,000 times greater than the most powerful bomb in existence at the time. There were many reasons President Truman had to consider in dropping the atomic bomb. First lets look at the military, moral, and political consequences of his decision. Military reasons and consequences:One of the major reasons that contributed to the bombing was the unprovoked and unexpected bombing of the US military base on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The unexpected bombing caused 19 ships to sink and about 2,400 American soldiers and sailors to be killed. This normally would not have provoked such a harsh response except for the fact that the United States was not at the time involved in the war. This was the first time that a battle was fought on American soil for hundreds of years and the American people weren't going to sit back and do nothing about the situation. They wanted to get revenge on Japan or they would not be satisfied. There was also a tremendous amount of propaganda spreading throughout the United States to increase America's hatred toward Japan. Newspaper and radio always used the slogan "Hirohito must go!" to further anger the Americans about the Pearl Harbor bombing. Since Americans hated Japan, this pressured Truman to do something about the injustice. (Cayton, Perry, Winkler, 1995, pg. 788) Many believed that Japan was ready to surrender and that there was no good reason to drop such a bomb. Japan's military resources were greatly depleted due to non-stop American air raids over Japanese military sites. However, Japan was reluctant to surrender unconditionally to American terms because they had too much pride for their Japanese emperor. The Japanese fought not only for the glory of their emperor, they fought for the glory of their country. Instead of surrendering, the Japanese soldiers would rather commit kamikaze attacks, which are "suicide missions in which pilots would deliberately slam their bomb-filled planes into Am...
