Name:_____________________Lesson #6: The Atomic Bomb
Date:________________
US History – Unit 9: Great Depression + WW2
Activity #1: Video Analysis
Directions: First, read context. Then complete questions below:
Context: In the summer of 1945, the war between Japan and the United States had been raging in the
Pacific Ocean for four long and bloody years. Slowly but surely, the United States Navy had fought its way
across the Pacific trying to reach Japan and force a surrender. The fighting took place in the open ocean
between ships and on tiny islands in the middle of the ocean like Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and Midway. Since
Pearl Harbor in 1941, the war had cost the lives of about 4 million Americans and about 2.5 million
Japanese. In April of 1945, Franklin Roosevelt – in the beginning of his fourth term as president – died of a
brain disease, leaving the inexperienced Harry Truman as president. During the war, FDR had created a topsecret government program called the Manhattan Project, which aimed to create a super-bomb capable of
unimaginable destruction. The program was so top-secret that even Harry Truman, the Vice President, had
no knowledge of it before he became president. Many of America’s leading scientists – including Albert
Einstein – worked for the Manhattan Project. In the spring of 1945, the Manhattan Project successfully
detonated an atomic bomb in the desert in New Mexico. A few months later, president Harry Truman
ordered that bombs be exploded over two Japanese cities (Hiroshima and Nagasaki), with the aim of forcing
Japan to finally surrender. The strategy worked, and on August 14 th, 1945, the Empire of Japan surrendered
to the United States aboard the battleship U.S.S. Missouri. World War 2 was finally over.
1. Based on what you know so far, was the United States justified in dropping the Atomic Bomb? Why / why
not?
Activity #2: Debate Preparation – Was the U.S. justified in dropping the A-Bomb?
Name:_____________________
Lesson #6: The Atomic Bomb
Date:________________
US History – Unit 9: Great Depression + WW2
Directions: Open pdf file. Fill out the graphic organizer by at least 5 documents.
Document # Does this document provide evidence that justifies the U.S. use of the atomic bomb?
1
Document # Does this document provide evidence that justifies the U.S. use of the atomic bomb?
2
Document # Does this document provide evidence that justifies the U.S. use of the atomic bomb?
3
Document # Does this document provide evidence that justifies the U.S. use of the atomic bomb?
4
Document # Does this document provide evidence that justifies the U.S. use of the atomic bomb?
5
Exit Ticket
Directions: Answer the Aim Question in 5-8 sentences using evidence from the lesson.
Name:_____________________
Lesson #6: The Atomic Bomb
Date:________________
US History – Unit 9: Great Depression + WW2
Aim: Was the U.S. government justified in dropping the atomic bombs on Japan?
Document 1: “Thank God for the Atomic Bomb” by John Fussell (1990)
My division, like most of the ones transferred from Europe, was going to take part in the
invasion at Honshu (a Japanese island). The people who preferred invasion to A-bombing
seemed to have no intention of proceeding to the Japanese front themselves. On
Okinawa, only a few weeks before Hiroshima, 123,000 Japanese and Americans killed
each other. Who knows what a few more days of this would mean to the luckless troops
and sailors on the spot. War is immoral. War is cruel.
Context: This excerpt was written by Paul Fussell, a World War II soldier fighting for the United States in the
Pacific in 1945, just before the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in August.
Document 2: “The Decision to Use the Bomb” by Henry Stimson (1947)
But the atomic bomb was more than a weapon of terrible destruction; it was
a psychological weapon. In March 1945 our Air Force had launched its first
great fire-bombing raid on the Tokyo area. In this raid more damage was
done and more causalities [deaths and injuries] inflicted than at Hiroshima.
Three days later a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki and the war was
over. So far as the Japanese could know, our ability to execute atomic attacks
was unlimited. As Dr. Karl Compton has said, “it was not one atomic bomb, or
two, which brought surrender; it was the experience of what an atomic bomb
will actually do to a community, plus the dread of many more, that was
effective.”
The bomb thus served exactly the purpose we intended. The peace party was
able to bring about surrender, and the whole weight of the Emperor’s prestige
was exerted in favor of peace.
Context: Henry Stimson was Secretary of War when the United States dropped the atomic bomb on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In 1947, he wrote an article justifying the decision to drop the bomb, which is
excerpted above.
Document 3: “Hiroshima as Victimization”
Japanese still recall the war experience primarily in terms of their own victimization. For them, World War
II calls to mind the deaths of family and acquaintances on distant battlefields, and, more vividly, the
prolonged, systematic bombings of their cities.
If it is argued that the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima was necessary to shock the Japanese to surrender,
how does one justify the hasty bombing of Nagasaki only three days later, before the Japanese had time to
investigate Hiroshima and formulate a response?
Document 4: “Hiroshima as Triumph”
To most Americans, Hiroshima—the shattered, atomized, irradiated city – remains largely a symbol of
triumph – marking the end of a horrendous global conflict and the effective demonstration of a weapon that
has prevented another world war.
