The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Attempting to bring an earlier end to World War II, U.S. President Harry Truman made the fateful decision to drop a massive atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. On August 6, 1945, this atomic bomb, known as Little Boy, flattened the city, killing at least 70,000 people that day and tens of thousands more from radiation poisoning. While Japan  was still trying to comprehend this devastation, the United States dropped another atomic bomb. This bomb, nicknamed Fat Man, was dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people immediately and another 20,000 to 40,000 in the months following the explosion. On August 15, 1945, Japanese Emperor Hirohito announced an unconditional surrender, ending World War II. The Enola Gay Heads to Hiroshima At 2:45 a.m. on Monday, August 6, 1945, a B-29 bomber  took off from Tinian, a North Pacific island in the Marianas, 1,500 miles south of Japan. The 12-man crew  was on board to make sure this secret mission went smoothly. Colonel Paul Tibbets, the pilot, nicknamed the B-29 the Enola Gay after his mother. Just before take-off, the planes nickname was painted on its side. The Enola Gay was a B-29 Superfortress  (aircraft 44-86292), part of the 509th Composite Group. In order to carry such a heavy load as an atomic bomb, the Enola Gay was modified: new propellers, stronger engines, and faster opening bomb bay doors. (Only 15 B-29s underwent this modification.) Even though it had been modified, the plane still had to use the full runway to gain the necessary speed, thus it did not lift off until very near the waters edge.1 The Enola Gay was escorted by two other bombers that carried cameras and a variety of measuring devices. Three other planes had left earlier in order to ascertain the weather conditions over the possible targets. The Atomic Bomb Known as Little Boy Is on Board On a hook in the ceiling of the plane, hung the ten-foot atomic bomb, Little Boy. Navy Captain William S. Parsons (Deak), chief of the Ordnance Division in the Manhattan Project, was the Enola Gays weaponeer. Since Parsons had been instrumental in the development of the bomb, he was now responsible for arming the bomb while in-flight. Approximately 15 minutes into the flight (3:00 a.m.), Parsons began to arm the atomic bomb; it took him 15 minutes. Parsons thought while arming Little Boy: I knew the Japs were in for it, but I felt no particular emotion about it.2 Little Boy was created using uranium-235, a radioactive isotope of uranium. This uranium-235 atomic bomb, a product of $2 billion of research, had never been tested. Nor had any atomic bomb yet been dropped from a plane. Some scientists and politicians pushed for not warning Japan of the bombing in order to save face in case the bomb malfunctioned. Clear Weather Over Hiroshima There had been four cities chosen as possible targets: Hiroshima, Kokura, Nagasaki, and Niigata (Kyoto was the first choice until it was removed from the list by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson). The cities were chosen because they had been relatively untouched during the war. The Target Committee wanted the first bomb to be sufficiently spectacular for the importance of the weapon to be internationally recognized when publicity on it was released.3 On August 6, 1945, the first choice target, Hiroshima, was having clear weather. At 8:15 a.m. (local time), the Enola Gays door sprang open and dropped Little Boy. The bomb exploded 1,900 feet above the city and only missed the target, the Aioi Bridge, by approximately 800 feet. The Explosion at Hiroshima Staff Sergeant George Caron, the tail gunner, described what he saw: 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. . . . It looked like lava or molasses covering a whole city. . . .4 The cloud is estimated to have reached a height of 40,000 feet. Captain Robert Lewis, the co-pilot, stated, Where we had seen a clear city two minutes before, we could no longer see the city. We could see smoke and fires creeping up the sides of the mountains.5 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. Unlike other bombing raids, the goal for this raid had not been a military installation but rather an entire city. The atomic bomb that exploded over Hiroshima killed civilian women and children in addition to soldiers. Hiroshimas 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. A survivor described the damage to people: The appearance of people was . . . well, they all had skin blackened by burns. . . . They had no hair because their hair was burned, and at a glance you couldnt tell whether you were looking at them from in front or in back. . . . They held their arms bent [forward] like this . . . and their skin - not only on their hands, but on their faces and bodies too - hung down. . . . If there had been only one or two such people . . . perhaps I would not have had such a strong impression. But wherever I walked I met these people. . . . Many of them died along the road - I can still picture them in my mind -- like walking ghosts. 6 The Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki While the people of Japan tried to comprehend the devastation in Hiroshima, the United States was preparing a second bombing mission. The second run was not delayed in order to give Japan  time to surrender but was waiting only for a sufficient amount of plutonium-239 for the atomic bomb. On August 9, 1945, only three days after the bombing of Hiroshima, another B-29, Bocks Car, left Tinian at 3:49 a.m. The first choice target for this bombing run had been Kokura. Since the haze over Kokura prevented the sighting of the bombing target, Bocks Car continued on to its second target. At 11:02 a.m., the atomic bomb, Fat Man, was dropped over Nagasaki. The atomic bomb exploded 1,650 feet above the city. Fujie Urata Matsumoto, a survivor, shares one scene: The pumpkin field in front of the house was blown clean. Nothing was left of the whole thick crop, except that in place of the pumpkins there was a womans head. I looked at the face to see if I knew her. It was a woman of about forty. She must have been from another part of town -- I had never seen her around here. A gold tooth gleamed in the wide-open mouth. A handful of singed hair hung down from the left temple over her cheek, dangling in her mouth. Her eyelids were drawn up, showing black holes where the eyes had been burned out. . . . She had probably looked square into the flash and gotten her eyeballs burned. Approximately 40 percent of Nagasaki was destroyed. Luckily for many civilians  living in Nagasaki,  though this atomic bomb was considered much stronger than the one exploded over Hiroshima, the terrain of Nagasaki prevented the bomb from doing as much damage. The decimation, however, was still great. With a population of 270,000, approximately 40,000 people died immediately and another 30,000 by the end of the year. I saw the atom bomb. I was four then. I remember the cicadas chirping. The atom bomb was the last thing that happened in the war and no more bad things have happened since then, but I dont have my Mummy any more. So even if it isnt bad any more, Im not happy.--- Kayano Nagai, survivor 8 Sources Notes 1. Dan Kurzman,  Day of the Bomb: Countdown to Hiroshima  (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1986) 410.2. William S. Parsons as quoted in Ronald Takaki, Hiroshima:  Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb  (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1995) 43.3. Kurzman,  Day of the Bomb  394.4. George Caron as quoted in Takaki,  Hiroshima  44.5. Robert Lewis as quoted in Takaki,  Hiroshima  43.6. A survivor quoted in Robert Jay Lifton,  Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima  (New York: Random House, 1967) 27.7. Fujie Urata Matsumoto as quoted in Takashi  Nagai, We of Nagasaki: The Story of Survivors in an Atomic Wasteland  (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1964) 42.8. Kayano Nagai as quoted in  Nagai, We of Nagasaki  6. Bibliography Hersey, John.  Hiroshima. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985. Kurzman, Dan.  Day of the Bomb: Countdown to Hiroshima. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1986. Liebow, Averill A.  Encounter With Disaster: A Medical Diary of Hiroshima, 1945. New York: W. W. Norton Company, 1970. Lifton, Robert Jay.  Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima. New York: Random House, 1967. Nagai, Takashi.  We of Nagasaki: The Story of Survivors in an Atomic Wasteland. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1964. Takaki, Ronald.  Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1995.

