The Hiroshima and Nagasaki Bombings. Genocide or Not? Essay Example

The Hiroshima and Nagasaki Bombings. Genocide or not? ! The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki occurred on 6-9 August 1945. As stated by Jennifer Rosenberg: ‘‘Unlike many other bombing raids, the goal for this raid had not been a military installation but rather an entire city.’’1 The US wanted to scare the Japanese out of the war. The possible targets of the bombings were: Hiroshima, Kokura, Nagasaki and Niigata. Kyoto was one of the choices as well, but it was removed from the list. ‘‘The cities were chosen because they had been relatively untouched during the war.’’2 The bomb «Little Boy» was dropped on Hiroshima by the crew of a B-29 Superfortress «Enola Gay» bomber. On 9th of August it was followed by the bomb «Fat Man» that was dropped on Nagasaki. The result of the bombings was death of about 250,000 civilians. Many inhabitants of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were seriously harmed by both burns, caused by instantaneous radiation of heat from the bomb explosion and the burns, caused by many fires that were created by the explosion(Fires, created by the collapsing buildings, damage to electrical systems an so on) as well as the radiation injuries, caused by instantaneous penetrating radiation3 . ! The United Nations Convention on Genocide is a 19 Article document created on th of August 1994 in order to help the world to determine whether a, for example, a killing 26 of a group of people could or couldn’t be considered genocide. As stated in the Article 2 of the UN Convention on Genocide: ‘‘In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: • (a) Killing members of the group; • (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; • (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; • (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the