In
1942 the Manhattan Engineer Project was set up in the United States
under the command of Brigadier General Leslie
Groves. Allied scientists recruited to produce an atom bomb included
Robert
Oppenheimer,
David Bohm, Leo
Szilard,
Eugene Wigner, Otto
Frisch, Rudolf
Peierls,
Felix
Bloch,
Niels Bohr, Emilio
Segre,
James Franck, Enrico
Fermi, Klaus Fuchs
and Edward Teller.
Winston
Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt
were deeply concerned about the possibility that Germany would produce
the atom bomb before the allies. At a conference held in Quebec in
August, 1943, it was decided to try and disrupt the German nuclear
programme.
In February
1943, SOE saboteurs successfully planted a bomb in the Rjukan nitrates
factory in Norway. As soon as it was rebuilt it was destroyed by 150
US bombers in November, 1943. Two months later the Norwegian resistance
managed to sink a German boat carrying vital supplies for its nuclear
programme.
Meanwhile
the scientists working on the Manhattan
Project
were developing atom bombs using uranium and plutonium. The first
three completed bombs were successfully tested at Alamogordo, New
Mexico on 16th July, 1945.
By the
time the atom bomb was ready to be used Germany had surrendered. Against
the wishes of many of the scientists involved in its production, Harry
S. Truman, the USA's new president, decided to use the
bomb on Japan.
On 6th
August 1945, a B29 bomber dropped an atom bomb on Hiroshima. It has
been estimated that over the years around 200,000 people have died
as a result of this bomb being dropped. Japan did not surrender immediately
and a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki
three days later. On 10th August the Japanese surrendered. The Second
World War was over.
The
uranium bomb dropped on Hiroshima
Second World War Forum Debates
Hiroshima and Nagasaki: A War Crime?
(1)
General Dwight Eisenhower, the Supreme
Allied Commander, told President Harry S.
Truman that he was opposed to the dropping of the atom bomb on
Japan.
I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my
belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb
was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our
country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon
whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure
to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very
moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of "face".
(2)
Robert Oppenheimer in conversation
with Paul Tibbets (1945)
Your biggest problem may be after the bomb has left your aircraft.
The shock waves from the detonation could crush your plane. I am afraid
that I can give you no guarantee that you will survive.
(3)
Deke Parsons, one of the team working on the Manhattan
Project, gave a talk to Paul Tibbets and his team on 4th August,
1945.
The bomb you are going to drop is something new in the history of
warfare. It is the most destructive weapon ever produced. We think
it will knock out almost everything within a three-mile radius. No
one knows exactly what will happen when the bomb is dropped from the
air. Even if it exploded at the planned altitude of 1850 feet it might
crack the earth's crust. The explosion's flash of light would be much
brighter than the sun and could cause blindness.
(4)
Colonel Paul Tibbets, was the commander
of the plane that dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima.
We despatched an aircraft to check the weather. There was an alert
in Hiroshima when the aircraft arrived. Then it turned away and the
"All Clear" signal was given in the town. And then we arrived.
I have never regretted it or been ashamed; I thought at the time I
was doing my patriotic duty in carrying out the orders given to me.
(5)
Robert Oppenheimer, on watching the
first atomic bomb test (16th July, 1945)
I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.
(6)
John Hersey, Hiroshima (1946)
On August
7th, the Japanese radio broadcast for the first time a succinct announcement
that very few, if any, of the people most concerned with its content,
the survivors in Hiroshima, happened to hear: "Hiroshima suffered
considerable damage as the result of an attack by a few B-29s. It
is believed that a new type of bomb was used. The details are being
investigated." Nor is it probable that any of the survivors happened
to be tuned in on a short-wave rebroadcast of an extraordinary announcement
by the president of the United States, which identified the new bomb
as atomic: "That bomb had more power than twenty thousand tons
of TNT. It had more than two thousand times the blast power of the
British Grand Slam, which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the
history of warfare." Those victims who were able to worry at
all about what had happened thought of it and discussed it in more
primitive, childish terms – gasoline sprinkled from an airplane,
maybe, or some combustible gas, or a big cluster of incendiaries,
or the work of parachutists; but, even if they had known the truth,
most of them were too busy or too weary or too badly hurt to care
that they were the objects of the first great experiment in the use
of atomic power, which (as the voices on the short wave shouted) no
country except the United States, with its industrial know-how, its
willingness to throw two billion gold dollars into an important wartime
gamble, could possibly have developed.
