Atomic Bombs

At the end of World War II, few questioned Truman's decision to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Most Americans accepted the obvious reasoning: the atomic bombings brought the war to a more timely end. They did not have a problem with over one hundred thousand of the enemy being killed. After all, the Japanese attacked America, and not the other way around. In later years, however, many have begun to question the conventional wisdom of "Truman was saving lives," putting forth theories of their own. However, when one examines the issue with great attention to the results of the atomic bombings and compares these results with possible alternatives to using said bombs, the line between truth and fiction begins to clear. Truman's decision to use the atomic bomb on Japan was for the purpose of saving lives and ending the war quickly in order to prevent a disastrous land invasion.

Because it killed so many people at once and left radioactive debris. Some people argued that Japan would have surrendered if they had been shown a test firing of the bomb and that this would have been more humane. Others argue that the detonations saved more lives (fighting Allied and Japanese soldiers and Allied prisoners of war) than were taken by the bombs and that this justifies the action. Certainly the two bombs put and end to the war.

I believe Einstein didn't actually "make" an atomic bomb; he did give some theoretical insight that made it possible to develop it, and he wrote some influential letters.

It really doesn't matter what the target was in Hiroshima. Virtually everything was destroyed by the atomic bomb.

The first nuclear explosion (Trinity test) was on a 100 foot steel tower in New Mexico (but was not dropped).

The first atomic bomb dropped on US soil was on Frenchman Flat on January 27, 1951 in the Nevada Test Site. Above ground tests continued there until July 17, 1962. Underground tests continued until September 23, 1992. Underground tests of subcritical masses continue to this day.

A variety of underground tests were performed in several states including Alaska, Colorado, and New Mexico.

They have enough to cause a real problem. I am not sure the United States even knows. It just takes one.

The bomb was a plutonium implosion type. The blast was large and the radiation fallout is deadly. Most of the people that died were from radiation poisoning.

There were 28 pow in Hiroshima and 3 in Nagasaki.

The atom bomb testing done in 1949 by the Soviets was one of five or six others done from 1949 to 1955 or 56. The US discovered it when they saw it in their "spying" on Russia. They knew Stalin had achieved his goal to build an atomic bomb and missiles.

Because it abruptly put an end to a bloody war which they started by bombing our Navy at Pearl Harbor. They were irrational fanatics, bent on expanding their empire and would have entrenched and fought to the death had we invaded. Countless thousands of American troops and those of our allies as well as Japanese troops and civilians themselves were saved by our action. We simply wanted the war to be "over" so President Harry Truman "explained" it to them in a language they apparently finally understood. I was 10 years old at the time and, in those days, we did not play "pussyfoot" war with our known enemies as our dysfunctional liberal politicians prefer us to do now. After being effectively defeated and driven back to Japan, the Japanese military refused to surrender and the Japanese Emperor was encouraging his private citizens to protect their homeland from invasion. The rest of the world considered that the Japanese efforts to take over the islands of the Pacific were unacceptable, especially since they had been so ruthless and deceitful. When Japan refused to surrender, even after severe bombing of the major cities, it was calculated that between 750,000 to 1,000,000 troops would loose their lives in an effort to invade Japan, and that at least as many Japanese citizens would die as well. Just forgetting about the Imperial attempts to take over the Pacific was not an option. The world demanded that the Japanese war machine be dismantled to avoid a second round in a few years. The league of nations had made that mistake with Germany at the end of WW1, and Germany rebuilt and tried to take over Europe again by invading other European nations in WW2, so most of the world did not want Japan to have a second chance. After looking at the number of probable deaths, it was determined that invasion was not a good idea. At about the same time, the Manhattan project had successfully tested a nuclear device. The military was given an opportunity to end the war without the loss of any more Allied lives. It was decided that if the citizens of the U.S. were to discover that the military had been forced to invade Japan and we had lost a million soldiers at a time that we had a device that would end the war without any further loss of life, the nation would have become enraged at the military and the government, and justifiably so.

Those are the only two that have been dropped in a combat situation.

The location of the first atomic bomb which was dropped was on Hiroshima on August 6th 1945.

To bring the war to a quick end and save lives which they did. Japan surrendered after Nagasaki was atomic bombed.

By executive order of President Harry S. Truman the U.S. dropped the nuclear weapon "Little Boy" on the city of Hiroshima on Monday, August 6, 1945, followed by the detonation of "Fat Man" over Nagasaki on August 9. These are the only attacks with nuclear weapons in the history of warfare.

President Harry S. Truman made the decision to use the atomic bomb on Japan to end WW II

First you have to realize that the yield of the explosion of an atomic bomb is not a fixed value, the US has designed and fielded pure fission atomic bombs with yields as low as about 10 tons of TNT to as high as 500 kilotons of TNT and using fusion in the design yields as high as 25 megatons were designed and fielded. The USSR designed a 100 megaton bomb (but only tested it at 50 megatons and never actually fielded it). Edward Teller proposed designing a gigaton range bomb but the design was rejected as having no military value (most of the blast of such a bomb would just go upward, just blowing all the atmosphere directly above the burst off into space). There is no theoretical limit for an atomic bomb that uses fusion to drive the fission of depleted uranium (U--238 which cannot support a neutron chain reaction but will fission from high energy fusion neutrons, and is plentiful).

The energy released from the 1883 explosion of Krakatoa has been estimated to be equal to about 200 megatons of TNT (about 4 times that of the largest atomic test ever done: the USSR's 50 megaton device mentioned above). But unlike an atomic bomb Krakatoa's fallout was not radioactive.

Hiroshima and Negasaki in Japan were the two cities destroyed my an atomic bomb in 1945.

On August 2, 1939, just before the beginning of World War II, Albert Einstein wrote to then President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Einstein and several other scientists told Roosevelt of efforts in Nazi Germany to purify uranium-235, which could be used to build an atomic bomb. It was shortly thereafter that the United States Government began the serious undertaking known then only as "The Manhattan Project." Simply put, the Manhattan Project was committed to expediting research that would produce a viable atomic bomb.

Yes, I believe they used it in 1945 July 16.

He wanted to end the war and end the means to make war again.

The fear that Germany was already well on the way to building an atomic bomb and could make first use of them against either England or the USSR at any moment.

"My New Haircut," its on youtube

The H-bomb, or Hydrogen bomb, is a fusion bomb and has never been used except for test explosions. There have been no "h bombings."