Practice IA IB History

This investigation evaluates whether or non the dropping of the two nuclear duds on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was necessary to assemble japan surr give noniceer uncondition all(prenominal)y. To assess the extent to which the deployment of thermonuclear weapons affected the Nipponese decision to surrender unconditionally and if lacquer was already prepargond to do this prior to the example of the atomic bombs. The details and motivations of the linked States to drop the bombs are explored as well as lacquers peace negotiations with the United States and their progress prior to the U. S. choosing to commit the bombs.Actions of the United States and Japan non related to the end of World struggle 2 are not assessed in this investigation. The two sources selected for evaluation, Code-Name Downfall The Secret Plan to encroach upon Japan-And Why Truman Dropped the Bomb by Thomas B. Allen and Norman Polmar and Downfall The abrogate of the Imperial Nipponese Empire by Richard B. Frank are evaluated for their origins, purposes, limitations, and values. B. abridgment of Evidence On the 15th of June 1944 535 ships landed 128,000 U. S. Army personal on the island of Saipan. From Saipan B-29 bombers were in range of Tokyo.Imperative that they not allow this to happen the Nipponese Vice Admiral attacked the U. S. dark blue with about nine-tenths of Japans armed combat fleet in the Battle of the Philippine Sea. Once the battle reason out the U. S. had disconnected 130 planes and 76 halocrew. Japan lost 450 planes, common chord carriers, and 445 aircrew. The Japanese Navys carrier force was effectively destroyed. The U. S. took control of the island a short meter later. More than 29,000 Japanese soldiers died hold uping the island. (Hoyt 297-312) On the twenty-third of October 1944 the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval battle in cosmos history began.With the aim of cutting Japan off from South East Asia and its oil supplies the U. S. Navy fought against the last remains of the Imperial Navy. By the battles end on October 26th Japan had lost 10,500 seamen, a fleet carrier, 3 light carriers, 3 battleships, 10 cruisers, 11 destroyers, and 500 planes. Japans once mighty Navy was no much. After this the Japanese were not able to carry out another significant Naval act for the remainder of the war off the beaten track(predicate)e. (Pape 123-168) Shortly afterwards the allies launched their invasion of the Philippines. On the seventeenth of April 1945 Mindanao, the last major island of the Philippines, was taken by the allies.In rack up 336,000 Japanese soldiers died defending The Philippines. (Hoyt 421-427) Within a few months of the fall of The Philippines Japan lost control of Burma and Borneo to the consort. In total the Japanese military lost more than 41,000 soldiers defending the islands. After this the Japanese were effectively cut off from all of their major oil supplies. (Hoyt 437-449) With Japans foreign empire or so decimated by the U. S. and its allies the U. S. turned to the Japanese Home Islands themselves. The Battle for the island of invasion of Iwo Jima ended on March 26th with total Japanese defeat.Of the more or slight 21,000 Japanese defenders only 216 survived. On June 21st the Allies defeated Japan in the Battle of Okinawa (Feifer 145-163). 75,545 Japanese people lost their lives defending the island. This was to be the last major battle of World War Two. (Hoyt 478-487) While in Europe the USAAF had only used precision bombing to limit noncombatant casualties the Air Force abandoned this policy while bombing Japan. The eldest raid using low-flying B-29 bombers carrying incendiary bombs to drop on Tokyo was on the night of February 24-25 1945 when 174 B-29s destroyed around 1 agora mile of the city.ever-changing their tactics, on the night of March 9-10, 1945, a wave of 300 American bombers struck Tokyo. In the ensuing firestorm more than 100,000 Japanese civilians were kill ed and roughly a jillion were injured. Dropping nearly 1,700 tons of bombs more than 16 square miles were completely burned and more than a quarter of million structures were destroyed. in the first place the dropping of the Atomic bombs more than 50% of Tokyo was completely destroyed. (Hoyt, 560-598) Nihei, a young Japanese school girl at the cartridge clip, recalled that, Those images in my legal opinion an never be erased I can see myself there, the flames all around me. And Im running for my life. Hell could be no hotter. By July about a quarter of all the houses in Japan had been destroyed, leaving more than 15 million Japanese civilians homeless. Its transportation system was near collapse with barely about all the strategic railways destroyed. American forces had sowed aquatic mines in the shipping lanes from the air effectively stopping all Japanese naval movement. Food had compel so scarce that most Japanese were subsisting on a sub-starvation diet.On Monday, dread ful 6th, 1945 by executive order of chair Harry S. Truman the U. S. dropped the nuclear weapon Little Boy on the city of Hiroshima. Truman said that, The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians. 90,000 to 166,000 civilians were killed by the blast. Only 3 days later on lordly 9th the Fat Man nuclear weapon was detonated over Nagasaki. 60,000 to 80,000 civilians were killed. Gosling, Fehner 28) Yoshitaka Kawamoto, just long dozen years old at the time, was in a classroom less than a kilometer away from the hypocenter, One of my classmates, I think his summon is Fujimoto, he muttered some social occasion and pointed outside the window, saying, A B-29 is coming. He pointed outside with his finger. So I began to get up from my chair and asked him, Where is it? Looking in the direction that he was pointing towards, I got up on my f eet, but I was not stock-still in an upright position when it happened. All I can think of was a pale lightening flash for two or three seconds. Then, I collapsed.I dont know much time passed before I came to. It was awful, awful. The smoke was coming in from somewhere preceding(prenominal) the junk. Sandy dust was flying around. I was trapped low the debris and I was in terrible pain and thats probably wherefore I came to. I couldnt move, not even an inch. Then, I hear about ten of my surviving