Atomic Bomb Dbq Analysis

Beginning in 1931, Japan expanded into East Asia with the invasion of Manchuria and carried into 1937 with a brutal attack on China. Seeking to curb Japanese aggression and force a withdrawal of Japanese forces from China and Manchuria, the United States imposed these economic sanctions on Japan. In response on December 7, 1941, Japan attacked the United States Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. This attack damaged America 's fleet and prevented serious American interference with Japanese military operations. Following that, two months later, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 ordering all Japanese-Americans to evacuate the West Coast, “Japanese-American Internment”. A year beforehand however, the government …show more content…
We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare.”(Document 1). Truman finishes that thought with “We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans.”(Document 1). Finally on August 15th, 1945, Japan’s Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s unconditional surrender in World War II during a radio address, citing the devastating power of “a new and most cruel bomb.” In response during 1947, the Secretary of War Henry Stimson, responded by saying the use of the atomic bomb was terrible thing to do but better than any alternative. From Document 3, Stimson says “But this deliberate, premeditated destruction was our least abhorrent alternative. The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki put an end to the Japanese war.”(Document C) . He continues to say “It stopped the fire raids, and the strangling blockade; it ended the ghastly specter of a clash of great land armies.”(Document