THIS DAY IN HISTORY

[IceWizard]

American bomber drops atomic bomb
on Hiroshima







1945
August 06




On August 6, 1945, the United States becomes the first and only nation to use atomic weaponry during
wartime when it drops an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Approximately 80,000 people
are killed as a direct result of the blast, and another 35,000 are injured. At least another 60,000 would
be dead by the end of the year from the effects of the fallout.

Since 1940, the United States had been working on developing an atomic weapon, after having been
warned that Nazi Germany was already conducting research into nuclear weapons. By the time the
United States conducted the first successful test (an atomic bomb was exploded in the desert in New Mexico
in July 1945), Germany had already been defeated. The war against Japan in the Pacific, however,
continued to rage. President Harry S. Truman, warned by some of his advisers that any attempt to invade
Japan would result in horrific American casualties, ordered that the new weapon be used to bring the
war to a speedy end.

On August 6, 1945, the American bomber Enola Gay dropped a five-ton bomb over the Japanese city
of Hiroshima. A blast equivalent to the power of 15,000 tons of TNT reduced four square miles of the
city to ruins and immediately killed 80,000 people. Tens of thousands more died in the following weeks
from wounds and radiation poisoning. Three days later, another bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki,
killing nearly 40,000 more people. A few days later, Japan announced its surrender.





In the years since the two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, a number of historians have suggested that
the weapons had a two-pronged objective. First, of course, was to bring the war with Japan to a speedy end
and spare American lives. It has been suggested that the second objective was to demonstrate the new weapon
of mass destruction to the Soviet Union.

By August 1945, relations between the Soviet Union and the United States had deteriorated badly.
The Potsdam Conference between U.S. President Harry S. Truman, Russian leader Joseph Stalin, and
Winston Churchill (before being replaced by Clement Attlee) ended just four days before the bombing of
Hiroshima. The meeting was marked by recriminations and suspicion between the Americans and Soviets.
Russian armies were occupying most of Eastern Europe. Truman and many of his advisers hoped that the
U.S. atomic monopoly might offer diplomatic leverage with the Soviets. In this fashion, the dropping of the
atomic bomb on Japan can be seen as the first shot of the Cold War.

If U.S. officials truly believed that they could use their atomic monopoly for diplomatic advantage, they had
little time to put their plan into action. By 1949, the Soviets had developed their own atomic bomb and the
nuclear arms race began.




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