The Nuclear Age Began When The US Detonated The First Atomic Bomb
On June 16, 1945, America detonated the first atomic bomb, starting the atomic age and the biggest arms race in the world.
Although the first attempts to make atomic bomb initiated in Nazi Germany they weren’t successful until the US president Franklin D. Roosevelt in cooperation with the British government authorized the “Manhattan Project” in order to research about production of atomic bomb.
A group of top scientists of the time worked for the project with the distinguished physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer being the head of the group. They succeeded to make the first atomic bomb in the US which was detonated in what is now called Trinity in New Mexico.
Perhaps at first it was believed that the US would not use that lethal weapon against the mankind but soon people of two big cities in Japan fell victim to America’s atomic bombs.
On August 6, 1945, a bomber in US Air Force 509th Bomb Squadron called Enola Gay- which is now kept in a museum in Washington- left a US base in the south of Pacific Ocean and detonated an atomic bomb named “Little Boy” over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The direct and the indirect death toll caused by this bombardment are estimated to exceed 140,000.
This however was not the end as three days after Hiroshima bombing, another atomic bomb, called the “Fat Man” killed 73,000 and injured 74,000 people in Nagasaki, Japan, not including those who later were found to be the victims of the bombing. Of course there was another bomb made in the Manhattan Project which was never used.
Oppenheimer regretted his participation in the Manhattan project after a while and began to speak against nuclear arms, and thus was removed from the project. His regret was of