I am spending some time researching the decision to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I am surprised that most of the articles I am able to find support Truman's decision. When I took American history in high school, it seemed that the consensus was coming around that Truman should not have dropped the bombs - at least not on enormous civilian targets. Now it seems people are starting to see Truman's decision as a wise one. One element that is influencing the change is the declassified documents that are referred to in the article I handed out last week.
I have found some articles that criticise Truman's decision. This one is actually an excerpt from a book. The author does a good job of summarizing the arguments:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/raico/raico22.html
This is one that attracted a lot of attention, although it is mostly just a blog entry. In this one, he shows how Truman violated a set of Roman Catholic ethical principles known as "Just War Theory." If you want to learn more about Just War Theory, Google it.
http://www.jimmyakin.org/2009/05/harry-truman-was-a-war-criminal.html
Read these articles and let me know what you think it would be useful for me to have the whole class read. Thanks.
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Sniffle-the whole class isn't and won't be condensed in one single class as of May 28th-and Mr. B. won't be handing out articles to the class either, b/c he's not our teacher anymore...WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! I'm out of a job!
ReplyDeleteyou sure cry a lot
ReplyDeleteYou are so insensitive anonymous!
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