User:Bravedc/History project

The Atomic Bomb was a weapon used on the Japanese in War World 2 because they wouldn't stop fighting with the United States of America. The atomic bomb was created by Albert Einstein. It weighed about 8,000 pounds and it stored up to 12,000 tons of TNT. Harriet Truman thought it was a good idea to use the atomic bomb even though it was a terrible thing, "it seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful..." ^[1]. More than $2 billon was spent during the history of the Manhattan Project ^[2]. The first atomic bomb is named "Little Boy", and it was dropped on the city of Hiroshima. The plane, which had carried the two atomic bombs for Japan, was named Enola Gay. When it was dropped, it exploded 1,900 feet over an hospital and unleashing the equivalent of 12,500 tons of TNT ^[3].

 

 

After the atomic bomb landed, everything changed. In the book, Hiroshima, by John Hersey, six people went through the attack and survived. They were:

• Miss Toshike Sasaki- when bomb went off, she had just sat down in her office.
• Dr. Masakazu Fujii- about to read Osaka Asahi on the porch.
• Mrs. Hatsuyo Hakamura- she was standing by the kitchen window.
• Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge- was reading a jesuit magazine.
• Dr. Terufumi Sasaki- was carrying blood for a Wassermann test.
• Reverend Mr. Kiyoshi Tanimoto- was about to unload a cart.

"... the air-raid siren went off--a minute long blast that warned of approaching planes, but indicated to the people of Hiroshima only a slight degree of danger when an American weather plane came over." ^[4] 'When the bomb dropped, it landed in the center of the city. It ended up killing three quarters of its population (aka: 245,000 died). The bomb traveled from east to west' ^[5]. When the bomb landed, for miles it seemed like nothing had happened because there was no sound; "He heard no roar" ^[6]. (Almost no one in Hiroshima recalls hearing any noise of the bomb.) "... and blood was running down from their heads, chests, and backs" ^[7]. The bomb let out a 'terrible'^[8] flash- which had reminded Father Kleinsorge of reading about a large meteor colliding with earth. About a week later, after the bomb was dropped, in comprehensible ^[9] rumor reached Hiroshima that the city had been destroyed by the energy released when atoms were some how split in to two. The long term effects of the bomb were discovered to be: genetic problems, malformed babies, retardations, radiation sickness, and mental trauma ^[10]. One of the survivors described the damage to people: "The appearance of people was . . . well, they all had skin blackened by burns. . . . They had no hair because their hair was burned, and at a glance you couldn't tell whether you were looking at them from in front or in back. . . . They held their arms bent [forward] like this . . . and their skin - not only on their hands, but on their faces and bodies too - hung down. . . . If there had been only one or two such people . . . perhaps I would not have had such a strong impression. But wherever I walked I met these people. . . . Many of them died along the road - I can still picture them in my mind -- like walking ghosts" ^[11]. Even after the bomb Little boy had cause so much misery, the Japanese still did not surrender. Japan failed to comply, however, and the plan was put in motion to drop a second bomb. The second bomb was called "Fat Man" and was to be dropped on the city of Kokura. Because Kokura had heavy cloud cover, the second choice city was Nagasaki. The "Fat Man," as its name would attest to, was much larger and had the destructive capabilities of 22 kilotons of TNT. The bomb was dropped at 11:02 am on August 9, 1945. It killed 150,000 people as well as causing the same long term effects as "Little Boy." By four o'clock on August fourteenth Japan had accepted unconditional surrender thus ending the war ^[12]. The atomic bomb was used for a propose in history. We, the Americans, wanted peace and did not want to fight anymore, and the Japanese did not want to surrender. The Americans dropped the bomb because they wanted to tell the Japanese that they had more power to destroy Japanese than they even knew about. Plus the Americans just wanted the war to be over. The atomic bomb had changed a lot of things. It changed the peoples outlook of the war. We only hope for the best that the world would never come to this again.