The Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by nuclear detonation took place during the last year of World War Two. The names of the two bombs used are “Little Boy” (used on Hiroshima) and “Fat Man (used on Nagasaki). Many believe this to be a controversial moment in the history of the United States of America and the Allied forces near the end of the world war. The two common thoughts are that the bombings were necessary to quickly stop the fighting and further death on both sides and that the bombings were unnecessary and Japan would have surrendered anyways. The two bombs had a combined death toll of at least 200,000 civilian casualties and resulted in many slow and agonizing deaths for many years to come after the events. Considering that Japan was mostly defeated, and that the death toll was so high for civilian casualties through bombing, the idea that the bombs were used to limit the deaths of the war seems like a stretch and sounds like the United States trying to justify a horrible act and terrible order. It furthers this idea that we would rather kill thousands and thousands of other civilians than lose one more American or Ally. We put our lives over the lives of hundreds of thousands of other innocent civilians who did not participate in the war. While this is the case, many were celebrating this display of power and destruction and glorifying it. Take for example this newspaper story posting from The San Francisco Chronicle, titled “Japan Hit By Atom Bomb---Mightiest Weapon in History! Tokyo Admits Heavy Damage” (San Francisco Chronicle 1945). This title shows how we are proud about the nuclear attacks and idolizing their power. While we can conclude how these bombings murdered hundreds of thousands of people, news outlets were ignoring this and feeding the public with headlines like these that celebrate these killings and attacks. This further fires up people to the point that we start to believe we are better than all those other nations and people, who are simply just people living on earth like Americans. This mindset and narrative that these headlines put out contributes to toxic patriotism and is similar to how propaganda and news outlets were used to spread misinformation that led to the January 6, storming of the United States Capital Building riots. According to Gar Alperovitz and Martin Sherwin in an article that discusses how the nuclear attacks were unnecessary, “However, the overwhelming historical evidence from American and Japanese archives indicates that Japan would have surrendered that August, even if atomic bombs had not been used — and documents prove that President Truman and his closest advisors knew it.” We can see how there was evidence that Japan was going to surrender regardless of the attacks or not. Yet, without looking further into it, the United States and the Allies decided to kill hundreds of thousands of people. We can further see the terrible fallout of the attacks in Hayo Kromback’s The Meaning of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in the quote “Many of us today who also survived face a harder task: that of imagining and internalizing an all-incinerating blast. It is difficult to manage such a mental leap” (Kromback 4). In this quote, we see how the terrors of the bombings went past the enormous death toll but have affected people mentally for years after the event. We see how toxic patriotism led to the horrible aftermaths of the nuclear bombings during World War Two. The mindsets that led to this happening are not much different than the minds that those who stormed the capital. Similar to how we see the Allied Forces justifying the horrible action of annihilating two major Japanese cities full of innocent people, we see how then President Trump causes his supporters to storm the Capitol Building, take it by force, and threatened the lives of many innocent people (law makers, police officers, civillians etc.). This 'false' justification that we see the Allied Forces make is similar in mindset to the justifications Trump made to basically order his people to take the Capitol Building, to try to overturn a lost election.
Related Links:
WW2 Propaganda: Influence of Racism. https://editions.covecollective.org/chronologies/ww2-propaganda-influenc...
Park Street Riot 1944. https://editions.covecollective.org/chronologies/historical-event-1914-1...
Exodus of Working Women After WW2. https://editions.covecollective.org/chronologies/exodus-working-women-af...
Primary Source:
San Francisco Chronicle, Japan Hit By Atom Bomb---Mightiest Weapon in History! Tokyo Admits Heavy Damage. 1945. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/561120434797283790/
Secondary Sources:
Alperovitz, Gar., Sherwin, Martin. Dropping Atomic Bombs On Hiroshima And Nagasaki Was Unnecessary. Common Dreams, 2020.
Krombach, Hayo. The Meaning of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, 1997.