In 1945, President Harry S. Truman took desperate action on Japan by the dropping of the two atomic bombs on the influential cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The two schools of thoughts, President Truman’s actions were justified and President Truman’s actions were not justified, will be looked at to come up with an overall say on what happened in 1945.
Many scholarly historians as well as notable military citizens’ believed that Japan was on the brink of surrendering, however, this is extremely hard to believe especially since: “As late as 1945 [Japan] [was] still talking about being able to negotiate on their own terms. They wanted to keep their system of government, have no occupation of Japan and keep their possessions in Manchuria and Korea.” (Hastings 2) Majority of the Japanese citizens were exceptionally courageous and “demonstrated near-fanatical resistance, fighting to almost the last man on the Pacific Islands..” (Dietrich 1), there were only a few people who were not prepared to lose their lives in war.
The Postdam Proclamation which was announced on July 26, 1945 stated that if Japan didn’t surrender, its allies would certainly attack. However, Japan was much more concerned of being disregarded as a nation if she did surrender, thus her leaders completely opposed to this declaration. Even after this, President Truman tried to convince the emperor of Japan to surrender by several options which included: increasing the firebombing that was already taking place in Japanese cities, waiting for the Soviet Union to join the war against Japan, and to allow Emperor Hirohito to retain his throne even after surrender. However, none of these options seemed reasonable in compelling a Japanese surrender quick enough to halt the death toll at where it already was. Truman and his administration figured that most plausible call to a Japanese surrender would be to drop the atomic bombs. The atomic bombs, which were considered psychological weapons and were seen...