Media Construction of Peace

PowerPoint Slide Show, Unit 4, Lesson 1

World War Two

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“If we permit our country to become involved in the wars now raging in Europe, Asia and Africa, we face disastrous sacrifices - human, social and material. We risk the liberties of the United States in a conflict from which no nation can emerge truly victorious. Let us spare America from such an act of national folly.”

194?Dr

Exact life for retaliation for atrocities?

Dismember their nation?

Crush their peace-time industries?

Enslave their people by indemnities and forced labor?

Disarm them in an armed world?

No punitive indemnities or forced labor?

Impartial trial of all persons charged with crime?

Self-determination for a democratic Germany?

Immediate limitation of all armaments?

World trade regulation for universal prosperity?

Admission of all free peoples to cooperation?

American History high school textbook excerpt from:“Defeating Japan”, pg. 575, in United States History: Two Centuries of Progress by

Harold Eibling, Carlton Jackson and Vito Perrone, published 1974

”Finally the United States gave Japan an ultimatum, one final warning to surrender. But the warning fell on deaf ears. Now President Harry S Truman had to make a major decision. He had become President after Franklin Roosevelt’s death in April, 1945. Truman now decided to use a new American weapon, the Atom Bomb, against Japan. He believed its use would end the war and save many lives.

On August 6, 1945, a one ton bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a major Japanese city. Three days later a second bomb struck Nagasaki. Both cities were destroyed. On August 14 the war ended. And on September 2, 1945, or V-J Day, the Japanese signed the formal terms of surrender.”

American History high school textbook excerpt from: “Atomic Warfare”, pg. 772 in American History: A Survey by Alan Brinkley, published 2003

“With the Soviet Union poised to enter the war in the Pacific, did the United States want to end the conflict quickly to forestall an expanded communist presence in Asia? Did Truman use the bomb as a weapon to intimidate Stalin, with whom he was engaged in difficult negotiations, so the Soviet leader would accept American demands? Little direct evidence is available to support (or definitively refute) either of these accusations.

On August 6, 1945, an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, dropped an atomic weapon on the Japanese industrial center at Hiroshima. With a single bomb the United States completely incinerated a four-square-mile area at the center of the previously undamaged city. More than 80,000 civilians died, according to later American estimates. Many more survived to suffer the crippling effects of radioactive fallout or to pass those effects on to their children in the form of birth defects.”