The question Im going to be attempting to answer is "Was the use of atomic weapons on Japan justified?" More specifically, what would the other options to end the war have been and what would have been the accompanying body counts. What I need help with is finding documents to use as sources. For instance, I believe that the department of defense put out a document the planned invasion of mainland Japan, and that it discussed the size of the invasion force, the resistance they would have met, and expected casualties on both sides. Are there any sort of databases that would contain documents like this one? And of course if anyone knows any good documents on the subject, I'd be happy to look at those as well. Thanks for any help you can give me.
Hi there!
The most potentially illuminating set of documents would be the Foreign Relations of the United States volumes. These are troves of government records published by the State Department and organized by administration, then by year, then by topic. It's all available for free online and you'll likely be able to find documents related to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I would also highly recommend the Truman Presidential library's website. This is probably the more accessible option. Search for their Student Research File. The good archivists there (met a few of them, they're awesome folks) have taken digitization of primary source documents to a new level. I believe they have an organized, completely free online collection on the decision to drop the atomic bomb. But even if they don't, the amount of digitized files easily available through that library is nuts.
Those resources should give you a good start.
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