Obbe Haverkamp
United States Bombing of Two Japanese Cities
On August 6th, 1945 the United States dropped the world’s first atomic bomb over one of
Japan’s major citie, Hiroshima. Three days later the United States dropped the last and final
bomb over Japan’s Nagasaki. These were both named Little Boy and Fat Man. The two bombs
combined killed an estimated 400,000 Japanese citizens instantly, and in addition killed
thousands of others afterward due to the radiation.
These two bombings that the United States dropped
ultimately lead to the surrender of Japan by the Emperor
Hirohito.
(The picture to the left is what Fat Man looked like) (The
botto
m
picture is Little Boy)
Five years previously President
Roosevelt was warned by Albert Einstein
about Germans possibly being able to obtain nuclear weapons. Einstein did this by writing a
letter to President Roosevelt warning him that the Nazis were already in progress of researching
and developing nuclear weapons. This letter gets deep into detail, explaining that the element
uranium might be able to be used to set off a nuclear chain reaction. Einstein then begins to tell
Roosevelt where to find an abundance of uranium and gives him a few possible options on the
current situation. With this information Roosevelt gave his approval to begin their own research
and development of nuclear weapons, but by the time the research was done and finished, Nazi
Germany had already claimed defeated. Despite this President Roosevelt authorized the testing
of the bomb, resulting in its first successful test conducted in a desert in New Mexico on July
1945.
Roosevelt understood that if the war with Japan didn’t end soon, many American lives
could potentially be lost. With that in mind, just about a month after the first successful test of
the bomb President Roosevelt authorized the dropping of the five ton bomb Little Boy over
Japan’s city of Hiroshima. Little Boy was dropped 31,000 feet from the ground at 8:15a.m. and
only took 44 seconds for it to hit the earth. Out of both of the bombs that were dropped Little
