Revisiting the Bomb: A Surface Overview

Source: BBC News
A necessary evil - this is how the atomic bomb has cemented itself into the American collective consciousness. In high school education, the bomb is often reduced to a single paragraph or a couple lines in a textbook, the events of the war in the Pacific largely overshadowed by more thorough coverage of the European theater. In many ways, the events of 1945 have faded with the mushroom clouds, the former enmity between the United States and Japan long replaced by an image of friendship and economic partnership. However, with the bombs’ 70th anniversary just behind us, the circumstances deserve revisiting. 

Codenamed the “Manhattan Project,” the bomb first began to be conceived in 1939 by American scientists, some of whom were refugees from European fascism. Originally presented to President Franklin D. Roosevelt by Albert Einstein, the project grew in both manpower and budget over the following years, eventually leading to the bomb’s first trial explosion in New Mexico less than a month before Little Boy fell on Hiroshima. 

By this point in World War II, the Pacific theater had seen devastating casualties, such as in the Battle of Okinawa wreaking havoc on American troops as well as Japanese military and civilians alike not long prior. With the Japanese refusing to give up on victory and American bravado dictating an “unconditional surrender,” the war seemed to be balancing on a precipice that could only lead to higher death tolls on both sides. Given this situation, President Henry Truman chose to end the war as quickly as possible and gave the go-ahead to unleash the bomb on Hiroshima and later, Nagasaki. 

Whether better alternatives were available to Truman may be debated endlessly, and the fact remains that the bomb was dropped and the war was brought to a close. However, it is interesting to consider other factors that may have potentially played a role in his decision. Perhaps the ugliest possibility is that bitterness over the events at Pearl Harbor and rampant racial antagonism among Americans may have colored the judgments of Truman and his advisors. The expense of the bomb’s development, nearing $2 billion, could also be validated only through the bomb’s detonation. Dropping the bombs had the additional advantage of making a strong impression on the Soviet Union, from which Truman was already beginning to feel a looming threat. 

The atomic bomb may have been a necessary evil, but confining it to such a conception does not do justice to the complexity of the political situation into which the bomb was born nor to the vast geopolitical ripples it sent throughout the world. To Japan, the only nation in history to have been the victim of nuclear warfare, the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster served as an unfortunate recent reminder, and justice is still being sought for discriminated bomb radiation victims. Though the legacy of the atomic bombs may appear to be at rest to many, those infamous mushroom clouds, long since dissipated, still cast a heavy shadow. 


Sources: 
http://www.britannica.com/event/Manhattan-Project 
http://www.britannica.com/topic/Trumans-decision-to-use-the-bomb-712569 
https://csis.org/blog/understanding-decision-drop-bomb-hiroshima-and-nagasaki 
J. Samuel Walker, Prompt and Utter Destruction: Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs Against Japan.

Pramodh Ganapathy graduated from Duke in 2014.