Social Psychology The Bystander Effect - 1061 Words

Although we may not realize it, our social life is constantly being characterized by social influences and our environments. As individuals we tend to give in to social influences because we either do not know how to act in certain situations, or because we follow the social norms (when we tend to embrace other ways of thinking, behaving, or feeling that are shared between a group of people). Social Psychology gives us the information we need in order to understand why we, at times, behave in a way that can sometimes go against our moral and ethical code. One example of this is The Bystander Effect. In the bystander effect, when faced with an emergency there is a diffusion of responsibility where individuals are less willing to help in an emergency because they are with a group of people and have given the responsibility to take action to someone else. We look at the actions and behaviors of others to give us cues as to how we should act. For instance, in the case of Kitty Genovese , where she was being murdered in front of a crowd of people and no one called the cops until hours later. Everyone either expected each other to do something, or they just assumed that it was just a â€Å"Lover s quarrel†. It was not until Kitty was on her dying breath did someone decide to call for help. The people who were observing this murder knew something atrocious was happening, whether it was a murder or a lover s quarrel, but because no one else decided to take action, the social normShow MoreRelatedThe Bystander Effect On Social Psychology1077 Words   |  5 Pagesreader briefly of the overall topic and why it is of interest. The general topic area is about The Bystander Effect. John M.Darley and Bibb Latane research about the bystander effect based on the story of Kitty Genovese. Also known as individuals are less likely to help in a situation in the presence of others (Greitemeyer and Mugge, 201 p.116). 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When a person is comes across a person in distress and there are other people around, he is less willing

Music Apreciation free essay sample

Who sang at the Grammy’s in Spanish in the late 1990s? What was the reaction? Ricky Martin sang at the Grammy’s in the late 1990s. Everybody loved it. It was widely accepted and supported. 2. When did Latin music burst back on the scene? What song brought it back to the mainstream? What effect did it have? Latin music bursted back on the scene in 1984. â€Å"Conga† by Gloria Estefan amp; the Miami Sound Machine brought Latin music back to the mainstream. It defined Latin pop music by mixing a Latin beat with English words. 3. How did the sounds of salsa change? The sounds of salsa changed because it was starting to be fused with pop, Ramp;B, etc. so that more people could understand it. 4. What was the influence of CBS’ Latin division on the explosion of Latin music in the US? CBS Latin division supported and sponsored latin music and helped it in its growth across America. We will write a custom essay sample on Music Apreciation or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page 5. Who were some of the artists who brought together Latin influenced music with mainstream pop music? Jennifer Lopez, Marc Anthony, Ricky Martin, and Gloria Estefan amp; The Miami Sound Machine were some of the artists that brought together Latin influenced music with mainstream pop music. 6. Why did the Latin music influence decrease? The Latin music influence decreased because people started becoming more modernized and less people could understand the music. 7. What was Reggaeton? Reggaeton was a mixture of the Jamaican â€Å"Dem Bow† beat mixed with Puerto Rican and Latin beats. 8. What other types of music are being influenced by â€Å"Latin† music? Hip-hop, rap, pop, and rock are all types of music being influenced by â€Å"Latin† music. References Mueller, Kate Hevner. Studies in Music Appreciation. journal of Research in Music Education 4.1 (1956): 3-25. Kamien, Roger, and Anita Kamien. Music: an appreciation. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1988. Seashore, Carl E. The psychology of music. Music Educators Journal 23.2 (1936): 20-22. Seashore, Carl E. The psychology of music. Music Educators Journal 23.2 (1936): 20-22. Seashore, Carl E. The psychology of music. Music Educators Journal 23.2 (1936): 20-22. Stigler, George J., and Gary S. Becker. De gustibus non est disputandum. The american economic review 67.2 (1977): 76-90.