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To this day, the ethical debate over the attacks on Hiroshima—the focus of Countdown 1945—and Nagasaki remains unresolved. There are two ethical questions that come into play when assessing the use of the atom bomb to end the war. The first concern is theoretical: whether the use of nuclear weapons is ever justified regardless of the context. While the use of the atom bomb in the context of war is a thorny issue, the question is not one of the use of nuclear energy in and of itself. An example is the hypothetical implementation of a nuclear warhead to destroy an asteroid headed straight towards earth—there would seem to be no ethical problem with using such a weapon to protect earth from imminent destruction.
The second concern is the more practical one: whether the use of nuclear weapons within the context of war can ever be justified, specifically in attacking Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Some argue that the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of non-combatants is unacceptable, even if it ends a war. Admiral Leahy expressed this view in comparing the actions of the American military to something out of “the Dark Ages” (254). Others argue that the carnage unleashed against the Japanese cities was simply the price necessary to end the war, ultimately saving more lives than would be lost in invading Japan. The American military establishment ultimately chose the second reasoning as their defense, arguing that the bombings had been justified.
The American military’s use of the bombs to end World War II was fraught with ethical questions from the start, but that is only part of the story. On the one hand, the United States used the atomic bombs to strike a blow against Japan so devastating and demoralizing that Japan was forced into surrendering unconditionally. There were many, however, who also speculated that the weapons were used as a warning for the Soviet Union that the United States was now the supreme power in the world. Such speculation suggests that the Americans used the bombs more as a demonstration of their nuclear capabilities than to end the war itself.
In any case, the American use of the bombs initiated what would become known as the “nuclear age,” which ushered in the Cold War—a decades-long power struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union as the world’s rival superpowers. Truman’s chief of staff said as much, stating that it was his view that this was the start of the clash between “the Anglo-Saxon democratic principles of government and the aggressive and expansionist police-state tactics of Stalinist Russia” (186-187). The specter of nuclear warfare also haunted the scientific community, who feared the scale of mass destruction that would follow any triggering of hostilities. In response to the employment of the bombs, Albert Einstein and a group of scientists decided to form an Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists in order to help encourage “peaceful use of atomic energy” (249) in place of a nuclear arms race.
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