On August 6, 1945, during the second world war, an American B-29 bomber dropped the world's first atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The bomb, known as "Little Boy," was a uranium gun-type bomb. 80,00 people were killed immediately while tens of thousands more would later die from radiation exposure. Just three days later, America dropped a second atomic bomb, this time in Nagasaki, thus forcing Japan to unconditionally surrender.
The entire project of building the bomb began shortly before the war in 1939, when a group of American scientists became concerned about the growing threat of nuclear weapons elsewhere. By 1940, the US government started funding nuclear weapon research which was run under the supervision of the Office of Scientific Research and Development and the War Department. The US Army Corps was tasked with leading the construction of the vast facilities necessary for the top-secret program. In fact, the project was codenamed "The Manhattan Project" for the engineering corps' Manhattan district. Over the next few years, the project's scientists worked on producing the key components for nuclear fission-uranium-235 and plutonium-239. A team was even sent to Los Alamos, New Mexico to turn these components into a workable atomic bomb. By mid-1945, the team held its first successful test of an atomic device at Trinity test site at Alamogordo, New Mexico.
Around the time of the test, the Allied powers had already defeated Nazi Germany in Europe. Japan, on the other hand, vowed to fight to the bitter end despite clear indications that they had little chance of winning. On the edge of defeat, Japan became increasingly deadly with its tactics. In fact, in about three and a half months in 1945, it caused Allied casualties totaling nearly half those suffered in the three full years of war. By later July, Japan's continued to reject defeat in the Potsdam Declaration which threatened "prompt and utter destruction" if the Japanese failed to comply. Losing patience watching the increasing number of casualties on the battlefront, General MacArthur and other high-level military commanders began to look towards possibly utilizing the atomic bomb. The United States was already bombing Japan, and was planning to follow up with a massive invasion, codenamed "Operation Downfall." However, these commanders strongly advised Truman not to go through with the invasion, claiming that such an order would result in a high casualty rate. After much discussion with Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, General Dwight Eisenhower, and a number of the Manhattan Project scientists, he concluded that using the atomic bomb was the most efficient way to end the war.
Before being decimated, Hiroshima was a manufacturing center comprising of some 400,000 people. Hiroshima had not been targeted during the previous bombing raids on Japan and was therefore regarded as a suitable location to test the effects of the atomic bomb. After a blast equivalent to about twelve to fifteen thousand tons of TNT, Japan once again refused to surrender. Then, Major Charles Sweeney flew another B-29 bomber to Nagasaki, a secondary target, where the plutonium bomb, "Fat Man" was dropped. The next day, Emperor Hirohito announced Japan's surrender on a radio broadcast.
https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/bombings-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-1945
I think that your post was very interesting, and I learned a lot about these bombings. One thing that really interesting to me was the reason that Hiroshima was specifically hit. Part of that can be attributed to the fact that Hiroshima was an unknown target, but there were a few other regions. The main city, Tokyo, was deemed unsuitable since it's image was already thought of as "rubble". Cities like Kyoto did not have large enough populations or manufacturing centers that would make the bomb symbolic. So finally, it was decided that Hiroshima would be bombed.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/08/hiroshima-nagasaki-atomic-bomb-anniversary/400448/