Was Truman Justified In Making Ethical Decisions

CRJ 313
19 February 2012 Truman: Bomb Dropping It was August 6, 1945 when the first ever atomic bomb dropped on the city of Hiroshima in Japan. Three days later another was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, Japan and this let to the surrender of Japan in World War II. The surrender would have not occurred so soon if it had not been for President Harry Truman’s decision to use the first ever nuclear attack on another nation. His decision changed history and the way the world worked. This meant that nuclear power was out there at the disposal of the United States for them to use whenever they saw fit. The decision Truman had to make was extremely difficult seeing as he was faced with a huge ethical dilemma whether to kill entire cities to save millions of American lives. The issue was not only was it ethically right but did he have enough justification to prove to the world that dropping the atomic bomb was the only way to end the war. When you look at Truman’s decision from an ethical perspective, many different ethical views have to be taken into account to judge
whether the decision was right or wrong. Utilitarianism is one way to judge the actions that Truman carried out in the bombings in Japan. Utilitarianism is basically a way of trying to create the most happiness possible for the most number of people. In Utilitarianism every one counts for one person and one person only because everyone matters equally. The easiest way to justify a right action is that the end justifies the means. The outcome of the action has to be beneficial to the majority of the people. The point of Utilitarianism is to think about your actions and what consequences they will have before you do them. Determine whether they are right or wrong by looking at all of the possible outcomes and see if it is going to be positive for the majority of the people involved. In President Truman’s case, he did look at this from a consequential standpoint. Him and his team analyzed all of the other options such as a ground attack but the casualties from that were estimated to be in the millions while there would be casualties on both sides. This would mean that hundreds of thousands of American soldiers would die from a ground invasion because of the suicide and kamikaze attacks the Japanese soldiers and civilians would use against them. In Truman’s opinion the best way to save American lives would be to drop the bombs because it would force the Japanese to surrender.
Truman followed the basic principles of Act utilitarianism as he weighed all the possible outcomes and chose the one that generated the most pleasure in that particular situation. At that time he was focused on bringing the greatest pleasure to the American people and the only way to do that was to force the Japanese to surrender. On the other hand the other principle of Rule Utilitarianism would have called for a different action from President Truman. Rule states that when looking at the potential rules of action you have to determine whether there is a rule to be followed. This needs to be a moral rule that needs to be followed at all times. The only problem with Rule and Truman was that Truman’s planned called for the mass killing of Japanese civilians and according to Rule Utilitarianism it is not okay to kill another human being except in some cases such as self-defense. To be fair to Truman’s decision he could have used utilitarianism as a way to back up his decision using the Act principle because he acted in the best way he saw fit to benefit his country and his people.
Truman had multiple reasons besides getting the Japanese to surrender in order to justify his decision. When the U.S. was deep into war with Japan towards the end of the war the cost of the war had climbed to new heights and was costing the U.S. tons of money. There were many soldiers that were being taken into imprisonment and were tortured to death as well as being forced to do unspeakable things to their own kind (Sky, Octo). The invasion of Japan would have caused casualties on both sides that would have surpassed the total number from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Finally, Truman was convinced that the bomb would show the world of the terror the atomic bomb would bring and prevent it from ever being used again. To also compel his decision he argued that the two cities would have been firebombed anyways so it wasn’t like they would have been left untouched. Truman knew that the devastation caused by the atomic bomb would be the only thing to stop the resistance of the Japanese and cause them to finally agree to ultimate surrender (Dietrich, 1995).
Another way to look at the situation is through how the actions of President Truman cannot be justified even though according to Utilitarianism he was justified because of the consequences being the best for the American people. When you look at Truman’s action through another view such as ethical formalism, it is clear that there was no justification of what he did when he dropped the atomic bomb. According to Ethical formalism, from deontological ethics, it’s based off of whether or not the motive is actually good or not. The intention of the action has to be morally good otherwise it doesn’t follow the laws. Also with ethical formalism, whatever is considered to be wrong is always wrong no matter what the case. Thus there is no justification for murder because there can’t possibly be any good from killing another person intentionally. This being sad helps point to the fact that Truman had the intentions of killing innocent people when he dropped the bomb. This action cannot be morally allowed because he knew that when he dropped the bomb that thousands of people would die. Even though most people can agree that dropping the bomb was better for America as a nation, ethical formalism says that there is no justifying murder even if it is to benefit the greater good.
The point of dropping the bomb was to pressure the Japanese into an unconditional surrender, which didn’t happen because after the surrender we still allowed them to keep their emperor. One of the other points of dropping the bomb in Hiroshima was to show what effects it would have upon an “untouched” city when an atomic bomb would fall. In reality there was no significance to Hiroshima because it was basically all civilians and there was no military significance in that city. The story told by Truman was the reason they dropped the bomb was to show the world the terror it could really cause to ensure that it never happened again yet he dropped a second bomb on Japan in three days before the Japanese had any time to realize what had happened in Hiroshima. It is clear that they would have most likely surrendered with dropping only the first bomb ("The ethical spectacle ," June). When you put all of these disbeliefs together with the fact of how necessary it was to use the bomb, it could make one doubt if we should have dropped in the first place. The point of nuclear weapon is to be used in the most extreme time when there are no options left but the United States was the front runner in the war at the time. The Russians were about to aid their fight against the Japanese and they had superior manpower. These reasons make it easy to doubt whether or not President Truman did the right thing or not.
Whoever debates this argument has valid points for each side and could justify what Truman did or declare what he did as an unmoral act.
This doesn’t change the millions of American soldiers’ lives he saved when he made that decision. The dropping of the bomb ended the war in a dead halt and saved more lives than it ruined. This was a significant point in history where everything changed and a new path was paved for a new era of firepower that had never been dreamed of before. The reality was that nobody thought that someone was going to drop the atomic bomb but Truman proved them wrong and showed that when America had to get business done that he would take the necessary actions. One thing Truman did accomplish that was a good thing, there has not been atomic bomb dropped since that day on August 9, 1945 because the world seen the destruction and chaos that the atomic bomb carried with
it.

Dietrich, B. (1995). Seattle times. Retrieved from http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/special/trinity/supplement/procon.html

The ethical spectacle . (June). Retrieved from http://www.spectacle.org/696/hiroshi.html

Sky, J. (Octo). Was dropping the atom bomb justified?. Retrieved from http://socyberty.com/history/was-the-dropping-of-the-atomic-bomb-justified/