we had to do it in order to end the war with a minimum loss of life”
(Van Kirk). Van Kirk also stated if he had to drop the bomb again, he would. Dropping the
atomic bomb saved lives. More people would have been killed if the United States had to invade
Japan, according to Van Kirk.
If the U.S. had not used the atomic bombs on the two cities on the island of Japan, we
most likely would have had to invade Japan from the sea. Albert Einstein said in an interview,
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"Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in developing an atomic bomb, I would have
done nothing.” (Einstein) If we had never started the Manhattan Project, then we would have had
to invade Japan through the coast and that invasion would have cost both the United States and
Japan more lives than those taken by the bombs. This invasion would have been one of the most
dangerous tasks Americans would have to overcome to win the war. Japanese soldiers guarded
basically every inch of the Japanese coastline. If the American soldiers had to invade Japan
through its coast, both sides would have lost countless men. This being said, the atomic bomb
“Little Boy” saved lives in Japan. Most likely, fewer people died from the bombing than from a
coastal invasion from the U.S. A week after V-J Day, which is the day that the Japanese
surrendered and World War II came to an end, a Japanese soldier from Yokohama was captured
and interrogated by a group of American scientists and engineers. After being asked what would
have happened if the Americans had not dropped the bomb and invaded the coast instead, the
Japanese soldier stated, “We would have kept on fighting until all Japanese were killed, but we
would not have been defeated” (Compton). This shows that even the Japanese soldiers knew that
less Japanese citizens were killed by the atomic bombs than they would have been had we
invaded the coasts.
Although there are many reasons that justify bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there are
an equal number of reasons to support not using the bombs. Innocent Japanese civilians did
suffer greatly from the atomic attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One woman recalls the day
that the bomb was dropped. Tomiko Morimoto was a schoolgirl at the time the U.S. dropped the
bomb. In an interview with the Voice of America, she mentions haunting spectacles of the
destruction. She says, “I thought the Americans were going to burn us to death. And we kept
running. And fire was coming out right behind us..." (Morimoto). Some of the sights she
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describes are unforgettable. She says that while walking to try and find her parents, she saw a
Japanese soldier burned onto his horse, dead. People were laying, sitting, and even standing dead
in the streets. She later mentions that her mother was found a week after the dropping of the
bomb underneath the debris of the building she worked at. Morimoto prayed that her mother died
instantly, painlessly. The atomic bombs were devastating, but these same spectacles that
Morimoto describes can be easily compared to the fire bombings. Firebombs are not as big of a
controversy as the atomic bombs, but they can compare destructively. Collectively, the
firebombing raids on Japan killed over 185,000 civilians, nearly 20,000 more civilians than were
killed by the atomic bomb (Asia-Pacific Journal) These firebombing attacks could have gone on
forever had we not dropped the atomic bombs. More people could have died if we kept attacking
with firebombs. The atomic bombs killed less people than the fire bombings and brought the war
to an end faster than the raids did.
People who believe that the bomb was unnecessary could also make the argument that the
Japanese weren’t given enough time between the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to react to
“Little Boy” and surrender (Dietrich). There was no guarantee that Japan would have
surrendered if we had just bombed Hiroshima. During World War II, Japan was a very persistent
country and they very well may have never surrendered, at least not until every Japanese soldier
was killed.
If one were to think of the bomb droppings as isolated instances without considering the
context of the whole war, they wouldn’t be for the bombings. However, as previously mentioned,
the bombing all in all did most likely save the lives of over 100,000 American and Japanese
soldiers. Long term, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki gave the world a glimpse of the
destruction of atomic weapons and showed the world that they should never be used. Something
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of such power should never have been created. The bombs ended World War II and saved more
lives than they destroyed. There is no way to tell whether or not the Japanese would’ve ever
stopped fighting if we didn’t drop the bomb. They were justified, should have been used on the
two cities, and should never be used again.
The U.S. was justified in dropping the atomic bomb on the Japanese cities in World War
II. It brought the war to an end with a minimal amount of life lost. If the United States hadn’t
dropped the bombs, we would have been forced to invade the island of Japan from the seas
and/or continue firebombing the country, killing more and more people, eventually exceeding the
amount of lives lost using the atomic bombs. The atomic bombs saved the lives of many
Japanese civilians and soldiers and was, therefore, necessary.
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Works Cited
Asia-Pacific Journal. "The Firebombing of Tokyo." Japan Focus IX.3 (2011).
Compton, Karl. "If the Atomic Bomb Had Not Been Used." The Atlantic (1946).
Crane, Conrad. "Nuclear Bomb on Hiroshima." n.d. World War II History.
<ww2history.com/key_moments/Pacific/Nuclear_bomb_on_hiroshima>.
Dietrich, Bill. "The Seattle Times." 1995. The Seattle Times Company.
<old.seattletimes.com/special/trinity/>.
Einstein, Albert. EInstein, the Man who Started it All Newsweek Magazine. 10 March 1947.
Encyclopedia Britannica. "Encyclopedia Britannica." 29 October 2014.
<www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/362098/Manhattan-Project>.
Hanford Department of Energy. Department of Energy. 30 July 2014. E-Gov.
<www.hanford.gov/page.cfm/Famous/Einstein>.
Morimoto, Tomiko. Hiroshima Survivor Recalls Day Atomic Bomb was Dropped Voice of
America. 30 October 2009.
Oppenheimer, Robert. The Decision to Drop the Bomb. with Fred Freed. NBC. 1965.
Rosenberg, Jennifer. About Education. n.d. <http://history1900s.about.com/od/PearlHarbor/a/Pearl-Harbor-Facts.htm>.
The Independance Hall Association . US History. 2008. <ushistory.org/us/51f.asp>.
Van Kirk, Theodore. Interview with the Man who Dropped the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima.
with Lindsey Garfield. RT. Stone Mountain. 6 August 2010.
World War II from Space. By Simon George. Dir. Simon George. Prod. Simon George. 2012.
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