It is hard to imagine that the Japanese would have surrendered without the atomic bomb. Japanese battle
plans that were in place when the bombs were dropped called for a massive, suicidal defense of the home
islands, in which the imperial government would mobilize not only several million fighting men but also
millions of ordinary citizens who had been trained and indoctrinated [brainwashed] to resist to the end with
primitive makeshift weapons. For Japanese to even discuss surrender was against the law.
Document 5: “I Survived the Bomb” by Yoshitaka Kawamoto (1985)
One of my classmates, I think his name is Fujimoto, he muttered
something 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 feet, but I was not yet in an upright position
when it happened. All I can remember was a pale lightening flash for two
or three seconds. Then, I collapsed. I don’t know much time passed before
I came to my sense. It was awful, awful. The smoke was coming in from
somewhere above the debris [scattered pieces of waste]. Sandy dust was
flying around.
I crawled over the debris, trying to find someone who were still
alive. Then, I found one of my classmates lying alive. I held him up in
my arms. It is hard to tell, his skull was cracked open, his flesh was
dangling out from his head. He had only one eye left, and it was looking
right at me. He told me to go away.
I was running, hands were trying to grab my ankles, they were asking
me to take them along. I was only a child then. And I was horrified at so
many hands trying to grab me. I was in pain, too. So all I could do was
to get rid of them, its terrible to say, but I kicked their hands away. I
still feel bad about that. I went to Miyuki Bridge to get some water. At
the river bank, I saw so many people collapsed there. I was small, so I
pushed on the river along the small steps. The water was filled with dead
people. I had to push the bodies aside to drink the muddy water. We
didn’t know anything about radioactivity [toxic air particles left over
from the bomb] at that time. I stood up in the water and so many bodies
were floating away along the stream.
Context: Yoshitaka Kawamoto was thirteen years old when the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. He was in a
classroom about 0.5 miles from where the bomb landed.
Document 6: “Hiroshima and Nagasaki Casualties” (1989)
Context: The charts above were created by an independent team of historians. The United States
government claims that the total casualties of both bombs was around 100,000 while the Japanese
government claims that the count was higher than 500,000.
Document 7: “Hiroshima, Before and After” (1945)
Context: Before the atomic bomb, Hiroshima was a thriving city of 255,000 people. After, it was literally
flattened.
Document 8: “Real Reasons for Dropping the Bomb” by Howard Zinn (1980)
Japanese leaders had begun to talk of surrender a year before the bomb was dropped, and the United States knew this
because they had broken the Japanese code. If only the Americans had not insisted on unconditional surrender – that is,
if they were willing to accept one condition to the surrender, that the Emperor, a holy figure in Japan, remain in place –
the Japanese would have agreed to stop the war.
Why did the United States not take the small step to save both American and Japanese lives? Was it because too much
money and effort had been invested in the atomic bomb not to drop it? General Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan
Project, described Truman as a man on a toboggan, the momentum too great to stop it. Or was it, as British scientist
P.M.S. Blackett suggested, that the United States was anxious to drop the bomb before the Russians entered the war
against Japan?
The Russians had secretly that they would declare war on Japan by August of 1945, mainly because the fighting in
Europe was finished as Hitler was defeated in April. But by August 8 the atomic bomb had been dropped, and the next
day a second one would be dropped on Nagasaki; the Japanese would surrender to the United States, not the Russians,
and the United States would be the occupier of postwar Japan and in a powerful position to determine what kind of
political and economic system that country would have going forward. According to Blackett, the dropping of the
atomic bomb was “the first major operation of the cold war with Russia,” as the United States was “anxious to end the
war with Japan before the Russians got involved.”
President Harry Truman, who made the decision to drop the two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August
of 1945, once said, “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.” It was a preposterous
statement. Those 100,000 killed in Hiroshima were almost all civilians. The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey said in its
official report: “Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen as targets because of their concentration of activities and
population.”
The dropping of the second bomb on Nagasaki seems to have been scheduled in advance, and no one has ever been able
to explain why it was dropped. Was it because this was a plutonium bomb whereas the Hiroshima bomb was a uranium
bomb? Were the dead and injured of Nagasaki victims of a scientific experiment?
Context: Howard Zinn is a historian and activist known for his harsh criticism of American foreign policy.
This excerpt is from his A People’s History of the United States, a book which has been banned in many
states because of its controversial views.
Document 9: “Haikus of Hiroshima”
Looking for her
mother
the girl still has
strength
to turn over
corpses
– Shibata Moriyo
Screams the sound
of souls
being devoured,
banished
from all existence
– Joseph Tauti
Red sky floats above
starts to drip the
blackness down
towards the drying
deathbed
now scorched by the
liquid fire
bleak chariots move the
dead
Little children scream
They look for their
families
which they will not
find
– Jonathan Matsuzaka
– Hideki Oshigawa
Context: A “haiku” is a traditional form of Japanese poetry. These were written about the bombing of
Hiroshima.
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