David Lane

Every year countries develop new and different experimental weapons and methods to achieve respect and fear from other nations in a time of war.  These experiments contribute heavily to the advancement of society, the progress of mankind, and the expansion of nations.  America has had such an experiment and development in science.  The Manhattan Project, the atomic bombing of Japan, and the aftermath of the bomb were pivotal moments in world events.

On the second of August in 1939, Albert Einstein and others wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt telling of the Nazis’ attempts to purify uranium-235.  This process would be used to create an atomic bomb that had the potential to destroy cities in a matter of seconds.  Shortly after the letter, the United States began the multi-billion-dollar assignment known as The Manhattan Project.  The Manhattan Project was an extensive scientific experiment that could, in fact, change the world of war forever (Purohit).

The goal of the project was to develop a formula for refining uranium-235.  It was not to create the actual bomb, as many mistakenly think.  Over the span of six years, 1939-1945, more than two billion dollars were spent on the Manhattan Project.  Some of the most brilliant men on the planet were working together to develop formulas for refining uranium.  The hardest part of creating the project was to produce enough “enriched” uranium to sustain a chain reaction for a certain amount of time.  A huge enrichment laboratory was made in Tennessee.  An extraction system was developed that could separate the very useful U-235 and the completely useless U-238 isotopes.  Robert Oppenheimer was the chief among the master minds who unleashed the atom bomb.  He oversaw the project from beginning to completion ( Bellis).  Progress on the project was slow and uneventful until August of 1942.  At this time The Manhattan Project was reorganized and placed under the control of the United States Army.  The official name of the project was actually The Manhattan Engineer District.  More than one hundred and forty thousand civilians worked at various locations on The Manhattan Project.  Some of these workers did not know what they were working on.  The project was extremely classified.

On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked America at Pearl Harbor.  This attack on American soil sparked a war in the Pacific.  Almost immediately, on December 8, 1941, America responded with a declaration of war on Japan.  President Roosevelt ordered the atomic bomb after getting word the bomb could be made and The Manhattan Project was indeed successful.  Colonel J.C. Marshall was told to set up the top secret assignment of creating an atomic bomb so powerful it could destroy a city (Gonzales 33).  Two different bombs were produced through this assignment.  Both of the bombs worked differently.  The bombs were named “Little Boy” and “Fat Man.”  “Little Boy” was smaller than “Fat Man” and not as powerful (59).  On July 16, 1945, a test bomb was unleashed at 5:29 in the morning.  Many scientists believed the bomb would not work.  Some prayed it would not because they knew the power it could have and were afraid of the destruction the bomb could cause.  Nevertheless, the bomb succeeded in the test.  The explosion was massive, and the flash was blinding.  Later newspapers said a blind girl could see the flash from one hundred and twenty miles away.  The bomb was ready.  America had in its possession an item that could truly destroy a city along with millions of lives (Purohit).

Many of the creators of the terrifying bomb had mixed reactions.  Some believed it should not be used.  Many immediately signed petitions saying the “monster” should not be unleashed.  Robert Oppenheimer was extremely excited about the success of the project but was also very scared.  He quoted a fragment of the Bhagavad Gita by saying, “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”  Isidor Rabi, another extremely important contributor to the creation of the bomb, thought equilibrium in nature had been mixed up, as if mankind had become a threat to the world it inhabited.  This discovery would mark the beginning of the atomic age of warfare, a huge advancement for all nations.

On August 6, 1945, a B-29 bomber named the Enola Gay took off from the island of Tinian and made the six-hour journey to Japan.  The pilot of the aircraft was Colonel Paul Tibbets.  The bomber’s main target was the city of Hiroshima.  Hiroshima had a civilian population of three hundred thousand.  It was an extremely important military center, containing forty-three thousand soldiers (DOE).  The atomic bomb named “Little Boy” was released from the Enola Gay at 8:15 in the morning.  The bomb measured 9.84 feet long and had a diameter of twenty-eight inches.  It weighed a remarkable 8,900 pounds.  The bomb was dropped at an elevation of thirty-one thousand feet (“Dimensions”).  The city was alive with activity.  People were walking in the streets, kids playing before school, and men and women were making their way to work.  The people closest to the explosion died instantly.  Their bodies were obliterated into black char.  Birds were incinerated in mid-air.  Shadows of bodies were burned onto walls, and clothing was melted onto skin.  Fires broke out everywhere, creating one massive firestorm blowing furiously across the land destroying anyone who had withstood the first part of the blast (DOE).  Staff Sergeant George Caron, the tail gunner of the Enola Gay, describes what he saw: “The Mushroom cloud was a spectacular sight, a bubbling mass of purple and gray smoke, and you could see it had a red-core in it and everything was burning inside.  It looked like lava molasses covering a whole city.”  Two-thirds of the city was destroyed instantly.  The co-pilot, Captain Robert Lewis, stated, “Where we had seen a clear city two minutes before, we could no longer see a city.  We could see smoke and fires creeping up the sides of mountains.”  Within three miles of the explosion, sixty thousand buildings were completely demolished.  A survivor of the attack described the victims as follows:

