Manhattan Project Notebook. Post-bombing aerial and on-the-ground images of Hiroshima. Empty bottle of Chianti Bertolli wine signed by scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project. Effects on the human body of radiation from the atomic bomb.
Post-Hiroshima bombing aerial and on-the-ground images. Color image of Hiroshima after bombing. Pieces of History: Harry Truman and the Bomb. Docs Teach resources on the atomic bomb. The American firebombing of Tokyo caused much of the city to burn down and killed between 75, and , people.
Similar Allied attacks in Germany killed upwards of 46, in Hamburg and 25, in Dresden. Although the Japanese people suffered greatly during this bombing campaign, their country was hardly an innocent victim of the war. It was an aggressor that invaded countries throughout Asia and treated them brutally.
The terror its citizens experienced through the American bombing campaign was itself a mirror of that experienced by the victims of Japanese invasions throughout Asia. It should not be forgotten that among the dead in Hiroshima were twenty thousand Koreans who the Japanese had forced into slave labor. Japan was also a full participant in the international race to develop nuclear weapons and would doubtlessly have used those same weapons had it succeeded in developing them.
In fact, Japan only abandoned its efforts to build atomic bombs after a series of shortcomings and failures convinced its government to focus on a different super weapon program: a death ray that would have used microwaves to kill. President Harry S. Truman ordered the bombing of Hiroshima with the belief that it would shorten the war and save lives, though he was predominantly focused on American lives.
His commanders predicted upwards of half a million American casualties if a direct assault on Japan was necessary and even higher numbers of Japanese. The American leadership also considered a swift end of the war in the Pacific necessary because the Soviet Union was set to enter the war against Japan on August 8, , three months to the day after the defeat of Germany.
Truman and other American leaders pushed to end the war before the Soviets could earn a zone of occupation in Japan as they had in Germany. To this day, scholars hotly debate whether the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki or the Soviet entry into the war brought the war in the Pacific to a close, but, as Japanese officials observed at the time, it was a combination of both. The Japanese strategy, however, was incompatible with the Americans' haste to end the war. Most Japanese leaders recognized that their cause was lost in , but hoped to force a decisive battle that would leave them in a position to surrender while maintaining their government.
Over and over the Japanese fought desperate battles not to win the war, but to win a seat at the negotiating table. Regardless of its purpose, this demand did not give the Allies any flexibility to negotiate with the Japanese. Despite utter devastation, the effects of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima were not as severe as one might think.
Unlike in the nuclear disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima , the city was never evacuated, though that was largely due to a lack of information and the logistical near impossibility of doing so. The Americans detonated the Hiroshima bomb nearly 2, feet above the city, which somewhat limited the damaged caused by radiation.
In fact, in his memo predicting the effects of the bomb, Manhattan Project lead scientist Robert Oppenheimer argued that the radioactive byproducts would go into the upper atmosphere and be dispersed throughout the world. This process did occur, but the detonation caused a rainstorm that brought many radioactive byproducts back to earth. The black rain would have been hard for Oppenheimer and others who developed the atomic bomb to predict, however, because the only test detonation was done in the Nevada desert where there was not enough moisture for rain.
In no time, everything went completely white. The next moment there was a loud roar. Then I blacked out. Hada witnessed some of the catastrophic injuries from the atomic bomb. People with their eyes popped out, their hair dishevelled, almost all naked, badly burned with their skin hanging down. I was asked to give them water, so I found a chipped bowl and went to the nearby river and scooped water to let them drink.
People died one after another. They didn't die like human beings. This is the day when fascism finally dies, as we always knew it would.
The following day, Japan's Emperor Hirohito was heard on the radio for the first time ever in a broadcast in which he blamed the use of "a new and most cruel bomb" for Japan's unconditional surrender.
He added: "Should we continue to fight, it would not only result in the ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but would lead also to the total extinction of human civilisation.
He added that special thanks went to the US "without whose prodigious efforts the war in the East would still have many years to run". After the surrender of Japan, two days of national holiday were announced for celebrations in the UK, the US and Australia.
The Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima, seen below in August , was one of the few buildings to survive the bomb and has been preserved as a memorial. All photographs subject to copyright. Image source, Getty Images.
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