The Manhattan Project was the US Government’s secret military project established in 1942 which aimed to produce the US’ first nuclear weapon. Fears of Nazi Germany creating a nuclear weapon during the Second World War sparked the establishment of the Manhattan Project. The US physicists J. Robert Oppenheimer and Leslie R. Groves headed a team of the finest US scientists, engineers, mathematicians in conjunction with the European scientists Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi and Leo Sizlard to participate in the Manhatten Project. The Project was divided into three main research and production facilities at Oak Ridge, Hanford and Los Alamos. By the end of the project, the Project conjured a substantial amount of Uranium -235 (a rare isotope of Uranium) to produce the Little Boy and Big Boy atomic weapons.

1. Describe the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Why were these chosen? Give details of the bombs and the physical destruction they caused. (At least a page).

On May 10th 1915, the Target committee at Los Amos led by Robert Oppenheimer decided on which targets that would be suitable to ‘bomb’. They recommended the cities Kyoto, Hiroshima, Yokohama and Kokura. The committee managed to agree that the atomic weapons should not be used on a military target due to the chance of missing them and instead, they decided on a more ‘civilian’ based target.

Hiroshima was eventually chosen due to its large size, civilian population of 225,000 people, military significance and vast hills that surrounded the city that would create a ‘focusing effect’ and thereby, intensify the destructive capacity of the bomb. During the time of the bombing of the city, it was home to the headquarters of the 5th division, housing Field Marhsal Shunkoro Hata’s 2nd General Headquarters. Furthermore, it served as a minor supple and logistics base with could act as a storage area for the assembly of troops, whilst acting as a communication hub. Its ability to produce toxins and chemicals that were used against the Chinese also enticed the committee to choose the city.

The bombing of Hiroshima took place on August 6th, 1945. The Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress of the 393d Bombardment Squadron was accompanied accompanied by two other B-29 Superfortresses, one containing instrumentation and the other a photography equipment. The bomb ‘Little Boy’ was released uneventfully at 8:15 (Hiroshima Time). The gun-type fission bomb with 60Kg of uranium-235 took 57 seconds to fall from the aircraft and detonate 600m on top of the city. A blast equivalent to 13 kilotons of TNT ripped the heart out of Hiroshima. The nuclear explosion consisted of five interlinked effects: heat, light, blast, fallout and electromagnetic pulse (EMP)

The immediate aftermath of the bombing would produce a death toll of 70,000 people. By 1950, the figure would climb up to 200,000 people due to the long-term illnesses experienced by victims who were within the vicinity of the bomb blast.

Similarly, the atomic bombing of Nagasaki was chosen due to its military significance. During the war, it was the largest sea port in Southern Japan that bustled with industrial activity, producing ordnance, ships and military equipment. On the morning og August 9, 1945, a US B-29 Superfortress by the name of Bockscar flew out to engage the city of Kokura (Nagasaki at this stage was a secondary target). When a 70% cloud cover was reported over Kokura, the bomber changed course to Nagasaki and at 11:01, dropped the atomic weapon ‘Fat Man’. The 6.4kg plutonium-239 cor was dropped over the city’s industrial valley  and caused a casualty rate of 40,000 – 75,000 people. By the end of 1945, it would increase to 80,000.

“The atomic bomb was more than a weapon of terrible destruction; it was a psychological weapon” US Secretary of War Henry L. Stinson, 1947.

1. What was the immediate reaction of Western media to the dropping of the bombs?

This reaction is based off a BBC news article written a few days after the bombing of Hiroshima.

The Western media seemed to take positive militaristic view on the bombing of Hiroshima. A major component of the sense of ‘accomplishent’ on the droppings of the atomic weapon seemed to be based on America’s achievements on of “harnessing the basic power of the Universe” (Harry S. Trumann) by embracing science as “British and American science has outpaced all German efforts” (Winston Churchill). The Western Media appear to have praised the destruction of Japan that had effectively ended the Second World War and neglected the drastically large loss of life necessary to achieve so, particularly on the civilian population.