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 (Rosenberg).

The goal of this bombing was not to merely destroy military forces; it was to demolish a city (Rosenberg).

All communications were destroyed in the bombing leaving Hiroshima stranded.  The government eventually received different reports from the outskirts of the city about fires and large amounts of smoke.  Sixteen hours later, the Japanese government finally received confirmation of what had happened.  They realized America had unleashed the most powerful weapon known to mankind on the city of Hiroshima (DOE).

America was not done with its unleashing of weapons of mass destruction.  Although America did give Japan the chance to surrender between bombings, Japan refused.  The next target was the city of Kokura.  Kokura was a massive collection of war industries.  The second option was Nagasaki.  They ended up having to settle for Nagasaki due to inclement weather.  The plane carrying the second bomb was named Bock’s Car (“Bombing”).  Piloting the aircraft was Charles W. Sweeney.  Sweeney said his greatest fear was “goofing up.”  He also stated, “I would rather face the Japanese than Tibbets in shame if I made a stupid mistake.”  The second bomb, “Fat Man,” was much heavier than “Little Boy.”  This made the aircraft more difficult to pilot.

The bombing of Nagasaki seemed jinxed from the beginning.  Many things went wrong such as bad weather, bad visibility, faulty communications, and even a malfunction with the bomb itself.  Despite the many close calls, Sweeney still accomplished his goal.  They left Tinian Island at 3:40 in the morning on August 9.  The plane headed for Kokura, but due to inclement weather and malfunctions with the extra fuel supply, they had to settle for the second option of Nagasaki.  Nagasaki was a major ship building city and military port (Glines).  The second atomic bomb exploded over the city of Nagasaki at 11:02 am.  A reporter flying in the plane behind the Bock’s Car said, “We watched a giant pillar of purple fire, 10,000 feet high, shoot upward like a meteor coming from earth instead of from outer space” (Glines).  About two hundred thousand people were in the city of Nagasaki when the bomb exploded.  A survivor of the Nagasaki bombing explains a scene he remembers distinctly as follows:

The pumpkin field in front of the house was blown clean.  Nothing was left of the whole thick crop, except that in place of the pumpkins there was a woman’s head.  I looked at the face to see if I knew her.  It was a woman of about forty.  She must have been from another part of town — I had never seen her around here.  A gold tooth gleamed in the wide-open mouth.  A handful of singed hair hung down from the left temple over her cheek, dangling in her mouth.  Her eyelids were drawn up, showing black holes where the eyes had been burned out. … She had probably looked square into the flash and gotten her eyeballs burned (Rosenberg).

Numerous secondary fires erupted throughout the entire city.  The fires were nearly impossible to put out due to the break of water lines (DOE).  The devastation was incredible.

The effects of these two bombings were absolutely devastating.  They left Japan emotionally destroyed.  America, within the course of three days, had left Japan completely dumbfounded and awestruck.  The bombing of Hiroshima instantly killed sixty-six thousand to sixty-nine thousand people.  One hundred thousand more died by 1945.  And by 1950, over two hundred thousand had died from various lingering effects (“Dimensions”).  Everything up to one mile from the target was completely destroyed with the exception of certain concrete structures made to withstand a blast.  Everything was flattened and desolate.  It looked like a wasteland (Purohit).

