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The Pros And Cons Of The Atomic Bomb

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On August 6, 1945, the 33rd president of the United States, Harry S. Truman, made the executive decision to drop a 10,000 pound atomic bomb named “Little Boy” on the city of Hiroshima in Japan. Three days later, Truman ordered another atomic bomb, called “Fat Man” to be dropped on another Japanese city, Nagasaki. Each bomb had a blast radius of fifty miles. The decision to utilize these weapons of mass destruction will always be a very controversial topic because of the debated morality of the decision. Various viewpoints see the decision to use atomic weapons on Japan as completely justified. When the bombs were dropped in 1945, many Americans were all for it. A few of the main arguments backing the use of the bombs were to keep the lives of Americans safe, to end the war quickly to strike back at the Japanese for the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. One of the major arguments is that the use of the bombs saved numerous American lives and put a quick end to the war. If the bombs had not been dropped, more American soldiers would have been shipped to Japan to invade the mainland. Hypothetically, the lives of many American soldiers could have been lost and the US military might have sustained considerable damage. Another argument for the use of atomic bombs on Japan is the swift ending they brought to the war. The war ended on September 2, 1945 when the Japanese surrendered and complied with the Potsdam Declaration that demanded “the unconditional surrender of all

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