Thesis Statement
I choose this topic, because I was unsure whether or not the United States did the right thing when they used Atomic bombs against Japan. When they did this they took hundreds of innocent lives, just to win a war and make a statement.
The Cities
The cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki became famous for the dropping of the Atomic bombs these two cities had been used for military purposes up to that point in the war. A number of military camps were located next to Hiroshima, including the Fifth Division’s Headquarters and the Headquarters which commanded the defense of Southern Japan under Field Marshall Shunroku Hata’s 2nd General Army. Nagasaki was one of the largest seaports. It was very important to Japan during WWII, because it had a wide range of industrial activity, like the production of war materials and ships. Most of the building in Nagasaki were built with wood and had tile roofs. They were not built to hold up to explosions. The city had not been the target of serious attacks until the atom bomb.
Making the Bombs
With the help of Canada and the United Kingdom, the United States ran the top secret “Manhattan Project.” This was the development and testing of the first nuclear bombs. American physicist, J. Robert Oppenhiemer directed the research. Most of the work was done at the Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico. One of the bombs was made uranium-235. It was named “Little Boy”. It was a gun-type bomb, and would be the first ever used in warfare. At its height there was 130,000 people working on the bomb, at a cost of nearly $2 billion.
The first ever explosion of an Atomic bomb was the test on July 16, 1945, in an area called the Trinity site. It was a test run with a bomb called “Gadget”. It was an implosion bomb that was the same type as the Bomb called “Fat Man” that would be the 2nd nuclear bomb used in warfare.
Selecting the Targets
The target committee was also led by Oppenheimer at Los...