Reference no: EM133301587

Assignment:

Begin by carefully reading the assigned materials in this module. Next, consider this very real dilemma from the final days of World War II:

It is the summer of 1945. President Franklin D. Roosevelt is dead. The Vice President, Harry Truman, becomes President and is immediately confronted with a terrible ethical dilemma. The Manhattan Project, which was designed to produce an atomic bomb, is complete. And is now available for use. Germany has surrendered to the Allies in May of that year, but Japan has vowed to fight on to the last man, woman and child. The conquest of Japanese-held islands in the Pacific has been far more costly in lives than expected because the Japanese have proven that they are willing to die rather than surrender. Truman's generals ask for direction. So the President orders a cost / benefit analysis of the probable results of two courses of action:

• Military conquest of Japan, island by island and city by city.
• The use of an atomic weapon, which could destroy an entire city with a single bomb.

History records that, faced with two terrible choices, Truman decided to use atomic weapons. Using any additional research you may find necessary, explain:

• Truman's rationale for the use of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
• The weaknesses in his use of utilitarian ethical theory in this situation