Happy rainy Sunday everyone! I will admit, this weather makes it quite difficult to actually do work, but I’m powering through and ignoring the urge to take a nap…well, at least for now.
This week we began reading a series of historical essays entitle History Wars by Edward Linenthal and Tom Engelhardt. For now, I have only read “Anatomy of a Controversy,” which tells the story of the difficulties of creating a World War II exhibit to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. The main controversy surrounding the exhibit was the plan for it to feature the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. This controversy expanded, as all controversies seem to do, to include whether or not Allied leaders should have made the decision to drop the bomb or not.
One of the largest issues surrounding this controversy was the constant question of “was the atom bomb really the best decision?” This question has no definite answer, though many have tried to argue for one or the other. Many seem to think that the answer can be found in a game of numbers. Was the tradeoff for how many people died in the explosion of the two atomic bombs, less than, greater than, or equal to the number of people who would have died in an invasion of Japan. This is, again, an impossible question to answer. There are simply too many “what ifs” to accurately estimate how many people would have died in a full scale invasion. Even the estimations were all over the spectrum, anywhere from 50,000 to 500,000. This argument is no longer useful because an accurate guess is completely implausible.
The simple fact is that an accurate number of casualties cannot be estimated for a full scale invasion of a massive of an island. The atomic bomb may not have been the best decision, but it was the decision that was made. One could always raise the question of “was the atomic bomb the most moral decision?” The answer to that question is exponentially more complicated than the last question and I won’t even start to give the numerous arguments that could be made for and against the morality of such a powerful weapon.
Well, that was a fun post. Hooray for the discussion of wartime controversies and morality (is there such a thing…all is fair).
Best of luck on Monday!
Matt
wherewillhistorytakeme 