classmates singing our school verse. I think up that. I could hear sobs. Someone was calling his mother. But those who were still animated were singing the school song for as long as they could. I think I joined the chorus. We thought that someone would come and encourage us out. Thats why we were singing a school song so loud.But nobody came to help, and we stopped singing one by one. In the end, I was singing alone. On August 9th the USSR entered the war occupy Manchuria. With a force of nearly 1,700,000 soldiers the Soviets quickly claimed total victory brainish the Japanese out and killing 20,000 to 80,000 Japanese soldiers and capturing about 650,000. (Glantz 54-72) On August 15th in a radio address to the nation emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of Japan. (Pape 87) The largest war in the history of mankind was over. C. valuation of Sources Code-Name Downfall The Secret Plan to Invade Japan-And Why Truman Dropped the Bomb by Thomas B. Allen and Norman Polmar was published by Simon & Schuster in 1995. Allen is an American source who went to college in Bridgeport, Conn. He worked for The New York Daily and then became voice of the subject area Geographic Book Division. Most of his work deals with military history. His book is an magnificent source of information because it is based upon hundreds of sources, was written well after the events expound so that more evidence is available, and is written by a middling objective military histori an who has less bias because he was not attached to the war.Downfall The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire by Richard B. Frank was published by Penguin in 2001. Frank is an expert on World War 2 history. He specializes on the Pacific part of WWII. He fought in the 101st Airborne Division during the Vietnam. This could possibly make him more bias towards U. S. military actions but his book uses hundreds of reputable sources so that his opinion is less biased. His book is a very definitive and staring(a) account of Japanese defeat. Its an excellent and useful source. D. Analysis The detail is that as far as the Japanese militarists were concerned, the atomic bomb was just another weapon. The two atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were icing on the cake, and did not do as much damage as the fire bombings of Japanese cities. The B-29 firebombing campaign had brought the destruction of 3,100,000 homes, leaving 15 million people homeless, and killing about a million of them. It wa s the ruthless firebombing, and Hirohitos realization that if necessary the Allies would completely destroyJapan and kill every Japanese to acquire unconditional surrender that persuaded him to the decision to end the war. The atomic bomb is thusly a fearsome weapon, but it was not the cause of Japans surrender, even though the myth persists even to this day. Said by Edwin P. Hoyt in 1986. According to the UK embassy in Washington the Americans regarded the Japanese as a nameless mass of varmint. A 1944 opinion poll that asked what should be done with Japan ground that 13% of the U. S. public was in favor of the extermination of all Japanese people men, women, and children. Hixson 239) The dropping of the two bombs had little to do with defeating the defeated Japan. make up before World War 2 had ended the cold war began. Stalin and the Soviets had taken control of nearly all of Eastern Europe and do it clear that they werent going to leave. (Glantz 152-167)The Soviet Union h ad emerged World War 2 as a super authority and as the only sure challenger to American hegemony. Militaristic and organized with huge amounts of natural resources the Soviets under Stalin had proven that they were willing to expend unimaginable amounts of piece life to win. Glantz 172-184) With this massive looming on the horizon the terrified United States had to demonstrate its military supremacy. Japan presented a unique opportunity for the U. S. to demonstrate its new foul power to the Soviets and the Japanese people paid the price. The Japanese were already defeated and desire peace. (Butow 111-121) It is my opinion that the use of the barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no hearty assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.My own feeling is that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cann ot be won by destroying women and children. president of the wartime Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral William D. Leahy. Shortly after the conclusion of the war habitual Douglas MacArthur confirmed what many Military analysts and historians theorized by saying, My staff was unanimous in believing that Japan was on the point of collapse and surrender. In 1963 President Eisenhower said, The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasnt necessary to hit them with that awful thing I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon. E. Conclusion While the dropping of the two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki certainly contributed to the Japanese becoming even more urgently willing to unconditionally surrender the atomic bombs, despite their unimaginable destructive power, were just another weapon the Japanese had to endure.More than a million Japanese people had been killed by bombing raids. In reality the fascinate of the Soviet Union into the war and their invasion o f Japanese controlled Manchuria more plausibly contributed to Japan being more willing to unconditionally surrender. Japan had controlled Manchuria far longer than any pacific island the U. S. fought on and had more than 1,200,000 men there. Their total defeat in a very short amount of time made Japan realize that they no longer were able to defend themselves.In conclusion to use the words of General Curtis LeMay, The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war. We are the inheritors to the mantle of Genghis Khan, wrote New York propagation editorial writer Hanson Baldwin, and of all those in history who have justify the use of utter ruthlessness in war. The dropping of the two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was in no way militarily justified. The use of the atomic bombs was an act of brutality the likes of which this world has never seen and for the continued survival of the human race I hope never has to see again.