Atomic Bomb Revisited

The feature story I will be writing about is about the Atomic Bomb being revisted.  The story is found at this political site and was posted as of today, March 1, 2010.  The article is titled Truman Library joins with Hiroshima Survivors in Forum on Nuclear Weapons by Melinda Henneberger.  This article was informative and its audience was who ever interested in the history of the Atomic Bomb as well as its present.  The article reflects the bombings that were dropped in Hiroshima and Nagaski under president Truman and the reasoning for why it happened.  This article contains many different italic fonts to capture the reader attention as well as color.  The color that is particularly used in the article is light blue.  I presume the light blue is to relax the reader because of the affects the Atomic bomb (a powerful nuclear weapon) had on the Japan were deathly.  The article goes on to inform its audience of the successful meeting that took place recently between the victims of the atomic bomb and the United States.  Towards the end of the article there is a video clipping which intrigues the readers more because rather than just reading the article they also have the option to listen to what the meeting was about as well as what the article was about.  The presentation of the article allows the reader to engage himself into the article.  He/she is able to have understanding the effects of the atomic bomb from the victims.   

Some background information on the in regards to the atomic bombing is

the United States spent 2 billion developing developing these nuclear weapons. On July 1945, the first atomic weapon was tested on Alamogordo, New Mexico. They had successfully detonated the first atomic weapon in the world. When the news reached to Truman, he felt more confident and firmer in his decisions. He was ready to show our military superiority and flex our muscles at the same time. At this point, the U.S. Was not aware of the true scope of damage path was something we were unsure of. Also, they assure that the atomic bombs would cause less American deaths overall. (Davidson, 891-896).

According to Richard Hewlett the total estimated cost of the Atomic program through August 1945 in World War II was $20 billion!  This included the research, materials, plants and people.  They estimated that each bomb that was detonated cost $5 billion. 

The incentive to build the potential atomic weapon that put an end to WWII started in August 2, 1939 with the letter Albert Einstein and several other scientists expressed to the President Franklin D. Roosevelt the efforts of the Nazi to purify Uranium-235 in order to build an atomic bomb. Consequently, United States started the Manhattan project, which was committed to work on the making a viable atomic bomb.

            The atomic bombs were against Japan at the order of the U.S. President Harry Truman on August 6 and 9 of 1945, after six months of fire bombing of 67 Japanese cities. “Little Boy” and “Fat Man” are the only attack of nuclear weapons in the history of warfare.

Little Boy transported on the Pacific theater for use against Japan. Little Boy was carried by a B-29 bomber called Enola Gay and dropped over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, resulting in the immediate or delayed deaths of 100,000 people. The government of Japan still refused to surrender.  Fat Man was released from another B-29 over Nagasaki. Faced with the prospect of continued annihilation of its cities, as well as not knowing that the U.S. had no other atomic bombs ready to deploy, Japan surrendered unconditionally on August 15, 1945.

The two explosions of the atomic bombs caused the intervention and declaration of peace of the Emperor of Japan. On September 3 a Japanese delegation signed the documents of surrender at the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay. This ended the war (Davidson, p.893)

In 1948, the ABCC was established in accordance with a presidential directive to the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council to conduct investigations of the late effects of radiation among the survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. Scientists wanted to discern the conditions and outcomes related to radiation exposure. At some places, they would not give the right medical assistance to survivors only for research data and better results. In 1975, the Radiation Effects Research Foundation was created to assume the responsibilities of the ABCC (Lindee, p. 46-51)

Hibakusha a literary word that literally translated means  “explosion-affected people” was the word used to name the survivors of the bombing. After these events, the Japanese started looking for the abolition of nuclear weapons from the world, creating one of the world's most firm non-nuclear policies. There has been reported an existence of more than 400000 hibakusha in Japan (Lindee, p. 46-51).  These people exist today to help bring about the meeting the was recently held thus the article that was recently put out.  The meeting was a success and the Hibakusha people feel a bit more better than they did before in regards to the Atomic Bomb. 

References:

Davidson, Giennap, et al. (2001). Nations of Nations. A Narrative History of the American Republic. 4^th Edition. New York: McGraw Hill.

Lindee, S. (1994). Suffering Made Real: American Science and the Survivors at Hiroshima. University of Chicago Press.

Wainstock, D.(1996). The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb. Greenwood Publishing Groups.