Normally we think of technology as a way to make life better, but
technology can also be destructive. In the summer of 1945, American
President Harry Truman was forced to make a decision. Scientists
told him about the top secret "Manhattan Project," a nuclear bomb
that was more powerful than twenty thousand pounds of TNT.
Harry Truman wasn't elected as president.
He had been Vice President less than three months when President
Franklin Roosevelt died. Truman was a brusque man whose use of mild
foul language in public caused his supporters to dub him "Give 'em
Hell Harry." Now he had to make what might be the single most important
decision any president would ever have to make.
America had been at war with Japan since
Japan attacked the American naval base on Hawaii's Pearl Harbor
on December 7, 1941. The United States was winning the war, but
at a great price. More than one million Americans would die in World
War Two, more than any other two wars combined. The Americans would
not be able to win the war without an invasion of Japan. Military
experts say another million people would be lost in the invasion.
Dropping the bomb would end the war quickly and save many American
lives.
But for many, including the scientists
who helped build the bomb, dropping it was unthinkable. More than
one hundred thousand people would be killed instantly. Many others
would suffer horribly. The effects of the bomb included severe radiation,
which caused many people to develop cancer.
Truman and his advisors worked in top
secret. Some suggested dropping the bomb in the ocean, but that
was rejected because nobody would understand it's destructive force.
Nobody was sure the bomb would actually work. Small-scale tests
worked, but nobody had ever dropped an atomic bomb before. America
only had two atomic bombs. If one exploded in the ocean, they would
have wasted a valuable weapon.
Some advisors suggested that Truman warn
the Japanese in advance of dropping the bomb. That would have allowed
the Japanese to move their civilians out of the areas and limited
the loss of life. Truman rejected that idea for many reasons. Japan
would have
no reason to believe that America was telling the truth and because
Japan might move prisoners of war into the target of the drop.
Truman decided to drop the atomic
bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. On August 9, a second bomb
was dropped on Nagasaki. Japan agreed to surrender on August 14.
The long war was over, but the nuclear
threat was born. Soon after the war, the Soviet Union (now Russia)
learned the secrets of nuclear weapons. Today, in addition to the
United States and Russia, France, Great Britain, China and Israel
have discovered the technology of nuclear weapons, and many other
nations, including India, South Africa, Iraq, Iran and North Korea
possibly have nuclear technology.
Advances in technology have allowed both
the United States and the Soviet Union/Russia to end life as we
know it. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev described our planet after
a full nuclear war as a place where "the living would envy the dead."
America came close to war with the Soviets in 1962, when the Americans
learned that the Soviets were building nuclear missiles in Cuba,
an island only ninety miles south of Miami, Florida. The Soviets
dismantled their missiles.
The world's two "superpowers" saw the
foolishness of nuclear war and began to discuss dismantling their
nuclear arms. Today, the nuclear threat is not from America or the
Soviet Union/Russia, but from smaller nations or individuals. In
1980, the government of Iran allowed 51 Americans to be held hostage
for more than a year. In 1995, Timothy McVeigh killed more than
three hundred people in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma by setting off a
small bomb.
Today we live in a world where many nations
and perhaps some individuals have the technology to destroy our
planet. We humans of the planet Earth have created many marvelous
ways to make life better, but we have also created a method to destroy
the world we created.
