Was it Necessary?
The intentional killing of thousands of civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in order to put a quick end to the war against Japan far outweighs the effects of the Chernobyl Accident of 1986 by any moral standards. Economically the effects of Chernobyl may be considered higher and the effects on the land higher, however at this time there are far less civilian casualties that are directly related to Chernobyl. The bombings killed an estimated 204,000 people between the two bombs and from their aftereffects (New World Encyclopedia). Chernobyl has had 30 deaths directly related to the tragic accident of 1986 (World Nuclear). The Chernobyl Accident was a tragic accident that happened in 1986 and was caused by a flawed reactor and by inadequately trained personnel (World Nuclear). Hundreds of thousands of people were originally evacuated from their homes and to this day are still working to be able to move back to their homes and the workers are still trying to build an adequate structure around the reactor to contain the radiation permanently. These people may have lost their homes but at least they still have their lives and may be able to recover fully. There is no evidence of a major public health impact attributed to radiation exposure 20 years after the accident (World Nuclear). This was a horrible accident but there were only 30 people proven killed. Some people and studies think that there may be a higher incidence of cancer but it has never really been proven. The fact of the matter is they get a chance to rebuild their lives and start over. The majority of the hundreds of thousands of people killed in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were innocent civilians who were not even fighting in the war. The Target Committee of Los Alamos recommended the area because they wanted the first use of this kind weapon to be sufficiently spectacular for its importance and to be internationally recognized (New World Encyclopedia). They seemed to be using it to show how powerful they were and to make a point and show other countries what could happen. It was a kind of experiment as they did not know the effects but were curious what would happen. The committee also stated that they believed this would end the war with far less casualties then if they just continue to fight out the war as they had been (New World Encyclopedia). Why would you drop two bombs instead of just seeing if the first one would do the trick and end the war? Why would you purposely kill more innocent people that may not need to be sacrificed? It seems to point to the fact that they just wanted to make a scene and prove a point while at the same time winning the war, and that it was not necessary to kill so many innocent people who had no choice in the matter. People didn’t just die from the initial blast of the bomb, many suffered needlessly for years to come from radiation exposure because nobody really knew what would happen from the bomb. In the years up to 1990 hundreds have died from radiation poisoning, necrosis and other related illnesses (New World Encyclopedia). When the decision was made to drop these bombs nobody had a clue what the
