Connor Ingram
The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
On December 7th, 1941, Japanese fighter planes attacked the United States naval base on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Less than 4 years later, the United States exacted retribution by detonating atomic bombs over the two major Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These attacks were completely necessary and justified; both critical aspects towards the outcome of the war.
In 1942, the United States led the Manhattan Project, with the United Kingdom and Canada also participating. The purpose of this project was to develop and test the first atomic bomb, before Nazi Germany or Japan. It was started in 1942, after more than 400,000 of the United States citizens had died due to the war. At 2:45 a.m. on Monday, August 6, 1945, a B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, took off from Tinian, a North Pacific island in the Marianas, 1,500 miles south of Japan. The twelve-man crew was on board to make sure this secret mission went smoothly. Colonel Paul Tibbets, the pilot, nicknamed the B-29 the “Enola Gay” after his mother. Just before take-off, the plane’s nickname was painted on its side.
The Enola Gay was a B-29 Superfortress, part of the 509th Composite Group. In order to carry such a heavy load as an atomic bomb, the Enola Gay was modified: new propellers, stronger engines, and faster opening bomb bay doors. (Only fifteen B-29s underwent this modification.) Even though it had been modified, the plane still had to use the full runway to gain the necessary speed, thus it did not lift off until very near the water’s edge.1
The Essay on Enola Gay
August 6, 1945 by Alison Fell In the Enola Gay five minutes before impact he whistles a dry tune Later he will say that the whole blooming sky went up like an apricot ice. Later he will laugh and tremble at such a surrender, for the eye of his belly saw Marilyn’s skirts fly over her head for ever On the river bank, bees drizzle over hot white rhododendrons Later she will walk the dust, a ...
The Enola Gay was escorted by two other bombers that carried cameras and a variety of measuring devices. Three other planes had left earlier in order to ascertain the weather conditions over the possible targets.
On a hook in the ceiling of the plane, hung the ten-foot atomic bomb, “Little Boy.” Navy Captain William S. Parsons, chief of the Ordnance Division in the Manhattan Project, was the Enola Gay’s weaponeer. Since Parsons had been instrumental in the development of the bomb, he was now responsible for arming the bomb while in-flight. Approximately fifteen minutes into the flight (3:00 a.m.), Parsons began to arm the atomic bomb; it took him fifteen minutes. Parsons thought while arming “Little Boy”: “I knew the Japs were in for it, but I felt no particular emotion about it.”2
“Little Boy” was created using uranium-235, a radioactive isotope of uranium. This uranium-235 atomic bomb, a product of $2 billion of research, had never been tested. Nor had any atomic bomb yet been dropped from a plane. Some scientists and politicians pushed for not warning Japan of the bombing in order to save face in case the bomb malfunctioned.
There had been four cities chosen as possible targets: Hiroshima, Kokura, Nagasaki, and Niigata (Kyoto was the first choice until it was removed from the list by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson).
The cities were chosen because they had been relatively untouched during the war. The Target Committee wanted the first bomb to be “sufficiently spectacular for the importance of the weapon to be internationally recognized when publicity on it was released.”3
On August 6, 1945, the first choice target, Hiroshima, was having clear weather. At 8:15 a.m. (local time), the Enola Gay’s door sprang open and dropped “Little Boy.” The bomb exploded 1,900 feet above the city and only missed the target, the Aioi Bridge, by approximately 800 feet.
Staff Sergeant George Caron, the tail gunner, described what he saw: “The mushroom cloud itself was a spectacular sight, a bubbling mass of purple-gray smoke and you could see it had a red core in it and everything was burning inside. . . . It looked like lava or molasses covering a whole city. . . .”4 The cloud is estimated to have reached a height of 40,000 feet.
The Essay on Hiroshima Atomic Bomb 3
Hiroshima Would you be afraid of an atomic bomb dropping on your city? In August 1945, World War II was finally dying down. The United States, including her allies, had already defeated Germany by this time and had reclaimed land that had been taken over by Hitler's Nazi Germany. Now that the United States and her allies had defeated the Nazis all the attention was pointed towards Japan. Japan was ...
Captain Robert Lewis, the co-pilot, stated, “Where we had seen a clear city two minutes before, we could no longer see the city. We could see smoke and fires creeping up the sides of the mountains.”5 Two-thirds of Hiroshima was destroyed. Within three miles of the explosion, 60,000 of the 90,000 buildings were demolished. Clay roof tiles had melted together. Shadows had imprinted on buildings and other hard surfaces. Metal and stone had melted.
Unlike many other bombing raids, the goal for this raid had not been a military installation but rather an entire city. The atomic bomb that exploded over Hiroshima killed civilian women and children in addition to soldiers. Hiroshima’s population has been estimated at 350,000; approximately 70,000 died immediately from the explosion and another 70,000 died from radiation within five years.
