K.Y.

TONI 201102831 2013 The Manhattan Project

Ethical Implications
Keeping the sole purpose of the project secret to the workers. From the governments point of view this was ethical as telling the workers what they were building would have compromised the whole project by either slowing it down (people refusing to work on it) or workers would have leaked the information to the enemys hands. From the workers point of view this was unethical as they were denied their power of choice, lied to (unethical) and most of all forced into building a bomb that would result in deaths of over 100000 people mostly civilians like them. Things like common morality would have probably made them choose otherwise. Last with this like professional ethics in place the government could have told the workers about the project and charged anyone that would leak such sensitive information with treason. Cities being primary targets rather than military areas. Bombing a different city because the one you intended to bomb first is covered by clouds shows me that the aim was to blast the bomb at all cost and that civilians were really not considered and that is unethical.

Was it necessary evil?

My answer is NO. I believe there were other means that could have been used to end the war besides the use of atomic bombs. Nazi Germany surrendered on 8 May 1945 3 months before the bombings and the Soviets had also declared war on Japan(kido koichi nikki,1966,pg 1223) and this tells us that the Japanese were clearly outnumbered as the rest of the world was against them but we see that the bombing is done before the troops that were in Germany are deployed to Japan and the bombing of Nagasaki just after the Soviets declare war on Japan. Historian Tsuyoshi Hegawa wrote The Soviet entry into the war played a much greater role than the atomic bombs in inducing Japan to surrendered.(Tsuyoshi 2006) General LeMay believed they as Americans behaved as war criminals and the only reason they were not prosecuted is because they won the war. To him this was an immoral act and he believes the war would have been over in 2 weeks even without the use of the atom bombs (http:/www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhekZXRr3w8&feature=relmfu)

Personally the fact that these atom bombs destroyed everyone and everything military or non military and the effects are still felt today makes me believe this was unnecessary the

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Americans should have considered the other alternatives especially since they were warned by their top scientists ("Leo Szilard, Interview: President Truman Did Not Understand.". U.S. News and World Report: 1960 pg. 6871. 15) about what might happen to the Japanese people.

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References
Kido koichi nikki, ,1966, p1223, Tokyo , Daigaku Shuppanekai Hasegawa, T.,2005, Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan. Belknap Press http:/www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhekZXRr3w8&feature=relmfu "Leo Szilard, Interview: President Truman Did Not Understand.". U.S. News and World Report: pp. 6871, 762. 15 August 1960. Retrieved 9 July 2007. (republished at [1], reached through Leo Szilard page at [2])