Alisia Compton
Garth Swanson
HIS 204-66
10/27/2017
Why the USA Dropped Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Having fled their fascist countries, Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi arrived in the United
States with portentous warnings for President Roosevelt. The scientists distributed intel on
German physicists who’d discovered how to split a uranium atom. At Einstein’s and Fermi’s
behest, level-headed Roosevelt reluctantly agreed to begin work on the Manhattan Project,
America’s code name for the manufacturing of atomic bombs.
1
On August 6, 1945, just four months after Roosevelt’s death, the atom bomb “Little Boy”
was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan instantly killing 70,000 people. Three days later a second
bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan and 70,000 more people died. In the months to come,
thousands more would die from radiation poisoning.
2
It’s impossible to justify so much
unnecessary death by an anti-fascist country, but it was in response to years of violence inflicted
by the Japanese.
Throughout the 1930s and early 1940s, Japan proved itself to be a vicious and merciless
foe. In 1937 Nanjing, Japanese forces killed approximately 300,000 Chinese civilians and
POWs.
3
By 1940, Japan had joined forces with Germany and Italy by entering into the Tripartite
pact.
4
They formed the Axis Alliance, a murderous pact hell-bent on dominance, race-cleansing,
and world-wide control.
