Atomic Bombing Research Paper

The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Written By: Nicholas Phandoe World War II began on September 1st, 1939 when the Germans invaded Poland and then ended on September 2nd, 1945 with the signing of the surrender documents from Japan aboard the American Battleship USS Missouri. During the course of 1941 when the US joined WWII, and 1945 when it ended over 291,000 US American Soldiers died. To shorten the span of the war and to save the lives of countless American soldiers the United States would have to produce the greatest possible blow upon the Japanese. The Atomic Bomb provided such a blow. The idea of creating
an atomic bomb first came from a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt from Albert Einstein in 1939. The letter had stated the Germans were trying to enrich uranium-235 in which the process would allow them to build an atomic bomb. This letter from Albert Einstein prompted President Roosevelt to create the Manhattan Project, in which the US will enrich and create an atomic bomb using uranium-235 before the Germans. The Manhattan Project had span over the course of six years, from 1939-1945 and more than $2 billion dollars were spent over that time period. To make an atomic bomb is very hard even for the physicists and engineers who put it together, but they pulled it off with the help of the most brilliant minds of the time. Uranium-235 was the main element used to create the atomic bomb “Little Boy.” To extract the Uranium-235 from pure Uranium is very difficult because Uranium-235 is 0.7% concentrated in the ore. To be useful in a nuclear weapon the concentration needed to be increased, this process is called enrichment. The rest of the Uranium ore however is Uranium-238 which is useless for Atomic Fission (splitting the atom for an explosive reaction) and nuclear warfare. The process of enriching the Uranium is too complicated for chemical extraction, so they had to mechanically extract it. Robert Oppenheimer was the chief who oversaw the whole project from conception to completion of the bomb. Other famous scientist who participated in the project as well include David Bohm, Leó Szilárd, Eugene Wigner, Otto Frisch, Rudolf Peierls, Felix Bloch, Niels Blohr, Emilio Segre, James Franck, Enrico Fermi, Klaus Fuchs and Edward Teller. The first atomic bomb was detonated on July 16, 1945 in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The bomb test was codenamed “Trinity”. Preparations for the test included the building of a steel tower that would suspend the bomb one hundred feet above ground. Some concerns were that the blast might launch a cataclysmic reaction in the upper atmosphere leading to world destruction. Another concern were that some feared the consequences of radio-active fallout on civilian populations surrounding the test site. The test was actually supposed to be detonated two weeks early but rain had postpone it until the predawn hours of July 16,1945 the bomb was detonated and what was seem as merely theoretical became a reality. The decision to drop the bomb on Japan was solely that of the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, Harry S. Truman. The US Army estimated that it would have cost between 500,000 to 1,000,000 soldiers lives to mount a successful full scale invasion of Japan, Truman didn’t want to risks so many soldiers’ lives so he sent the order to General Spaatz to drop the bomb on their main target of Hiroshima any time after August 3rd, 1945 once weather visuals cleared up. On August 6th, 1945 the bomb code named “The Little Boy” was dropped around 2:45 am on Monday by the Enola Gay B-29 Bomber and piloted by Paul Tibbets. Three days later on early morning of August 9th, 1945 another B-29 bomber the “Bockscar” was sent over the city of Kokura but abandoned the primary target because of smoke cover over the city. The B-29 went to its secondary target of Nagasaki. At 11:02 am the Plutonium bomb code named “Fat Man” bomb was dropped at an altitude of 1,800 feet to achieve maximum blast effect. Originally after exhaustive study by military specialist four targets were chosen which is Hiroshima and Kokura which were the primary targets. Nagasaki and Niigata were the secondary targets. These locations were chosen as targets against the Japanese because they were mostly untouched by the war. After the atomic bombing on the Japanese on August 6th and 9th, 1945 the next day on August 10th, 1945 the Japanese surrendered.
The official unconditional surrender under the Potsdam Declaration was sign aboard the USS Missouri on September 2nd, 1945 officially ending the war after 6 years of warfare. Two reasons were raised as the cause of the Japanese surrendering. The Japanese plans to end the war had collapsed and the Emperor intervened to accept proposed Allied terms offered after the Potsdam conference. Also in early 1945 it was clear to the Emperor and most members of the Council that Japan had little chance of pulling out a military victory. Emperor Hirohito began exploring possible terms of Japanese surrender with members of the Supreme Council and elder statesmen through the offices of Lord Kido. As the US goal was to create a massive blow upon the Japanese with the atomic bombings which they succeeded, provided that “push” the Japanese needed to
surrender. At 8:15 am, Little Boy exploded over Hiroshima, the burst temperature was estimated to reach over a million degrees Celsius, which ignited the surrounding air, forming a fireball some 840 feet in diameter instantly killing 80,000 to 140,000 people and seriously injuring 100,000 more.
The blast wave shattered windows for a distance of ten miles and was felt as far away as 37 miles. Over two-thirds of Hiroshima's buildings were demolished. There were hundreds of fires, ignited by the thermal pulse, combined to produce a firestorm that had incinerated everything within about 4.4 miles of ground zero. About 30 minutes after the explosion, a heavy acid-like rain began falling in areas to the northwest of the city. This "black rain" was full of dirt, dust, soot and highly radioactive particles that were sucked up into the air at the time of the explosion and during the fire. It caused contamination even in areas that were too far to be affected by the bombs blast radius. Like Hiroshima, the immediate aftermath in Nagasaki was a nightmare. More than forty percent of the city of Nagasaki was destroyed. Major hospitals had been utterly flattened and care for the injured was impossible. Schools, churches, and homes had simply disappeared. Transportation was
impossible.

The effects on the Japanese people were very harsh. People were experiencing a lot of radioactive sicknesses such as radioactive poisoning which is a form of damage to their organ tissue due to excessive exposure to ionizing radiation. A lot of people had experience thermal burning or some even died to mild burns. It was very hard to get medical treatment to the wounded and to transport oneself to somewhere safer because like in both cities were flattened and nothing was left. Both cities took more than 15 years to construct back. Hiroshima is now home to over 1.7 million people and ironically runs on nuclear power energy. Nagasaki is populated with over 500,000 people and is booming with business.