Three days later, on August 9, 1945, another atomic bomb, nicknamed Fat Man, was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. A small parachute was on the bomb in order to slow its drop and allow the plane time to fly away from the blast zone.ĭespite witnessing the terrible destruction of the bomb on Hiroshima, Emperor Hirohito and Japan still refused to surrender. The bomb itself was over 10 feet long and weighed around 10,000 pounds. The bomb was dropped by a plane named the Enola Gay which was piloted by Colonel Paul Tibbetts. The explosion was huge, the city was destroyed, and tens of thousands of people were killed. On Augan atomic bomb named Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. President Truman decided to drop the atomic bomb instead. Army leaders figured that anywhere from 500,000 to 1 million US and Allied soldiers would die in an invasion. The US was contemplating an invasion of Japan. Japan was defeated as well, but would not surrender. When President Harry Truman heard of the bomb's success he wrote "We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world".īy the time the first atomic bomb had been made, Germany had already surrendered and World War II in Europe was over. This bomb would change the world and could cause mass destruction and death. Scientists figured that the temperature at the center of the explosion was three times hotter than at the center of the sun.Īlthough the scientists were happy they had successfully made the bomb, they also were sad and fearful. The explosion was massive and the equivalent to 18,000 tons of TNT. On Jthe first atomic bomb was exploded in the New Mexico desert. By the end of the project, funding had reached $2 billion and there were around 200,000 people working on the project. Ironically, many of the scientists involved in making the bomb had defected from Germany. It started small, but as the bomb became more real, the United States added scientists and funding to be sure they were the first to have the bomb. The Manhattan Project was the name for the research and development program for the atomic bomb. As a result, Roosevelt set up the Manhattan Project. He wrote a letter to US President Franklin Roosevelt telling him about the atom bomb. When he realized that such a bomb could be made, he was frightened about what might happen if Hitler and Germany learned how to make the bomb first. Army Air Force serviceman on the mission to document the nuclear device.The mushroom cloud above Nagasaki, Japan from the atomic bombĪlbert Einstein came up with many of the theories that helped scientists in making the atomic bomb. It is assumed that this photo was made by a U.S. It is not known exactly who made this photograph of the mushroom cloud over Nagasaki. It is estimated that another 30,000 died due to the effects of radiation in the aftermath of the explosion, with some deaths occuring many years later. While estimates on the death toll differ, around 40,000 were killed by the initial blast. At 11:02 a.m., the B-29 Superfortress, nicknamed Bockscar, dropped a plutonium bomb code-named "Fat Man." When the bomb exploded some 1,500 feet over Nagasaki, it did so with a force equal to roughly 20,000 tons of dynamite. At the time, Nagasaki was a major port city and naval shipyard. The mission was sent to destroy the arsenal at Kokura, Japan, but due to heavy cloud cover it moved to the secondary target of Nagasaki. On August 9, 1945, the United States detonated an atomic bomb on the Japanese port of Nagasaki. What do you think the reporter meant when he described the bomb as "a living thing, a new species of being, born right before our incredulous eyes"? It was a living thing, a new species of being, born right before our incredulous eyes." It was no longer smoke, or dust, or even a cloud of fire. A reporter for the New York Times who accompanied the mission wrote of the scene, "Awestruck, we watched it shoot upward like a meteor coming from the earth instead of from outer space, becoming ever more alive as it climbed skyward through the white clouds. Does this the image emphasize or de-emphasize the destructive power of the bomb? How? Where was the photographer located when he or she took this photograph? Why do you think the photographer took the image from this vantage point? (The image was taken from the air from one of the planes on the mission that delivered the bomb to Nagasaki.) From what point of view are we looking at the atomic bomb blast? Where can you find proof of this by examining the condition of the photograph? (The lines that are drawn on it indicate how the picture would have been cropped for various printings.) This image was used repeatedly by the New York Times from 1945 through the mid-1990s.
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