(7)
Michihiko Hachiya lived in Hiroshima during the Second
World War. He wrote an account of the dropping of the atom bomb
in his diary on 6th August, 1945.
Hundreds of people who were trying to escape to the hills passed
our house. The sight of them was almost unbearable. Their faces and
hands were burnt and swollen; and great sheets of skin had peeled
away from their tissues to hang down like rags or a scarecrow. They
moved like a line of ants. All through the night, they went past our
house, but this morning they stopped. I found them lying so thick
on both sides of the road that it was impossible to pass without stepping
on them.
(8)
One Hiroshima survivor described
the death of her daughter from radiation sickness.
She had no burns and only minor external wounds. She was quite
all right for a while. But on the 4th September, she suddenly became
sick. She had spots all over her body. Her hair began to fall out.
She vomited small clumps of blood many times. I felt this was a very
strange and horrible disease. We were all afraid of it, and even the
doctor didn't know what it was. After ten days of agony and torture,
she died on September 14th.
(9)
President Harry S. Truman, speech (6th
August, 1945)
The
harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which
the sun draws its power has been used against those who brought war
to the Far East. We have spent $2,000,000,000 (about $500,000,000)
on the greatest gamble in history, and we have won.
With this
bomb we have now added a new and revolutionary increase in destruction
to supplement the growing power of our armed forces. In their present
form these bombs are now in production and even more powerful forms
are in development.
Before
1939 it was the accepted belief of scientists that it was theoretically
possible to release atomic energy, but none knew any practical method
of doing it. By 1942 however, we knew the Germans were working feverishly
to find a way to add atomic energy to other engines of war with which
they hoped to enslave the world, but they failed. We may be grateful
to Providence that the Germans got VI's and V2's and in limited quantities,
and even more grateful that they did not get the atomic bomb at all.
The battle
of the laboratories held fateful risks for us as well as the battles
of the air, land and sea and we have now won the battle of the laboratories
as we have won other battles. Before Pearl Harbour, scientific knowledge
useful in war was pooled between the United States and Britain and
many priceless.helps to our victories have come from the arrangement.
Under that general policy, research on the atomic bomb was begun.
With American and British scientists working together, we entered
the race of discovery against the Germans.
We are
now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive
enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city. We shall destroy
their docks, their factories and their communications. Let there be
no mistake, we shall completely destroy Japan's power to make war.
It was
in spare the Japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum
of July 26 was issued from Potsdam. Their leaders promptly rejected
that ultimatum. If they do not now accept our terms they may expect
a rain of run from the air the like of which has never been seen on
this earth. Behind this air attack will follow sea and land forces
in such numbers and power as they have not yet seen and with a fighting
skill of which they have already become well aware.
Although
workers at the sites have been making the materials to be used in
producing the greatest destructive force in history, they have not
themselves been in danger beyond that of many other occupations for
the utmost care has been take for their safety. The fact that we can
release atomic energy ushers in a new era on man's understanding of
nature's forces. I shall recommend the Congress of the United States
to consider promptly establishment of an appropriate Commission to
control the production and use of atomic power within the United States.
I shall give further consideration and make a further recommendation
to Congress as to how atomic power can become a powerful and forceful
influence towards the maintenance of world peace.
(10)
John Hersey, Hiroshima (1946)
Dr. Sasaki
and his colleagues at the Red Cross Hospital watched the unprecedented
disease unfold and at last evolved a theory about its nature. It had,
they decided, three stages. The first stage had been all over before
the doctors even knew they were dealing with a new sickness; it was
the direct reaction to the bombardment of the body, at the moment
when the bomb went off, by neutrons, beta particles, and gamma rays.
The apparently uninjured people who had died so mysteriously in the
first few hours or days had succumbed in this first stage. It killed
ninety-five per cent of the people within a half-mile of the center,
and many thousands who were farther away. The doctors realized in
retrospect that even though most of these dead had also suffered from
burns and blast effects, they had absorbed enough radiation to kill
them. The rays simply destroyed body cells– caused their nuclei
to degenerate and broke their walls. Many people who did not die right
away came down with nausea, headache, diarrhea, malaise, and fever,
which lasted several days. Doctors could not be certain whether some
of these symptoms were the result of radiation or nervous shock. The
second stage set in ten or fifteen days after the bombing. Its first
symptom was falling hair. Diarrhea and fever, which in some cases
went as high as 106, came next. Twenty-five to thirty days after the
explosion, blood disorders appeared: gums bled, the white-blood-cell
count dropped sharply, and petechiae [eruptions] appeared on the skin
and mucous membranes. The drop in the number of white blood corpuscles
reduced the patient's capacity to resist infection, so open wounds
were unusually slow in healing and many of the sick developed sore
throats and mouths. The two key symptoms, on which the doctors came
to base their prognosis, were fever and the lowered white-corpuscle
count. If fever remained steady and high, the patient's chances for
survival were poor. The white count almost always dropped below four
thousand; a patient whose count fell below one thousand had little
hope of living. Toward the end of the second stage, if the patient
survived, anemia, or a drop in the red blood count, also set in. The
third stage was the reaction that came when the body struggled to
compensate for its ills–when, for instance, the white count not
only returned to normal but increased to much higher than normal levels.
