Atomic Bomb – hbauld's Weblog

By Guest Author, Tara Ross

On this day in 1945, Americans drop an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The bombing came not too long after Japan had rejected a final opportunity to surrender.

The so-called Potsdam Declaration was issued through a combined statement of the United States, Great Britain, and China.

“The time has come,” these Allies declared, “for Japan to decide whether she will continue to be controlled by those self-willed militaristic advisers whose unintelligent calculations have brought the Empire of Japan to the threshold of annihilation, or whether she will follow the path of reason.”

Unconditional surrender was necessary. The alternative was “prompt and utter destruction.”

Japan rejected the ultimatum. Presumably, no one in Japan really knew what was coming. But you have to wonder whether anyone in America truly understood what was coming, either?

Captain William Parsons of the Manhattan Project briefed the crew of the Enola Gay (and others) before they departed on their historic mission: “The bomb you are going to drop,” he told them, “is something new in the history of warfare. It is the most destructive weapon ever produced. We think it will knock out everything within a three mile area.”

Well, yes, it did. But it also shattered glass in suburbs that were twelve miles away from the detonation site.

Later that day, President Harry S. Truman made a statement:

“The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. . . . We are now prepared to obliterate . . . every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city,” he stated. “We shall destroy their docks, their factories, and their communications. Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan’s power to make war.”

Unfortunately, the Japanese did not surrender that day. A second bomb would be dropped on Nagasaki mere days later.

It was a hard day in world history, but it was also the beginning of the end of World War II.

Guest author, Tara Ross, is a mother, wife, writer, and retired lawyer. She is the author of The Indispensable Electoral College: How the Founders’ Plan Saves Our Country from Mob Rule,Enlightened Democracy: The Case for the Electoral College, co-author of Under God: George Washington and the Question of Church and State (with Joseph C. Smith, Jr.), & We Elect A President: The Story of our Electoral College. She is a constitutionalist, but with a definite libertarian streak! Stay tuned here for updates on pretty much anything to do with the Electoral College, George Washington, & our wonderfully rich American heritage.

Today is the 70th anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan: August 6, 1945. The below article is a great discussion of the US’ “Target Committee” and what cities they considered as the first “target” and why.

As the article says at one point: “The committee unanimously agreed that the atomic bombs should be used: (1) as soon as possible; (2) without warning; and (3) on war plants surrounded by workers’ homes or other buildings susceptible to damage, in order to make a spectacular impression “on as many inhabitants as possible.”

Government leaders, including Secretary of War Henry Stimson, Major General Leslie Groves who was the Army engineer in charge of the Manhattan Project, scientist Robert Oppenheimer, and others all had their preferred targets.

Groves fought hard for Kyoto and it was first on his “list” of targets, but Stimson wanted Kyoto removed for a purely sentimental, personal reason: Stimson and his wife had visited the beautiful city of Kyoto with its wooden bridges and structures in 1926. Eventually Stimson, as Groves’ boss and the senior member of the target committee, won out and Kyoto was off the table.

Hiroshima was ultimately picked as the target and that sealed its fate. On August 6, 1945, the US dropped a uranium gun-type atomic bomb known as “Little Boy,” virtually wiping Hiroshima from the Japanese landscape.

Three days later, a US bomber dropped an implosion-type bomb known as “Fat Man” on the city of Nagasaki. The two bombings killed an estimated up to one-quarter million Japanese people.

The Soviet Union declared war on Japan on August 15, 1945. Japan capitulated and surrendered on the deck of the USS Missouri September 2, 1945. Less than one month after the initial bombing of Hiroshima, World War II was over.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/08/hiroshima-nagasaki-atomic-bomb-anniversary/400448/