The Hiroshima Bombing: A Necessity
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The Hiroshima Bombing: A Necessity
During World War II on August 6, 1945, the United States made a decision to drop an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima in Japan. Many believe that this decision was criminal and immoral. Some defend this devastating act by claiming that the U.S. was in a “supreme emergency” and that drastic measures were necessary to bring the gruesome war to a quick end and to avoid further casualties (qtd Walzer 235). According to author Michael Walzer, a supreme emergency is one that would justify a state in using measures that the war convention prohibits. Clearly, the war convention prohibits the use of weapons of mass destruction such as atomic bombs. Was the United States in a supreme emergency then? Yes, it was. The use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was the best decision President Truman could have possibly made for the good of the United States and the Japanese.
The question of whether or not the U.S. was in a supreme emergency is a complicated one to answer. However, many aspects of the war seem to lean towards the idea that it was. The United States had been fighting this dreadful war since 1941. Resources were probably beginning to decline and morale was most likely low. Despite these horrific conditions, both sides continued to fight. In his article titled “The U.S. Was Right”, John Connor explains that Japan was “under tight control of the militarists” and was showing no signs of conditional surrender (227). What then was President Truman
to do? Was he supposed to sacrifice more American lives and resources just to satisfy the laws of warfare which had already been broken by the Japanese? Michael Walzer quotes
President Truman:
We have used [the bomb] against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it to shorten the agony of war (224)
President Trumans decision to use the bomb was practical and prudent. It was Henry Stimson who said:
As I look back over the five years of my service as Secretary of War, I see too many stern and heartrending decisions to be willing to pretend that war is anything else but what it is. The face of war is the face of death; death is an inevitable part of every order that a wartime leader gives.” (qtd Walzer 245)
Walzer says of the Japanese that “they cannot complain about Hiroshima as long as the destruction of the city actually does, or could reasonably