In this stage, many patients died of complications, such as infections
in the chest cavity. Most burns healed with deep layers of pink, rubbery
scar tissue, known as keloid tumors. The duration of the disease varied,
depending on the patient's constitution and the amount of radiation
he had received. Some victims recovered in a week; with others the
disease dragged on for months.
As the
symptoms revealed themselves, it became clear that many of them resembled
the effects of overdoses of X-ray, and the doctors based their therapy
on that likeness. They gave victims liver extract, blood transfusions,
and vitamins, especially Bl. The shortage of supplies and instruments
hampered them. Allied doctors who came in after the surrender found
plasma and penicillin very effective. Since the blood disorders were,
in the long run, the predominant factor in the disease, some of the
Japanese doctors evolved a theory as to the seat of the delayed sickness.
They thought that perhaps gamma rays, entering the body at the time
of the explosion, made the phosphorus in the victims' bones radioactive,
and that they in turn emitted beta particles, which, though they could
not penetrate far through flesh, could enter the bone marrow, where
blood is manufactured, and gradually tear it down. Whatever its source,
the disease had some baffling quirks. Not all the patients exhibited
all the main symptoms. People who suffered flash burns were protected,
to a considerable extent, from radiation sickness. Those who had lain
quietly for days or even hours after the bombing were much less liable
to get sick than those who had been active. Gray hair seldom fell
out. And, as if nature were protecting man against his own ingenuity,
the reproductive processes were affected for a time; men became sterile,
women had miscarriages, menstruation stopped.
(11)
Studs
Terkel interviewed Ted
Allenby about his experiences fighting the Japanese
Army during the Second World War
for his book, The Good War (1985)
I was in Hiroshima and I stood at ground zero. I saw deformities that
I'd never seen before. I know there are genetic effects that may affect
generations of survivors and their children. I'm aware of all this.
But I also know that had we landed in Japan, we would have faced greater
carnage than Normandy. It would probably have been the most bloody
invasion in history. Every Japanese man, woman, and child was ready
to defend that land. The only way we took Iwo Jima was because we
outnumbered them three to one. Still, they held us at bay as long
as they did. We'd had to starve them out, month after month after
month. As it was, they were really down to eating grass and bark off
trees. So I feel split about Hiroshima. The damn thing probably saved
my life.
(12)
Joyce
Storey, Joyce's War
(1992)
That same year that Patty
started school, the war ended. It had lasted for six long weary years,
and for those of us who had been young at that time, it was a big
slice out of our lives. When it was finally all over, there was singing
and dancing in the streets. Victory bells rang and people cried and
laughed at the same time and hugged each other. We had street parties
for the children, and although they were too young to know what it
was all about, they caught the excitement of the moment, and with
balloons and streamers they joined in the fun. I made sponges and
jellies along with Jean Brodie from down
the road, and even helped with the paper hats.
News filtered through
that the war had ended suddenly because a small bomb had been dropped
on Hiroshima. Nobody questioned why it had come to an abrupt halt.
Like thousands of others, we were relieved and happy that hostilities
had ceased and hoped that our lives could proceed along normal lines
once more. It was several months before the word atomic was mentioned,
and we were ignorant of its consequences. We ignored it all. The war
was over and that was enough. Much later, we saw and heard the full
horror of this weapon that the Americans had used and were appalled.
That it must never happen again was a phrase that Governments bandied
about for years, and which we believed, like so many
other things. We were young and we were gullible. Impossible
to think, then, that nuclear weapons would become
the ultimate 'deterrent'. Impossible also to believe that
when the final page of history was being written, we discovered
that Germany had also been busy perfecting this
deadly weapon of destruction, and it could have been us
and not Hiroshima as the target. A moment for reflection.
One sobering thought. How could things ever be
the same again?
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