The United States created three atomic bombs within their Manhattan project; Fat Man, Little Boy, and Junior. Fat Man was dropped on Hiroshima and used uranium as the reactant, Little Boy on Nagasaki with plutonium. Junior was never used. The dropping of the first bomb, Fat Man, was justified. It scared the Japanese, and if given enough time, they would probably have surrendered. The Second World War was a stressful time in world history, all leaders of countries in the world were feeling this strain, Harry Truman was no exception, and it is likely because of this strain Truman dropped the second bomb. They had waited too long to interfere with Hitler and because of that over six million innocent people had died; Truman did not want to make the same mistake twice. This fear led to his error in judgment. The Japanese would have surrendered if given slightly more time. Despite the contradicting evidence that is now available, it is possible to see why he did what he did; the history of the time implied that waiting too long could be disastrous, so he did what he thought was right and what was in everyone’s best interest. It would be wrong to begrudge him for that.

Many people in Japan understand the reasons for the dropping of the bombs, some even agree. The Japanese hold very tight to their belief of honour; it is something worth dying over. It has been stated that if the bombs were not dropped the Japanese army would have fought until their last man, leaving a country with just women and children to fend for themselves. They take dishonour very seriously; if someone has disgraced their family it is tradition to commit Seppuku: suicide by self-disembowelment. As it was, the Japanese army was already going to extreme lengths to avoid surrender. They would send people on suicide missions, Kamikaze, to blow up boats with explosive packed planes. This caused terrible damage to both sides of the war. This tactic was basically a last ditch effort, a “going down with the ship” tactic to preserve their country’s honour. The atomic bombs saved them from their own self-destruction.

It is true that many people died in the atomic bombings: 100,000 people died instantly, 100,000 more within the months afterwards from radiation poisoning. Many more may have died from radiation related cancers in the years that followed, however it is unknown how many more would have died if the war had continued. People on both sides would have been hit; Allied soldiers, Japanese soldiers, and many more innocent civilians would have died. It is a fact that the relentless bomb raids scattered through the city of Tokyo had killed more people over the entire course of the war than the atomic bombs had. Though this other outcome of more raids and a longer, ever endless war that had not occurred, people should be thankful that there were not more victims of the Second World War, the price of the war was already far too high.

There were many casualties of the Second World War, the last but not the least was the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A great many things were learned from their destruction; desperation of man, the lengths at which people would honour their country, and how it is far easier to destroy then create. President Truman had a difficult decision to make in the final months of the war and he chose the lesser of two evils. While the dropping of the first bomb was a valid one, hindsight shows us that second bomb was not; the Japanese may have surrendered after only the first but hasty actions were taken. The people of America were scared that the Japanese would stop at nothing, that they would fight until there was no one left to fight. It was because of this, that it is believed that the bombings had also saved many lives. Whether or not the atomic bombings are considered as war crimes is irrelevant, it may have saved many more people from dieing and that is the end result that President Truman had been striving to achieve. Hopefully this event in history will stop further destruction from taking place. Teaching the people of the world to be better to one another so something like this will never happen again is the ultimate goal.

The bomb was originally developed for use in World War II by America for fear that the German Nazis would acquire it first. The Germans did have plans to build an atomic bomb, however, due to poor organization, their bomb never made it past the planning stages. The atomic bomb works by using a technology, which, at the time, was revolutionary: nuclear fission. Nuclear fission, through the use of Uranium (U-235 or U-238) or the more-effective Plutonium (P-239), creates a chain reaction so powerful that it was unfathomable at the time of its conception. Physicists had been theorizing about nuclear reactions years before the bomb came to fruition, however no one could have predicted the explosive power a bomb as powerful as this would exert.

Robert Oppenheimer via Wikipedia

The development of the atomic bomb in the United States took place under the military codename of “The Manhattan Project.” The “Manhattan Project” was headed by Julius Robert Oppenheimer (nicknamed Oppie by his colleagues), a young Harvard graduate with vast amounts of knowledge in physics specifically related to nuclear technology. He, along with the United States Army, recruited the best scientists to a secret location in Los Alamos, New Mexico. This secret location would be where the first atomic bomb would eventually be created. The United States army commanded this location with Major General Leslie R. Groves who would run the schedules of the scientists and military personnel stationed there.

