Complexity in History: Who Should be Blamed?

              In a class, an English teacher asked me ,"Who should be responsible for throwing nuclear bombs in Japan? Should the scientists who invented it be accused?" I said, "Well, I think the government which took an advantage of the scientific invention should be accused. Any invention such as dynamite and airplanes can be beneficial and harmful, largely depending on how people use it. " I think my answer was convincing enough, but the teacher reasoned that nuclear bombs, which are definitely weapons, would not have been made without those scientists and thus the scientists should be accused!

               To me, this question was very hard to answer with confidence. The responsibility for this incident in Nagasaki and Hiroshima can be attributed to many individuals and groups, and I think this is the complexity when we try to have a consensus on recognition of historical events. For example, Some people could argue that WW2 would not have happened if WW1 did not happen even though both of them did not seem directly related each other. But then, if Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria did not go to Sarajevo, WW1 would not have happened. But then, if....

              I think we can endlessly keep attributing the cause of the WW2 to the past events. History, most of the time, happens with cause-effect relationships. Thus, if I try to answer the question teacher asked in a class, I could say, "Perhaps, the god should be responsible for the nuclear bombs because it created us."