so the prompt is that i needed to make a rhetorical analysis of the different perspective(stakeholders) in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki , Thank you!
The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki occurred during World War II. The shareholders are the U.S government and soldiers, who benefited because they were able to end the war quickly before they lost more lives in the conflict. The main sufferers of the event were the civilians that were living in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they took the blunt of the attack and lost more than one hundred thousand lives in the bombing. Another shareholder that was directly affected by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the Japanese government itself. They Japanese government was affected because the atomic bomb was a direct cause for them to surrender to the United States.
The United States government claim would be that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a necessary action that they need to take in order to save "American" lives by using that weapon, the United States made other countries think twice before being hostile against the United States.(Washington Post 1945) They wanted to show their power to the communist countries so that an event like Pearl Harbor would not happen in the future, because many lives and ships were lost on the surprised attack by the Japanese planes.
The warrant for the American claim was that they were losing more than one hundred thousand lives during World War II. There were more casualties than that in the pacific. The United States wanted to end the war quickly so that they will be able to save lives that would have been lost if they had used ground assault to invade Japan and end the war.
The United States justified their actions by using the number of casualties of US soldiers which was derived from the article "Truman Didn't Hesitate to Drop the Atomic bomb". Before the decision to use nuclear weapon was reached the United States has lost more than one million in troops, twenty-nine hundred thousand soldiers were killed in action. More than six hundred thousand soldiers were wounded, missing or taken prisoner by the axis forces. The number of casualties would be an effective piece of evidence because it would give people facts that many died in the assault of Japan, and if the atomic bomb was not used more lives would have been lost before Japan surrendered. (Pincus 1974)
People that did not agree with the claim would state that it was not necessary to actually bomb the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki because they the Japanese would have surrendered eventually. They would support their claim with the evidence that the US was already pushing the Japanese back into their homeland, if the US continued their ground assault, the Japanese would have surrendered in due time. They would also argue that United States could have gave the Japanese a warning shot by dropping the bomb somewhere without civilians.
The US government might rebut the statement by stating that if they have continued with ground assault more lives would have been lost because the Japanese were ready to sacrifice their lives to kill American troops. They would support their claim with the evidence that the United States already lost more than one hundred thousand lives from island hopping. If they were to assault Japan directly they would lose more lives because the mainland would have been more heavily fortified by the Japanese troops. The government would rebut the alternate solution by saying that it would not have worked because according to Truman Didn't Hesitate to Drop the Atomic bomb, the United States was already bombarding Tokyo, if they dropped a warning shot it would not have had effect because it was nothing different than the air strikes that happens daily in Tokyo.(Pincus, 1974)
The second stakeholder in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be the Japanese victims that lived in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The victims would claim that it was morally wrong for the United States to massacre the civilians that lived on the islands because they were non-combatant civilians which would not have entered the war to kill the US soldiers. By killing civilians that were not directly involved in the war, the US would be proven to have the wrong moralities driving them in the war.
The warrant for victims would be that they had not actively participated in the war at all. They have not directly killed any American soldiers. They did not deserve to die or suffer from the atomic bomb, which the aftermath left many with radiation poisoning.(Akiko,2003)
The evidence that they would use to support their claim is the document called Searching for grandpa in the Hiroshima memoryscape, under the shadow of the bomb, which depicts the struggles of a young boy who is a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing. The evidence shows that the United States bombed an island that was inhabited by children and elders. They would not have posed a threat to the US troops at all.(Akiko, 2003)
The people who disagrees with the victims would rebut their claim by saying that it was necessary to drop the bomb on the islands because it was the only way to end the war quickly without increasing the number of casualties suffered by the allied forces. They would also say that the civilians were also providing food and raw materials for the Japanese troops to go to war, so they were involved in the war though not directly. They would support their claim with the fact that everyone in Japan during the war was either enlisted in the army or working towards producing weapons for the war effort of Japan.
The victims would rebut the statement by saying that Hiroshima was a small island. They would not have had any significant raw material and food to send to Japanese troops to make a significant difference. They would support this statement with the evidence that most of the adult men that were on the island were enlisted to go to war, which leaves only the old and young on the island. This lowers their capacity to providing food and raw materials significantly. It would make the island of Hiroshima a morally wrong choice to drop the bomb since there were only elders and children living there, while it also has very little contribution to the war effort made by the Japanese.
The last stakeholder that was involved in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is the Japanese government. The Japanese government would claim that the use of the atomic bomb was excessive use of force against them because they were already being bombarded in Tokyo on a daily basis (Pincus, 1974). The atomic bomb caused more than two hundred thousand lives to be lost in one day (Pincus, 1974).
The warrant for their claim is that, they were already losing civilian lives daily from the bombardment made by the United States air force in Tokyo. The atomic bomb would also cause long lasting radiation effects on the civilians that survived the initial bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The radiation effects can include defects, cancer and even death (Duffus, 1946).
They would support their claim with the evidence of the after effect of the bombing of the islands, with the horrendous image of the effect of the bomb from a first-hand survivor (Akiko, 2003). It would be effective because the horrendous images and the detailed survival story would appeal to the emotions of the audience which will make them feel more compassionate towards the claim.
The people that disagree with the Japanese would state that, they were given a chance to surrender by the United States before they decided to drop the atomic bomb on the islands of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Pincus 1974), Which means that it is the Japanese government's fault for not surrendering when they were given the chance to do so. They would support their claim with the fact that the United States offered them a chance to surrender before the bomb was dropped (Pincus, 1974). It would prove that the US did not just drop the bomb out of nowhere, there was a cause for them to use the bomb.
The Japanese government would rebut the claim with the fact that even if they did not surrender, the massacre of more than two hundred thousand civilians was still morally wrong, and the force that was used was excessive because it caused an incurable condition to the land of the island. (Pincus, 1974) They would support their claim by stating that many lives were lost or changed forever because of the atomic bomb, children and elders suffered from the bomb.(Pincus, 1974)(Akiko, 2003) It would appeal the emotion of the audience, which will be an effective tool to convince them to agree with the claim.
In conclusion, in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki there were many stakeholders in the event. The Americans who gained the most from it. The civilians of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who lost more than two hundred thousand lives, and the Japanese government who lost the war from fear of the atomic bomb. They would have different views of the event and different evidence, some will agree with the dropping of the bomb , some will disagree with it.
