The End of World War II- Atomic Bomb Dropped in Hiroshima

                  Ever since 1940, the United States were working on developing an atomic weapon, after being warned by Albert Einstein that Nazi Germany was already working on conducting research into nuclear weapons. By the time the United States had perfected and conducted the first successful test, Nazi Germany had already been conquered. While this aspect to the war had already been gone and done, the war in the pacific against Japan was still raging on.

                  After a great amount of thought and planning, President Truman had come to the realization that if the U.S. attempted to invade Japan, they would suffer many great casualties. They came to the conclusion that their new and improved weapon could be used to end the war quickly. On August 6, 1945 Enola Gay (American bomber) dropped a five-ton bomb over the city of Hiroshima. The blast equivalent of this bomb had the power of 15,000 tons of TNT. This bomb killed 80,000 people on the spot. Tens of thousand people passed away the following weeks with radiation poising and wounds in result to the bombing. Three short days later, another bomb dropped on Nagaski, another Japanese city. This bomb killed nearly 40,000 people on the spot, almost double the amount from the first bombing. In result to this, Japan ended up surrendering two short days after this event.

               

               Following the end of World War II, many historians looked into the actual thought process of the atomic bombs. They came to the conclusion that there were 2 objectives that played into the goal of them. The first objective was quite obvious. America used the atomic bomb method as a way to end the war with Japan as quickly as possible. The second could come as a shock to many people. This objective was to show off their new weapon of destruction to the Soviet Union. By the year of 1945, the bond between the Soviet Union and the United States had been degraded. America had hoped that the drop of this atomic bomb might create diplomatic leverage. In result to this, they dropped the bomb in Japan, and in a way started the Cold War. In 1949 the Soviet Union had developed their own model of an atomic bomb and there began the nuclear arms race.