Essay: Dropping the a-bomb on Hiroshima - a crime?

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1 Essay: Dropping the a-bomb on Hiroshima - a crime? Liese Schnurbusch 10/3 On 6 August 1945, the American B-29-Super Fortress No. 82, Enola Gay, dropped the first A-bomb ever to be used in a war. At exactly 8:16 a.m. and two seconds the bomb exploded 600 metres above the city centre of Hiroshima, killing 90% of the population within a 0.5 km radius instantly. In the months and years that followed, the radiation caused by it led to the death of more than 100,000 people. The USA took this drastic step in order to end the Second World War quickly and regain peace among the world. Today though, this decision is strongly criticised from all angles. How can it be justified to even develop such a massive destructive weapon? Can it be called a triumph of science or was it simply foolish to believe that mankind was ready for this power? And can the massive killing of noncombatants be seen as a simple military move or was it mass-murder? And was the ultimate goal peace amidst the nations of the world actually achieved? Or did this bombing achieve the exact opposite and could possibly even lead to the extermination of the whole human race? First of all, I would like to point out the fact that American scientists, including many European scientists that emigrated from Europe in fear of the Nazis, only started researching on this technology because there was a rumour that German scientists had already started developing such a bomb. It was a sort of arms race with Germany, and for a time it even looked as if whoever managed to develop the A-bomb first, the so-called Wunderwaffe, would win the war. So, what these scientists were developing was actually a measure to stop or at least intimidate the Hitler regime. Scientists like Albert Einstein were very worried about what would happen if Hitler got hold of this new technology, even though they could hardly anticipate the real power this weapon held. What they did not know was that the German scientists stopped their research once they knew that what they were creating would lead to massive destruction if their maniac- dictator ever got his hands on it. Can the American scientists be blamed for continuing their work in a free and democratic nation where the politicians were reliable and listened to their advisors? Must we blame them for trying to find a way to end the war quickly and put an end to the horrors Hitler was causing? In my opinion, what these scientists researched and developed was not a crime. There had never been a comparable weapon in human history, so at first, they estimated the power of the bomb to be only half of what it actually was. I personally think that they never really intended it to be used but saw it as a matter of deterrence. Also, due to their calculations it would have been easy to drop it on a military base in Germany without killing a lot of non-combatants. But after the first test-bombing, it became clear that this weapon was even more destructive. After receiving this information, many

2 scientists warned the government not to use the bomb. A petition was signed to convince the President, but it was simply ignored. So the scientists, now knowing just what power they had put in the hands of their nation, found themselves shoved aside, leaving this almost godlike power in the hands of people who had no idea of what exactly they were dealing with. They had thought the USA would use this power wisely and only if it was the only way to stop the war with Hitler, but now had to watch their government drop the bomb on a city in Japan. This had never been part of the plan, simply defeating Hitler was what this bomb was built for. One could argue that it was foolish of the scientists to believe that they could control what they had created, but was it not the other way around, that it was very foolish of the government to actually believe they could handle this weapon that they knew hardly anything about, without taking the opinion of the experts seriously? The scientists were pioneers in this part of science, and they did things no human being had ever before managed. They found out facts that confirmed what they had before only had theories about and because of this research people today see the world differently. That alone is a great triumph. Building the bomb itself was only a side -effect, maybe it can be called an experiment. The scientists themselves could only estimate the after-effects of the bomb, since it had never been actually tested on humans, but they believed it to be too dangerous to use. I believe that, if the government of the USA had listened to those scientists, they would not have dropped the bomb. The bomb that was created, of course, cost many peoples lives, but this research also helped raise our living standards by enabling people to generate electricity through nuclear power. So, I think that the actual research and developing of the bomb was not a crime itself. It lies in the nature of mankind to be curious and try and develop new technologies that make life easier for us. If the atomic bomb had not been discovered then, it would still have been discovered some time later. Science cannot be stopped, we continually discover new things. Of course, if nuclear power had not been discovered then, maybe today we would already have an alternative energy source that does not pollute or endanger the environment in any way, and the discovery of nuclear power would only have been a secondary occurrence, but it seems as if we will never know. The point is, it is not a crime for things to be discovered or developed, but much rather the wrong use of them that can lead to crimes. And in my opinion, the argument that mankind was not yet ready for the A-bomb, and that placing the bomb in the hands of the government was like putting a loaded rifle into the hands of children is nonsense. These people were grown up, and leading a whole nation, they should have understood what huge responsibility it was. One could expect them to have more sense than pulling the trigger of something they hardly knew. But still, they foolishly decided to use this bomb as a weapon, despite the warning of the scientists not to.

