The Effects of the Atomic Bomb

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Recommended: Hiroshima, August 6, 2018 Book Notes

The Effects of the Atomic Bomb Some regard the atomic bomb as “the thank God for the atom bomb”. This places God on the U.S. side and regards the bombs as our saving grace. This bomb forced the Japanese to surrender which in turn proved the U.S. to be the heroes who saved the American’s lives.1 The Americans intended on ending the war but did not expect to end it with such a large number of casualties. The results of the atomic bomb and how it effected the Japanese people both emotionally and physically will be addressed. “The bombs marked both an end and a beginning—the end of an appalling global conflagration in which more than 50 million people were killed and the beginning of the nuclear arms race and a new world in which security was forever a step away and enormous resources had to be diverted to military pursuits”.2 They planned to invade Kyusha in the South on November 1st, and Tokyo and the Kanto area in Honshu in March of 1946. There was a long road ahead of them so the sooner the war ended, the better. But this was no excuse for the U.S. to kill millions of people.3 “In Japan, as might be expected, popular memory of the atomic bombs tend to begin where the American narratives leave off…Rubble everywhere. A silent, shattered cityscape. In this regard, the heroic narrative differs little from a Hollywood script”.4 Today we have the Smithsonian Institution that represents the trauma that many of the people today do not have imprinted in their memory. This is a way for all people, who were both present and not present, to pay their respects to the participants and the victims in World War II.5 In creating the Smithsonian, the Americans initially wanted to reflect deeply upon the occurrences by design... ... middle of paper ... ... the War in Asia,” The Journal of American History 82 (1995): 1124. - Ernest Hook, “The Exclusion of Minor Malformations in the Study of Mutation in the Offspring of Survivor of Atomic Bomb: Methodological, Not Sociopolitical, Rationale,” Journal of the History of Biology 30 (1997): 239-242. - Kenzaburo Oe, Hiroshima Notes, trans. David L. Swain and Toshi Yonezawa (New York: Grove, 1996). - Toyofumi Ogura Letters From the End of the World: A Firsthand Account of the Bombing of Hiroshima trans. Kisaburo Murakami and Sigeru Figil (New York: Kodansha International, 1982). - “Physical Damages Caused by the Nagasaki Atomic Bombing,” http://www-sdc.med.nagasaki-u.ac.jp/n50/disastewr/Damage-ic.html (28 Feb. 2000). - Report of the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack (New York, 1972).

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