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 8th 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 bvious 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 lets face it, no one knows. Its possible Japan was just about to hand over its unconditional surrender, but ost 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 Japaneses 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 about before he goes into battle. People today still wonder why the bombs were dropped. The atomic bomb took 6 years to develop (1939-1945). The bombs used on the cities cost (about) 2 billion dollars to develop. Hiroshima was a major military target and they had spent 2 billion dollars on the greatest scientific gamble in history and won. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima weighed 4. 5 tons and the bomb used on Nagasaki weighed 10 tons.
The single weapon ultimately dropped on Hiroshima, nicked named little boy. produced the power of about twenty thousand tons of TNT, which is roughly seven times grater than all of the bombs dropped by all the allies on Germany in 1942. The first city bombed was Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. An American B-29 bomber, named Enola Gay flown by the pilot Paul W. Tibbets, dropped the Little Boy atomic bomb. Three days later a second bomb named fat boy was dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki. After being released it took approximately one minute for little boy to reach the height of detonation.
Which was about 2,000 feet. The impact of the bombs on the cities and people was massive. Black rain containing large amounts of nuclear fallout fell as much as 30km from the original site. A mushroom cloud rose to twenty thousand feet in the air, and sixty percent of the ity was destroyed. The shock wave reached speeds close to the speed of sound. The wind generated by the bombs destroyed most of the houses and buildings within a 1. 5 mile radius. Within Hiroshima, 48,000 buildings out of a total of 76,000 were completely demolished. The fires lasting for several more days after destroyed much more.
A mile from the explosion center, where the wind velocity was close to 190 miles an hour all brick buildings were completely destroyed. The people who entered the area within a half mile radius from the explosion center in the first 100 hours after were also effected by emaining radiation. It was a kind of hell on earth, the ones who died instantly were the lucky ones. Thousand died, vaporized, crushed or burned. But there were tens of thousands more who were still alive, milling about the city, seeking relief from the shock, fire and pain.
Thousands threw themselves into the Ota River, which was awash with corpses by the end of the day. By 1946 the 2 bombs caused 240,000 deaths and in 1950 it had reached 340,000. If the US had chosen not to uses the bomb on Japan, their death rate would have been lower, but ours would be close to a million. The research for the first Atomic bomb was done in the US by a group of the best scientists around. This research was given the code name of the Manhattan Project. The project was brought on by fear of Germany and its atomic program.
But once Germany surrendered the problem was what to do with the bomb. So they turned toward Japan. The focus of the war was changing. Germany was starting to lose the war so the US the decided to focus much of their attention on the war with Japan. A committee was formed to advise the President on the best course of action to easily defeat Japan with the owest loss of American lives. The committee came up with some choices. The first was to negotiate a peace treaty. Second, to cooperate with the Russians and continue fighting the war as they hoped for a quick end.
The third choice was to organize an invasion with the help of the Army and Navy. Another choice was to test the bomb on an unpopulated island to show its capabilities of destruction. Their last choice was to use it one a city in Japan. There were many disadvantages to all of the decisions that could be made. The US would not accept anything but an unconditional surrender, and the Japanese were insisting hat they keep their emperor and current government. To cooperate with Russia meant that the Us would be in debt and would possibly be in a undesirable position with the Russian Communist Rule.
The invasion of the Japanese mainland would, like the previous choice, sacrifice hundreds of thousands of American soldiers. A problem with showing the testing of the bomb was the possible failure of the bomb. On August 6th, the bomb named Little Boy, completely flattened four miles of Hiroshima. Three days later on August 9th, the bomb named Fat Man was dropped on Nagasaki. It did not cause the devastation of Hiroshima because of the different land features. But it still resulted in about 39,000 deaths.
My grandfather David Warren Redfearn, was a Corporal in the Marines when they dropped the bombs. He was a construction worker. He worked on a airbase in the Mayanas. He said that the US needed to drop the bombs because thousands of US soldiers would have died in a invasion that wouldnt have worked. And that every one that I knew agreed with me. They were vicious bastards who would torture the soldiers captured during the invasion. He also said that it probably saved some Japanese lives because each ight bombers would leave his airstrip and perform fire raids on Japanese cities.
My grandfather believes that the bomb saved his life along with thousands of others. The decision to drop the bomb was one of the most controversial decisions of the 20th century, But in my paper I have proved that Trumans decision was the right one. And many veterans owe their lives to him. There is no doubt that the Japanese would have definitely lost the war but the problem was that it was against everything in their culture to surrender. They just needed a little jump start to realize that they had no choice but unconditional surrender.