In the cartoon, bodies are lying round everywhere, with two characters looking very worried. It says ‘Don’t you see, they had to find out if it worked …’ this implies that the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was just testing that if the bomb was a success, and this means that America was extremely careless of the colossal number of lives lost and the homeless.
Source C supports source B very much. As source B confirms that the Americans had to see if the atomic bombs had worked. In source C, it corroborate that the bomb had cost $2000 million just to develop, and would be very difficult to not use the bomb after so much money being spend on that bomb.
Source E is more reliable than source D from my opinion, President Truman’s advisor as a citizen of America announced ‘The use of this barbarous weapon was no help to our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated’. From this resource, I suggest that America dropped the two hazardous bombs on Hiroshima and one on Nagasaki for ‘fun’ as this I consider is an act of terrorism destroying a enormous number of innocent lives without an excuse apart from Pearl Harbour, which there was a huge life loss, but from my consideration America didn’t have to drop bombs on a immensely populated city like Hiroshima or Nagasaki, but they could have destroyed Japan’s military bases, as the Japanese soldiers were prepared to die.
Source C, published by the campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, revealed that the bomb cost $2000 million just to develop, and it would have been a ‘waste’ if the Americans did not use it, and Nagasaki was just an excuse of trying out the second type.
Source F confirms that Japanese prime minister Suzuki gave out a speech saying ‘I expect the 100 million people of the glorious empire of Japan to join as a shield to protect the Emperor and our land from the invader’ this verify that the prime minister expects 100 million people to protect Japan, but on the other hand there will not be 100 million people to protect Japan as over half of this total will be afraid to go to war or unprepared. I reckon this is not a very good source for a historian finding out why the Americans dropped the atomic bomb.
Source G is from an interview with James Byrnes, a American Secretary of State, he comments, ‘We were talking about the people who hadn’t hesitated at Pearl Harbour to make a sneak attack, destroying not only ships but the lives of many American sailors’ this proves that America dropped the bombs for revenge for the tragic event that occurred at Hawaii, Pearl Harbour.
Source J is a very reliable source, ‘We all realized that the fighting would be fierce with heavy losses. General Marshall told me it might cost half a million American lives.’ This is from Harry Truman the president of USA in 1945. This suggest that America was confident of defeating Japan, but they were scared to lose a predicted half a million American soldiers. So if America didn’t want to lose this large total of American lives they had to strike Japan with minimal loss, to drop the two bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Source K is a fairly reliable source. ‘We were under incredible pressure to get the bomb ready before the conference (between the Americans and the Russians).the intention of the president was to say to the Russians that we had a new weapon that we planned to use in Japan and it was very powerful’
This verifies that Americans did it to frighten the Russians, and if Americans did not drop the bombs, it would make the Americans look weak as the Russians would have thought the Americans just talk but they do not take action.
Source D is not a very reliable source, as even Americans could have defeated the Japanese, America was likely to have a huge life loss.
In conclusion I think that America dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in act of revenge of Pearl Harbour.