Why did the USA use nuclear weapons against Japan in August 1945?

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Why did the USA use nuclear weapons against Japan in August 1945?

On August 6th 1945 an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima by the USA. The bomb killed 200 000 people. A few days later on August 9th another bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, killing an estimated 74 000 people. In July Truman had warned Japan that unless they surrendered the Americans would unleash on them a new weapon of immense power, yet Japan still refused to surrender. There were many reasons for the USA dropping these bombs, some private to the government of the USA and some open to the public.

One reason was that the bombs were revenge for the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan on 7th December 1941. The attack sunk or damaged 18 American ships and 300 US planes. Japan did this because they aimed to expand their territory, and America did not want this to happen and were a big threat to Japan. Japan thought that in attacking Pearl Harbor they would damage the USA’s fleets sufficiently so that by the time the USA recovered Japan would be powerful enough to resist them. However the USA was not as badly damaged as hoped, and was outraged by what they saw as a cruel and unprovoked attack. It can be argued that America’s thirst for revenge was one of the reasons for dropping the atom bombs on Japan. This reason was public in that the American public knew about Pearl Harbor and there was a general thirst for revenge, but it was not put forward as a reason by the American government, so in that way it was more private.

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Another public reason was that the Japanese treated US prisoners of war very badly. The prisoners were used for slave labour, tortured and generally treated very cruelly. About 27% of American prisoners died in Japanese hands. The Americans were enraged and to stop this cruelty and also to get revenge was another reason for them dropping the atom bomb.

Even though Japan was obviously losing the war, they were not giving in. There had been 5 bombings of Tokyo and still no submission from Japan. In Japanese culture it is dishonourable to surrender so despite facing destruction they ...

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