In the early morning hours of August 6, 1945, a B-29 bomber named Enola Gay took off from the island of Tinian and headed north by northwest toward Japan. The bomber’s primary target was the city of Hiroshima, located on the deltas of southwestern Honshu Island facing the Inland Sea.
A few hours later at about 8:15 a.m. Hiroshima time the Enola Gay released “Little Boy,” its 9,700-pound uranium bomb, over the city.
Forty three seconds later Little Boy detonated 1,900 feet above the city and about 70,000 people died as a result of initial blast, heat, and radiation effects. The five-year death total may have reached or even exceeded 200,000, as cancer and other long-term effects took hold.
It’s a moral dilemma: was this the greatest single-instance, unnecessary atrocity the world has ever known, committed against mainly civilians? Or was it a hard but correct decision to make, one which ended World War 2 earlier than it otherwise would have? Japan was already close to being broken and the Russians, having won in Europe, were mobilising against them also. Would Japan have defended their Empire to the last man? Or did the nuclear attacks change the minds of the Japanese from “let’s surrender on our terms” to “let’s just surrender and stop the slaughter of our civilians.”?
Could the American’s not have demonstrated their power first? Drop a bomb on a well defended Japanese military island or port in the Pacific, and then declare an ultimatum: “You have 5 days to surrender, or you’ll have one of these delivered to Yokohama. Or Tokyo”.
Compare WW2 Japan to WW1 Germany. The Germans could claim that they never really lost the War, they simply gave up. No enemy boot laid foot in anger on German soil. Japan was in the same situation, but by nuking Japan, America let them know in no uncertain terms that they had lost this war despite not having been invaded.
Regardless of what one thinks about the use of nuclear weapons in WWII, it is inarguable that the Manhattan Project was (along with Apollo) among the greatest American projects of all time. The brightest scientists in the world, working in secret with the government, organized by General Leslie Groves was simply brilliance of engineering and management.
Since 1945 there have been more than 2000 nuclear tests, with seven in Australia. Besides America, seven other countries have, for certain, developed nuclear weapons: the USSR, the UK, France, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea. So far, no other countries have used them in anger.
