EPortfolio Assignment Melissa Lyon Professor Jessy Feveryear History 1700 27 April 2014 Question #1: Most Influential

US History Topic

Lyon 1

One of the most devastating and pivotal moments in our world was the creation and detonation of the atom bomb. In 1945, Japan housed the last of the Axis power in its shrinking territory. In a decision to end the Pacific War and destroy the last remaining power of the Axis group, Truman made the difficult decision of detonating the first atomic bombs on a warring nation. On August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb that killed nearly 80,000 people and destroyed a massive portion of Hiroshima, Japan. Only two days later, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, and the very next day, a second atom bomb exploded over the port of Nagasaki, killing yet another 60,000 people. Those who had survived had radiation poisoning and were severely distraught from the horrors they had witnessed. In the name of peace, millions of Japanese lives were taken because of this horrific event. The atomic bomb achieved Trumans goal of ending the Pacific war and preventing the loss of more American lives. However, at what cost? The atomic bomb was the equivalent of a mass genocide, killing tens of thousands of Japanese in less than a minute and destroying the lives of thousands more over the next several years. The bombing also added to the growing pressure of the nuclear arms race, which inevitably lead to the beginning of the cold war with the Soviet Union. This historical decision determined the fate of the next decades that followed and lead to

EPortfolio Assignment

Lyon 2

massive technological advances in our warfare such as the hydrogen bomb, which was successfully tested later on, in the 1900's. As I have studied US history in high school and now in college, I have come to realize that the atomic bombing at the end of World War II and its influence in starting the Cold War was an event of great impact to me. This event has helped me, in my own life, to try to see the short and long-term consequences of every decision I make. Trumans cabinet saw the short-term effects of their decision, but they failed to see how a nuclear attack could cause another war, rather than just end one. As individuals and as a society, we will be far better off if we weighed out every big decision we make and look at all of the possible good and bad long-term consequences of those actions. We are only doomed to repeat the past, if we failed to learn from it in the first place.