August 6th 1945, 70,000 lives were ended in a meter of seconds. The United States had dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima then on Nagasaki. Today many argue over whether or not the US should have taken such a drastic measure. Was it entirely necessary that we drop such a devastating weapon? First look at what was going on at the time the decision was made. The US had been fighting a massive war since 1941. The outcome was obvious but both sides continued to fight, and both were determined to win. Obviously the best thing would have been to bring the war to a quick end, with a minimum of casualties. In a meeting on the 18th of June the Joint War plans Committee gave Truman projected death rates ranging from a low of 31,000 to a high of 50,000. This number is much lower than estimates from other sources. AC Snow, a News and Observer editor, wrote “The invasion was expected to be the Armageddon of world war II. Some historians project that a million or more lives would have been lost.” President Truman and secretary of war, Henry Smitten, said that dropping the bomb was a military action that avoided the loss of many lives in the upcoming invasion of Kyushu. I wonder what would have happened had the A-bomb not been used? The most obvious thing is that the war would have continued for much longer. Us forces therefore, would have had to invade the home island of Japan. Some historians say the number of casualties could have reached a million us soldiers, dead or wounded. Also, our forces would not only have to fight off the Japanese military, but they would have to defend themselves against the civilians of Japan as well. The Japanese would have continued to fight the US with all they had. No one can say exactly what would have happened, because let’s face it, no one knows. It’s possible Japan was just about to hand over its unconditional surrender, but most evidence would not agree with that. One thing that points to the Japanese not surrendering would be Kamikaze pilots. Kamikaze were “suicide” pilots. They would load an airplane up with explosives and try to nose-dive it into an enemy target. The Japanese Soldier would fight until the end, for his Emperor and his country. They scary thing about this is the majority of the Japanese’s military thought this way. The fact that the enemy is ready to die as long as you die with him is not something that a soldier wants to think
A bomb is a container filled with an explosive, incendiary matter, or gas that can be dropped, hurled, or set in place to be detonated by an attached exploding device. It may range in design from a homemade device used by terrorists, assassins, or clandestine raiders to a sophisticated weapon of war. The original bomb, an ancestor of the hand-thrown GRENADE, was a simple container filled with black powder (see GUNPOWDER), which was set off by a fuse lit by the thrower. In the 16th century, the Dutch
The machine gun mechanized war. Artillery and gas mechanized war. They were the hardware of the war, the tools. But they were only proximately the mechanism of the slaughter. The ultimate mechanism was a method of organization-anachronistically speaking, a software package. "The basic lever," the writer Gil Elliot comments, "was the conscription law, which made vast numbers of men available for military service. The civil machinery which ensured the carrying out of this law, and the military organization
The Most Difficult Decision Ever President Truman stood in the oval office full of many advisors, but was truly alone ready to make the hardest decision, which would change the world forever. Is dropping the bomb the right decision for the president to make? Dropping the bomb wasn't the right decision to make, because many people lost their lives and it wasn't right to make that move. On December 7, 1941 the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and on December 8, 1941 the president of the United States
The terror of nuclear war, the fright of your home being destroyed before your eyes. This was what was facing 16 year old Sorry Rinamu in the novel The Bomb by Theodore Taylor. This historical fiction deals with the problems of Sorry and his small island facing the control of Japan and needs of the United States. The Bomb takes place on the small island of Bikini Atoll after World War II in the year 1946. Being located in the west Pacific led to problems with Japan. This island was under Japanese
Atomic Bomb "Then a tremendous flash of light cut across the sky . Mr. Tanimoto has a distinct recollection that it traveled from east to west, from the city toward the hills. It seemed like a sheet of sun. John Hersey, from Hiroshima, pp8 On August 6, 1945, the world changed forever. On that day the United States of America detonated an atomic bomb over the city of Hiroshima. Never before had mankind seen anything like. Here was something that was slightly bigger than an ordinary bomb, yet could