A site separate from the Los Alamos location was chosen as the test site for the first atomic bomb. Robert Oppenheimer chose the Jornada del Meurto (literally translated as “Journey of Death”) desert in New Mexico as the test site. Oppenheimer would name this location “Trinity.”

Among the great scientists recruited by Oppenheimer was Albert Einstein. Einstein was the greatest physicist of his day. Einstein was a quiet elderly man; however, he had great knowledge, which he clearly demonstrated. Einstein had great knowledge and expertise of the intricacies behind building an atomic bomb and put this knowledge to great use for the United States. Albert Einstein was one of the main developers behind the bomb and keeper of its secrets, which lied within its core. The core contained the “initiator,” which released neutrons to initiate the nuclear reaction, and the sub-critical Uranium or Plutonium hemispheres.

The development of the first atomic bomb concluded on July 13, 1945 as the scientists unloaded it onto the one hundred-foot steel tower, which would be used to drop the bomb onto the “Trinity” test site’s hard, desert ground. Three days later, on July 16, 1945 at 5:29:45 Mountain War Time, the Earth would see its first atomic bomb detonation and subsequent explosion. Six miles away from the bomb’s “ground zero” the scientists who created this magnificent bomb stood in awe at what would come to be known as the world’s most destructive weapon of all time.

Image via Wikipedia

The deployment of the atomic bomb was almost as hectic as the development of it. President Harry S. Truman debated whether it was a smart idea to kill hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese civilians, but eventually decided it was a better alternative than sending in American troops to fight a ground war on Japanese soil. Without President Truman’s decision, the United States would have been forced to deploy troops into Japan and fight a costly land battle against the Japanese, which would create many more American casualties and create a battle which the United States may not have been able to win. With this uncertainty looming in the distance, President Truman made a tough, but necessary, decision to use the atomic bomb on civilian targets.

The first atomic bomb was set to be deployed on Hiroshima, Japan. The plane chosen for this fateful journey was the “Enola Gay,” which was commanded by commander Colonel Paul Tibbets. The bomb used here was nicknamed “Little Boy” and was a bomb created using an isotope of Uranium, U-235. The bombing took place on the morning of August 6, 1945. The bomb used had a blast equivalent to thirteen kilotons of TNT. Estimates of seventy to eighty-thousand Japanese civilians perished during the initial blast of the atomic bomb and the mushroom cloud could be seen from many miles away. Hiroshima would go down in history as the first civilian target to be attacked with an atomic bomb. The knowledge gained from this deployment about the after-effects of the bomb would greatly help in discouraging future use of the bomb.

The second atomic bombing was on a smaller Japanese city, Nagasaki. This bombing took place on August 9, 1945. The bomb used here was a more powerful Plutonium-based bomb nicknamed “Fat Man” (after Winston Churchill). The bombing of Nagasaki killed as many as 80,000 people. Some historians have seen this attack as an unnecessary display of power; however, the United States saw it as the proverbial “one-two punch” needed to cause Japan to surrender their war efforts. Many people today view this bombing as overkill due to the fact that the first bombing at Hiroshima displayed tremendous amounts of power which some see would have likely caused Japan to surrender by itself. The United States thought the second bombing was necessary so that Japan would not think the first atomic bomb was a test bomb, and therefore the only one the United States had.

Image via Wikipedia

The bombing of these two Japanese cities have led to new discoveries about how atomic bomb radiation affects the people exposed to it. This new information would discourage countries in the future from waging nuclear war for fear that their own people would be attacked with this horrendous weapon. Those people who did not die initially from the bombing most likely perished from radiation poisoning later.

The aftermath of the bombing was horrible. Two hundred twenty thousand people had died by then end of 1945. The world reacted to the bomb with great fear, surprise, and disillusion. The bombings still have an effect on our world today. In fact, just recently President Barack Obama has called for all nations to begin nuclear disarmament in hopes that the world can be free of nuclear proliferation someday.

Eventually, spies passed on the secrets of the workings of the bomb to Russia. A physicist close to the development of the bomb, Klaus Fuchs, was a communist sympathizer who had had meeting with Russian contact for many years. Klaus passed on vital secrets to the inner workings of the bomb to Russian spies. Russia had built its own atomic bomb by 1948 with use of this knowledge. Russia’s development of the bomb led to the cold war stalemate between the United States and Russia for the next forty-five years.

