Hiroshima and Nagasaki

“Atomic Bombs”Discovery Education Video

VIDEO

Nuclear Bomb at HiroshimaYouTube Video

8.5 min

Nuclear Bomb at HiroshimaYouTube Video

What primary resources do we see or hear in the video?

• Japanese survivors• Men who flew in the plane• Video footage

OPINION SUPPORTING OPINION

OPPOSING OPINION SUMMARY

What Should Truman Do?DROP THE BOMB DO NOT DROP THE BOMB

•Ends war quickly•Saves us from a costly war - $•Saves American lives•Just as many people will die from an invasion•Revenge!•Japanese mindset – no surrender (Pearl Harbor/Kamikaze)

•Japan is already weak•Kills innocent people•Does not target the military•No fair warning has been given•We don’t know the results of such a bomb

The Mushroom Cloud8:15 AM, “The Little Boy” was dropped over the center of Hiroshima

It exploded about 2,000 ft. above the city and had a blast the equivalent to 13 kilotons of TNT.

Due to radiation, approximately 152,437 additional people have died.

"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. . .[I]t looked like lava or molasses covering a whole city…“- Staff Sergeant George Caron, tail gunner

The cloud is estimated to havereached a height of 40,000 feet.

Hiroshima, Japan

Captain Robert Lewis, the co-pilot, stated, "Where wehad seen a clear city two minutes before, we could no longer see the city. We could see smoke and firescreeping up the sides of the mountains.“ 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.

The atomic bomb that exploded over Hiroshima killed civilianwomen 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.

– “The appearance of people was . . . well, they all had skinblackened by burns. . . . They had no hair because their hairwas burned, and at a glance you couldn't tell whether you werelooking at them from in front or in back. . .their skin - not onlyon their hands, but on their faces and bodies too - hung down. .If there had been only one or two such people . . . perhaps Iwould not have had such a strong impression. But wherever Iwalked I met these people. . . . Many of them died along theroad - I can still picture them in my mind - like walking ghosts.”

With a population of 270,000, approximately 70,000 people died by the end of the year.

A dense column of smoke rises more than 60,000 feet into the air over the Japanese port of Nagasaki, the result of an atomic bomb, the second ever used in warfare, dropped on the industrial center August 8, 1945, from a U.S. B-29 Super fortress.

Nagasaki

What did Truman say?

• “I’d do it again.”• “I regarded the bomb as a military weapon and never had any

doubt it should be used.”• “The atom bomb was no great decision. It was merely another

powerful weapon in the arsenal of righteousness.”• “Nobody is more disturbed over the use of Atomic bombs than

I am but I was greatly disturbed over the unwarranted attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor and their murder of our prisoners of war. The only language they seem to understand is the one we have been using to bombard them.”

Long-term Consequences

• Brought a quick end to World War II• Cold War – nuclear arms build-up and military tension

and threats• Billions of dollars in military expenses• Nuclear Proliferation• Nuclear energy• Technological developments – Medical advancements• Environmental Hazards and Accidents• Threats to world peace