I mostly agree with Tom Nichols about President Truman and the atomic bomb being dropped in Japan. The only thing I would differ on is that President Truman had no good choice. Continue the war and risk losing another hundred-thousand American soldiers in the Pacific, or drop the bomb in Japan and kill at least a million innocent Japanese. Who were guilty of nothing other than living in Japan during World War II. But the old cliche war is hell has never been more true than during this war. When you’re the head of state in your country during wartime, your loyalty is to your own country. And that even means leading a war and ordering missions that can kill a lot of innocent people on the other side. Without the dropping of the atomic bomb in Japan, how and when does that war end?
Japan, wasn’t interested in preserving their own people. If anything America showed more mercy to the Japanese people then their own government. We didn’t use the Japanese as targets and human shields. Japan, was only interested in saving their dictatorial regime. Not surrendering and risk being thrown out. Didn’t matter to them how many of their people had to die to preserve their regime. Not that different with Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the current Islamic State in Iran. So what President Truman and his National Security Council was left with was how to end a war against a country that refuses to surrender and stop fighting.
President Harry Truman, was President of the United States. And because of that was responsible for the lives and national security of the American people. Which included German-Americans as well as Japanese-Americans back then and today. America, fought both Germany and Japan back then. And had the Japanese Government been more interested in preserving the lives of their own people than their regime, the atomic bomb is never dropped. Because the war would’ve been over a long time before the bomb. Because Japan would’ve figured out the obvious. They were beat and losing thousands of their own people everyday and would’ve just lost more the longer the war went on. And that they couldn’t beat the United States.
Critical Past: President Harry S. Truman Reads Prepared Speech After Dropping of Atomic Bomb