Why Is Harry Truman Unethical

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Harry Truman took presidency after Franklin D. Roosevelt died. Truman was faced with the decision to use atomic bombs to end the war with Japan. Truman decided that dropping the atomic bomb would avoid an invasion by Japan and the loss of a huge number of American citizens (Walker, 2005, p.312). Instead of a large number of the American citizens being killed, seventy five thousand Japanese citizens were killed at the instant the bomb was dropped and more tens of thousands died soon after (Hamby, 1995, p. 7). Japan was given no warning the United States was going to bomb them; therefore, many innocent Japanese citizens did not have time to leave or take cover (Jordan, 2015, p. 54). Harry Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb was unethical because research shows there was another way …show more content…
3). This means that two innocent Japanese children, who did not sign up for war, died to save the life of an American Soldier: a man who did sign up to die for his country. I believe that killing thousands of people in general is immoral. It is even worse when the people killed consist of innocent children. Those children had a future, and for all we know they could have invented something that would have changed the world. I base my beliefs on deontological ethics. One person should not have the power to take thousands of people’s lives, which is what Truman did. The president should be able to declare war and strategize on the most efficient way to end war, but his strategy should not take out tens of thousands of citizens. I cannot bring myself to reason how the planes crashing into the twin towers, killing 3,000 American citizens, is any worse than the 80,000 Japanese lives that were taken by the atomic bomb (History.com, 2015). I believe President Truman should have reconsidered the other ways proposed to end the war, or he should have been more patient with the naval