Overall, the atomic bomb is the greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time. The bomb is the most deadly and destructive weapon ever used against another country and looks to remain as such, hopefully, for a very long time.

Sources:

Day of Trinity by Lansing Lamont (1965, 1985)

The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the Words of Its Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historians by Cynthia C. Kelly (2009)

TIME Magazine, Monday, June 10, 1946, “Atomic Dust Storm”

Just think of yourself as President Harry Truman during the war. President Truman wanted the war to end, and the only way to end it was to have an invasion in Japan to make them surrender. The only problem with this plan was that thousands of American Soldiers would die in the process of the invasion. At the same time that President Truman was thinking about the invasion, the atomic bombs were invented. President Truman didn’t know about the bombs until he was told by a general. The general said that the atomic bombs could cause a lot of devastation to the Japanese with only four or five American soldiers who could die if things went wrong.

If things didn’t go wrong no American soldiers would die. President Truman gave the okay to use the atomic bombs in Japan to end the war. They picked two cities in Japan to bomb, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The American’s would first send out leaflets all around Japan saying that if they didn’t surrender they would bomb them with a bomb with tremendous force. The Japanese didn’t surrender, so the American’s bombed the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Still, the Japanese didn’t surrender, so they sent out leaflets again saying that they were going to drop another atomic bomb if the Japanese didn’t surrender. The Japanese sill didn’t surrender, so the American’s dropped another bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. Finally, Japan surrendered after the second atomic bomb was dropped. The names of the atomic bombs were Fat Man and Little Boy.

After the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the United States became the super power of the world. The main reason the United States became the super power of the world was because they had a very destructive weapon, and instead of just threatening to use it, the United States actually used it. In other words, other countries would have just threatened to use the atomic bomb, but the United States actually used it. In a way, using the atomic bombs on Japan was saying that if you make the United States mad enough during a war, they will put a lot of devastation to your country.

Just think of how devastating the atomic bomb is. The atomic bomb completely wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After the bombs were atomic bombs were dropped, many people’s lives changed. The Japanese, for instance, got nuclear radiation poisoning, and for a couple generations some Japanese children would be mutated.

After the war, the Soviet Union leader, Stalin, wanted to get the technology to create an atomic bomb. Stalin wanted to be a super power like the United States, and he knew the only way to get to be a super power was to have the technology to create an atomic bomb. After awhile, Stalin gets the technology, and creates atomic bombs for the Soviet Union. When Stalin made the bombs, he made it very clear that if the United States interfered with any of the Soviet Union’s affairs, he would bomb the United States.

After the United States got the threat, they made nuclear radiation shelters all around the Untied States. So, if an atomic bomb would ever hit the United States people could go to the shelters to protect themselves from the nuclear radiation poisoning. Some people even had nuclear radiation shelters in their own homes. Also, at schools, they had a nuclear bomb drill. If someone saw a mushroom cloud, a mushroom cloud was what the atomic bomb looked like when it exploded, all of the children in the classroom would go over their desks and put their head in between their knees. In other words, people were very scared of an atomic bomb hitting the United States and killing everyone.

Furthermore, countries knew the consequences of what could happen if an atomic bomb was used during war. One atomic bomb could kill millions of people in one blow. Especially after using the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; countries saw the kind of damage the bomb could make. When many countries started to develop the atomic bomb, the countries didn’t want to use them on anyone. The atomic bomb is used as a last resort during war, and even then, no one wants to use it. Since the atomic bomb is such a threat, countries don’t want another World War because if there was another World War, modern nuclear bombs (what atomic bombs are called now) would be used, and the outcome would be very devastating. Since countries know the consequences of using the atomic bombs, they will try talk out their problems instead of going into a huge war with the atomic bombs that cause a lot of damage.

Think about it, by developing and using the atomic bombs the United States became a super power, the atomic bomb changed many people’s lives by its devastation, and now countries know the consequences of the atomic bomb and now countries try to appease each other so they don’t go into another World War. The atomic bomb is very dangerous, but we still try to advance them. Even though the atomic bomb caused a lot of devastation; it is still needed in the world.