The Atomic Bomb The atomic bomb is a powerful, explosive nuclear weapon. It is fueled by the fission of the nuclei of specific amounts of plutonium or uranium, in a chain reaction. The strength of the explosion created by one of these bombs is equal to the strength of an explosion created by thousands of tons of TNT. To detonate one of these bombs, enough mass of plutonium or uranium must be provided to reach what is known as "critical mass." Critical mass is the mass at which the nuclear
The Hydrogen Bomb Thesis Statement The hydrogen bomb is a nuclear weapon in which light atomic nuclei of hydrogen are joined together in an uncontrolled nuclear fusion reaction to release tremendous amounts of energy. The hydrogen bomb is about a thousand times as powerful as the atomic bomb, which produces a nuclear fission explosion about a million times more powerful than comparably sized bombs using conventional high explosives such as TNT. The Hydrogen Bomb The Atomic Bomb Was A Essential
Atomic Bomb The use of the atomic bombs on Japan was necessary for the revenge of the Americans. These bombs took years to make due to a problematic equation. The impact of the bombs killed hundreds of thousands of people and the radiation is still killing people today. People today still wonder why the bombs were dropped. If these bombs weren’t dropped on the Japanese the history of the world would have been changed forever. The Atomic bomb took 6 years to develop (1939-1945) for scientists to work
The Atomic Bomb It is agreed by many parts of our society that one of the main atrocities done by the human being took place on August 6th and 9th, 1945 in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. Over 170,000 innocent Japanese individuals died due to the dropping of two atomic bombs created in the United States. This transcendent historical event suddenly ended the bloody Second World War and gave the start to a new one, the cold war , which in fact led to an atomic weapons race between the
The first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, on August 6, 1945. The world would never be the same. This paper will discuss the significance of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and how they led to the success of the Allied forces. It will also discuss how the United States developed the atomic bomb, the decision to drop the bomb, the weakening of Japan, the actual bombing an destruction of both cities, the surrender of Japan and the impact the atomic bomb would have in the future
decided to drop the atomic bomb on August 6, 1945. On that day the Enola Gay dropped "Little Boy" on Hiroshima. Three days later the United States dropped "Fat Boy" on Nagasaki. 240,000 civilians, mostly women and children, lost there lives on these two days. On August 14, 1945 Japan surrendered unconditionally. Was it necessary? I believe that the U.S. could have used other means to bring about the end of the war. This paper will note a few reasons for dropping the bomb, followed by a discussion
History of the Atomic Bomb The atomic bomb1 is the most destructive weapon known to mankind. A bomb of this nature is capable of obliterating anything up to four square miles and anything reaching outside that area receives very extreme damage. Albert Einstein was the man who had convinced the United States to research the Atomic Bomb. The Manhattan Project2 was the name given to the research and development of the atomic bomb. It was called the Manhattan Project after Manhattan Engineer District
Development of the Hydrogen Bomb In the world there is little thing called power. Many countries want to have great power, few get it. Powers gave the Soviet Union and the U.S. the ability to dominate in wars. In the 1950’s during the Cold War these two countries had a race to se who could create the most powerful weapon the world has ever seen, the Hydrogen Bomb. Edward Teller, an atomic physicist, and Stanislaw Marcin Ulam, a mathematician, "who together developed the Teller-Ulam design in 1951"
Race For The Super Bomb In 1945, America terrified the world by using the Atom Bomb in Hiroshima and later in Nagasaki. This fear of the most powerful weapon ever created started a cold war between America and Russia. These two great nations had started the race for the super bomb, which would have each country trying to out do the other for decades to come. The super bomb in which America and Russia were trying to build was in fact the Hydrogen Bomb. This bomb had an unlimited blast potential
Julius Robert Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bomb J. Robert Oppenheimer was a brilliant physicist and known as the ”Father of the Atomic Bomb”. A charismatic leader of rare good qualities and commonplace flaws, Oppenheimer brought an uncommon sensibility to research, teaching, and government science. After help creating the atomic bomb with the Manhattan Project he was banned from the U.S. Government during the McCarthy Trials. He opposed the idea of stockpiling nuclear weapons and was deemed a security