The effects of the Nagasaki bombing were not as severe as Hiroshima, even though the bomb was more powerful and bigger.  This is mainly because Nagasaki is located in a mountainous area (Avalon).  But even with the mountains acting as barriers, the bombing of Nagasaki took a substantial toll on Japanese citizens.  Forty-two thousand citizens were instantly killed, and forty thousand were severely injured.  The bomb completely destroyed thirty-nine percent of the buildings in Nagasaki.

Both cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, suffered many strange and sometimes unexpected diseases and symptoms after the bombings.  Survivors developed symptoms such as blood cell abnormalities, high fevers, chronic fatigue, diarrhea, vomiting, hair loss, and extreme depression.  All people after the bombing were more prone to infection and cancer.  Three years following the radiation exposure leukemia rates peaked.  The exact amount of casualties is unknown, but many continued to perish up to ten years after the detonation of the atomic bomb (Anhalt)!

In addition to the immediate and long-term diseases and injuries of the Japanese people who were struck by the bomb was also an immense amount of emotional damage and sheer terror.  The bombings struck an intense fear into all the citizens witnessing the event.  Many citizens ran away and hid for long periods of time due to the hysteria the bombing forced into their lives.  Before the atomic bombings people would pay no attention to a single plane, but after the nuclear bombing seeing a single plane would put more fear into Japanese citizens than seeing a mass of planes.  This terror would never cease to exist (Avalon). It undoubtedly shaped the way mankind sees warfare.

Arguably the biggest deal concerning the bomb was the effect it had on the ongoing world war.  The atomic bombing of Japan undoubtedly ended World War 2.  Japan surrendered after seeing the massive amount of damage and casualties of their own land and people.  Japan offered their surrender on August 10, 1945.  The only condition was the emperor be allowed to remain the nominal head of state.  America accepted the conditions of their surrender, but said the emperor could only remain for ceremonial purposes.  Japan was not happy and delayed their response.  During this delay America continued conventional raids, which killed thousands of more Japanese people.  Finally the emperor remarked, “I can not endure the thought of letting my people suffer any longer.”  On August 15, the emperor announced his plan to surrender.  It took a few weeks but finally on September 2, 1945, the official ceremony of surrender took place and the war was over (DOE).

Countries continue to develop different weapons and methods to gain fear from other nations.  The atomic bomb may have been one of the biggest discoveries ever made.  The invention of this nuclear weapon has changed the way nations look at warfare and political matters.  The Manhattan Project, the atomic bombing of Japan, and the aftermath of the bomb were pivotal moments in world events.

Works Cited

Anhalt, Lindsey. “Atomic Bomb.” Arts & Sciences. Washington University in St. Louis. Web. 10 Oct. 2010. <http://artsci.wustl.edu/~copeland/atomicbomb.html&gt;.

“The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima, August 6, 1945.” Department of Energy. Web. 10 Oct. 2010. <http://www.cfo.doe.gov/me70/manhattan/hiroshima.htm&gt;.

“Avalon Project — The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” Avalon Project — Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy. Web. 10 Oct. 2010. <http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/mpmenu.asp&gt;.

Bellis, Mary. “History of the Atomic Bomb and The Manhattan Project.” Inventors. Web. 10 Oct. 2010. <http://inventors.about.com/od/astartinventions/a/atomic_bomb.htm&gt;.

“The Bombing of Nagasaki.” History Learning Site. Web. 10 Oct. 2010. <http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/bombing_of_nagasaki.htm&gt;.

Cohen, Daniel. The Manhattan Project. Brookfield: Millbrook Press, 1999.

Glines, C. V. “World War II: Second Atomic Bomb That Ended the War.” Web.

Gonazales, Doreen. The Manhattan Project and the Atomic Bomb. Berkeley Heights: Enslow Publishers, 2000.

“Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” VCE.COM. Web. 10 Oct. 2010. <http://www.vce.com/hironaga.html&gt;.

“Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Dimensions.” Dimensions Guide. Web. 10 Oct. 2010. <http://www.dimensionsguide.com/hiroshima-atomic-bomb-dimensions/&gt;.

Purohit, Vishwas. “The Atom Bomb: A Brief History.” Buzzle Web Portal: Intelligent Life on the Web. Web. 10 Oct. 2010. <http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/2-17-2004-50656.asp&gt;.

Rosenberg, Jennifer. “Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” 20^th Century History. Web. 10 Oct. 2010. <http://history1900s.about.com/od/worldwarii/a/hiroshima.htm&gt;.