

Unconditional surrender was first enunciated by the Allies during World War II at a summit meeting at Casablanca in January 1943. The settlement demands that the loser make no demands during surrender proceedings. Unconditional surrender is a term used by victors in war to describe the type of settlement they wish to extoll from the vanquished. Sometimes incorporating napalm, these bombs were responsible for burning over 41.5 square miles of Tokyo by the United States in March 1945. The incendiary bomb was a mixture of thermite and oxidizing agents employed by the Allies and Axis powers after 1943. In the successive weeks, thousands more Japanese died from the after effects of the radiation exposure of the blast. Three days later, on August 9, a second bomb, Fat Man, was dropped on Nagasaki. Leveling over 60 percent of the city, 70,000 residents died instantaneously in a searing flash of heat. On the clear morning of August 6, the first atomic bomb, nicknamed Little Boy, was dropped on the city of Hiroshima. The Allies in late July 1945 declared at Potsdam that the Japanese must unconditionally surrender.Īfter Japanese leaders flatly rejected the Potsdam Declaration, President Truman authorized use of the atomic bomb anytime after August 3, 1945. Yet, Japanese resolve stayed strong and the idea of a bloody "house to house" invasion of the Japanese mainland would produce thousands more American and Allied casualties. In all, hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed in these air strikes meant to deter the resolve of the Japanese people. Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, and Kobe all were decimated by incendiary and other bombs. The imprecision of bombing and the use of devastating city bombing in Europe eventually swayed United States Pacific theater military leaders to authorize bombing of Japanese mainland cities. Japan's lack of air power hindered their ability to fight. American B-29's made bombing runs over military targets on the Japanese mainland an integral part of their air campaign. Their navy had ceased to exist as an effective fighting force and the air corps had been decimated. Their losses at Iwo Jima and Okinawa had been staggering. The Japanese resolve to fight had been seriously hampered in the preceding months.
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Operation Olympia, a full scale landing of United States armed forces, was already planned for Kyushu on Novemand a bomb and blockade plan had already been instituted over the Japanese mainland for several months. President Harry Truman had many alternatives at his disposal for ending the war: invade the Japanese mainland, hold a demonstration of the destructive power of the atomic bomb for Japanese dignitaries, drop an atomic bomb on selected industrial Japanese cities, bomb and blockade the islands, wait for Soviet entry into the war on August 15, or mediate a compromised peace. The bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese to initiate United States entrance into the war, just four years before, was still fresh on the minds of many Americans.Ī feeling of vindication and a desire to end the war strengthened the resolve of the United States to quickly and decisively conclude it. These victories insured the United States was within air striking distance of the Japanese mainland. In these most bloody conflicts, the United States had sustained more than 75,000 casualties. was engaged in heavy fighting with the Japanese at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. The Pacific war would receive full attention from the United States War Department. With the advent of the nuclear age, new dilemmas in the art of warfare arose. The world's first atomic bomb had been detonated. The explosion carrying more power than 20,000 tons of TNT and visible for more than 200 miles succeeded. Groves of Oppenheimer, in a memorandum for Secretary of War Stimson. "For the last few seconds, he stared directly ahead and when the announcer shouted Now!' and there came this tremendous burst of light followed abruptly there after by the deep growling of the explosion, his face relaxed into an expression of tremendous relief," recalled General L. Years of secrecy, research, and tests were riding on this moment. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Manhattan Project, could hardly breathe. In the early morning hours of July 16, 1945, great anticipation and fear ran rampant at White Sands Missile Range near Alamogordo, New Mexico. Electing Our Presidents Teacher Workshop.

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