3 This leads to the second question: Was the dropping of the bomb simply a military action? Was it a legitimate weapon? Of course there were a few buildings of military importance in Hiroshima. Yet, these were embedded into an area where hundreds of thousands civilians lived. So dropping the A-bomb on this city meant huge civilian losses. Taking down only the military bases with smaller bombs would have saved a lot of lives and still affected the Japanese warfare greatly. In a way, the Commanders of this bombing were acting like small children: we have a new toy and must definitely use it! But I believe there must have been another reason behind using the A-bomb on Hiroshima, because why should you waste such a powerful and new weapon on killing mostly non-combatants, if there were much more important military bases elsewhere, where the civilian losses would have been much fewer? I think this bombing was meant to state an example. The USA wanted to intimidate the proud Japanese population and force them to their knees. It was a demonstration of supreme power and many historians also argue that it could have been an act of revenge for the attack on Pearl Harbour. It was quite a shock for the Americans that they were attacked because usually they were the far away super power that supported the war but whose civilian population was never endangered. Due to this attack the hate towards the Japanese population grew extremely. Possibly, their actual goal was not to weaken the military but to weaken the moral of the population and make clear that the war was already lost for them. So, before we can answer the question whether the A-bomb was a legitimate weapon, we must ask the question, if using any kind of weapons against the non-combatant population is legitimate. In my opinion, force or destruction of whatever source that is used against the harmless and helpless population is clearly NOT legitimate. The purpose of any sort of weapon is to prevent harm, it serves as self protection, nothing else. So, actually, the purpose of a weapon is to protect the civilians, and not to harm them. Wars, if they should ever be fought at all, should not attack people that have nothing to do with them. Of course, one must never underestimate the power of the population, in Germany for example people were shouting for a total war they were yearning for it, and therefore everyone did everything they could, to help the military. Still I think that killing these people does not help to win a war, it only causes hatred, which leads to another war. The general public is so easily influenced, that I do not think that they can be blamed so much as to justify killing them all. Then again, lots of people argued that trying to win the war against Japan on land, including having to take over its various islands, would kill more Japanese than the bomb and even kill American soldiers additionally. This seems a good argument, but in my opinion it is an extreme difference whether people who signed up for fighting for their country, people who were ready to give their lives for the ideologies and beliefs of their nation are killed or if it is the totally harmless population that maybe had not even wanted a war. There were children in Hiroshima, teenagers, old people, mothers. They were causing absolutely no threat to anyone at that moment. Yet the USA had already shown that they were ready to sacrifice civilians in order to intimidate their enemies by bombing Dresden, a clearly non-military target, and reducing it to rubble. During

4 the bombing of Dresden about the same number of people died as during Hiroshima ( about 100,000) but Dresden was bombed for 3 days and nights with thousands of planes and different types of bombs, whereas in Hiroshima almost the same affect was caused with only one bomb. Moreover, the after- effects of the radiation in Hiroshima still affect the population there and contaminates the area, while Dresden was rebuilt quite quickly. Only because of the A- bomb dropped on Hiroshima (and Nagasaki) the aftereffects of extreme radiation became clear, including hair loss, slowly dying of internal bleeding and cancer. Maybe the fact that they were curious about the effects was also a reason for using the bomb, since Japan is very far away from the USA and there was no danger of America possibly being affected by the radiation. So, in addition to the fact that the bombing of civilian population is always mass murder and a war crime, the A-bomb that was dropped has affected the area until this very day and turned the population into human guinea pigs as the bomb had never before been tested on humans. In my opinion it was clearly not legitimate, the bombing of either Dresden or Hiroshima cannot be excused as simply a military action, but must be seen as a cruel war crime that directly attacked the noncombatants in Germany and Japan. Because of this extremely radical step, it is argued if the USA actually wanted peace at all. Should they not have at least tried to negotiate with the Japanese government longer before dropping the second bomb on Nagasaki? Was their ultimate goal really peace or did they just want to demonstrate the power they had over everyone? One way or another, the war definitely was stopped due to the dropping of the A-bombs. So, at first it may seem as if there was peace - no more battles, no more killing, and treaties among the nations. But, beneath the thin layer of this peace something was brewing up. I believe that the bombing of Hiroshima and many other war crimes led to this very tense situation after the war. As mentioned before, attacking the non-combatants in a war always leads to hatred and not to peace. Additionally, the dropping of the A-bomb led to a great fear among the other nations of the world, and it triggered an arms race. So actually, instead of being at peace at last, the whole world was frozen in fear. The Second World War was over and the Cold War began.

5 Cartoon by Rube Goldberg, published in the New York Sun in July 1947; Taken from: ources.com/2009/03/04/a-month-of-pulitzer-prize-winning-cartoons-day- 4/&h=493&w=399&sz=41&tbnid=P23pQfj76QHG1M:&tbnh=90&tbnw=73&zoom=1&usg= 1Uq95CfXeRl7o_wmTX5wXamMlhI=&docid=0juzuiXfvDD5bM&sa=X&ei=jqQDU8T4 G-X8ywOQu4LYCg&ved=0CD0Q9QEwAQ&dur=592 Downloaded: