Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings:

Bombing Of Hiroshima and Nagasaki:

On August 6, 1945, during World War II, an American B.29 Bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the city of Hiroshima in Japan. The explosion wiped out about ninety percent of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people. Not counting the people who later died of radiation exposure. If that wasn’t enough damage, three days later a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing around 40,000 people. This attack was in response to the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

The bomb in Hiroshima exploded at 8:15 on the morning of August 6, 1945. About an hour previously, the Japanese had a warning radar that had detected the approach of some American aircraft headed for the southern part of Japan. The alert had been given, and radio broadcasting stopped in many cities. The planes approached the coast at a very high altitude. At nearly 8:00 A.M., the radar operator in Hiroshima determined that the number of planes coming in was minuscule - probably not more than three, and the air raid alert was lifted. The standard radio broadcast warning was given to the people that it might be advisable to go to a shelter if B-29's were sighted, but no raid was expected. At 8:15 A.M., the bomb exploded. Hiroshima was destroyed taking many souls down with it.

Hiroshima, a manufacturing center of some 350,000 people located about 500 miles from Tokyo, was selected as the first target. After arriving at the U.S. base on the Pacific island of Tinian, the more than 9,000-pound uranium-235 bomb was loaded aboard a modified B-29 bomber christened Enola Gay (after the mother of its pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets). The plane dropped the bomb–known as “Little Boy”–by parachute at 8:15 in the morning, and it exploded 2,000 feet above Hiroshima in a blast equal to 12-15,000 tons of TNT, destroying five square miles of the city.

Hiroshima was the primary target of the first atomic bomb mission. The mission went smoothly in every respect. The weather was good, and the crew and equipment functioned perfectly. In every detail, the attack was carried out exactly as planned, and the bomb performed exactly as expected. 

The bombing of Nagasaki didn’t get executed as the first. On the American point of view, it didn’t go “as effective” as the bombing of Hiroshima. There were weather complications among others conditions that limited the success of this bombing. Nagasaki had been subjected to a large-scale bombing before the explosion of the atomic bomb there. On August 1st, 1945, some high explosive bombs were dropped on the city. A few of these bombs hit in the shipyards and dock areas in the southwest portion of the city. Several of the bombs hit the Mitsubishi Steel, and Arms Works and six bombs landed at the Nagasaki Medical School and Hospital, with three direct hits on buildings there. While the damage from these few bombs was relatively small, it created considerable concern in Nagasaki and some people; principally school children were evacuated to rural areas for safety, thus reducing the population in the city at the time of the atomic attack.

On the morning of August 9th, 1945, at about 7:50 A.M., Japanese time, an air raid alert was sounded in Nagasaki, but the "All clear" signal was given at 8:30. When only two B-29 super fortresses were sighted at 10:53 the Japanese apparently assumed that the planes were only on reconnaissance and no further alarm was given. A few moments later, at 11:00 o'clock, the observation B-29 dropped instruments attached to three parachutes and at 11:02 the other plane released the atomic bomb. The bomb exploded high over the industrial valley of Nagasaki, almost midway between the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works, in the south, and the Mitsubishi-Urakami Ordnance Works (Torpedo Works), in the north, the two principal targets of the city.

Researching this information impacted me significantly. I wanted to focus in on a survivor’s story that moved me. "Mr. Akihiro Takahashi was 14 years old when the bomb was dropped. He was standing in line with other students of his junior high school, waiting for the morning meeting 1.4 km away from the center. He was under medical treatment for about year and a half. And even today black nail grows at his finger tip, where a piece of glass was stuck.” It is crazy to me that everyday life was going on when this happened. It makes me think about what were to happen if I was a survivor, but my family had just been wiped off this earth in a blink of an eye. Mr. Akihiro Takahashi was a child. When the bomb hit, he described it as a tremendous heat that came over him. His whole body burned. He described the cold river he came upon was precious as treasure. He ran into a friend of his, Tokujiro Hatta, who’s feet were badly burnt and could barely walk. His feet had red muscle exposed from the burns. He had to crawl on his arms and knees or have Takahashi hold him up as they tried to find help. I believe it is so important to look at people’s stories so that we may be impacted by it and want to make a difference by not repeating history.

 Japan’s Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s unconditional surrender in World War II in a radio address on August 15, citing the devastating power of “a new and most cruel bomb.” The United States only joined the war after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December of 1941. The United States viewed this bombing as a victory, but was it? Our country is responsible for the deaths of many innocent lives. Though Japan acted with violence first on our territory, it was not morally okay to kill thousands of innocent people. 

The United States justification for both atomic bombings in Japan was wanting to limit its own casualties by forcing Japan to surrender as quickly as possible and thus “protecting American civilians”. However, historians have also concluded that there were other motivations, as expected; At the Yalta-Conference in February 1945 the Soviet Union secretly agreed to join the war against Japan within three months of Germany's surrender, so the United States wanted to force Japan to surrender before the Soviet Union could enter the war to secure a stronger political position after the war. The U.S. wanted to use the weapon in war to measure its effectiveness.      

By the end of the war, most of Japan's major cities had been destroyed by U.S. air attacks. Hiroshima was still intact. The reasons Hiroshima was chosen as the target for the A-bombing are assumed to be the following. The size and the shape of the city was suited to the destructive power of the A-bombs. Because Hiroshima had not been bombed, ascertaining the effects of the A-bomb would be relatively easy. Hiroshima had a high concentration of troops, military facilities and military factories that had not yet been subject to significant damage. As far a Nagasaki, it only made it to the list after Kyoto was removed from being too much of an important cultural center. The initial target on August 9 was Kokura, but there was too much cloud cover for visual targeting, so the Bockscar moved on to the backup target, nearby Nagasaki, insisted.

Works Cited:

History.com Staff. "Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki." History.com. A&E Television Networks, 2009. Web. 23 Feb. 2017

"Avalon Project - The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki." Avalon Project - The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Feb. 2017.

"Hiroshima & Nagasaki Remembered." Hiroshima and Nagasaki Remembered: The Story of Hiroshima. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Feb. 2017.

"Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament." The Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Feb. 2017.