![]() ![]() Estimates of casualties from Nagasaki have generally ranged between 50,000 and 100,000, with many dying instantaneously and others dying slowly and agonisingly as a result of burns and radiation. The nuclear bombing did nevertheless prove devastating, with approximately 22.7% of Nagasaki’s buildings being consumed by flames, but the death toll and destruction was less than in Hiroshima. The centre of Nagasaki, the harbour, and the historic district were shielded from the blast by the hills around the Urakami River. Tens of thousands died immediately and many more in the days and months that followed.ĭue to the hilly geography of Nagasaki and the bombing focus being away from the city centre, the excessive damage from the bombing was limited to the Urakami Valley and part of downtown Nagasaki. In total, 92% of the structures in the city were either destroyed or damaged by blast and fire.Įstimates of total deaths in Hiroshima have generally ranged between 100,000 and 180,000, out of a population of 350,000. Almost 63% of the buildings in Hiroshima were completely destroyed and many more were damaged. The firestorm in Hiroshima destroyed 13 square kilometres (five square miles) of the city. These factors meant that the death toll and destruction in Hiroshima was particularly high. The bomb was dropped on the city centre, an area crowded with wooden residential structures and places of business. Hiroshima stands on a flat river delta, with few hills or natural features to limit the blast. Three days later, a second atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, killing between 50,000 and 100,000 people. View CND’s Hiroshima and Nagasaki exhibition.Join CND campaign against nuclear weapons.This was the first time a nuclear weapon had ever been used the fireball created by the bomb destroyed 13 square kilometres of the city, and those dead as a result numbered up to 180,000. Though how helpful the information they passed on is debated by many, it certainly did not help in terms of the strength and honesty of the East – West relationship.On 6th August 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima by US air forces. However, as early as 1943, two spies for the USSR, Klaus Fuchs and Rudolf Peierls, had started working for the Manhattan Project and sending information back to the USSR. Truman did not fully explain the test and its success to his allies, and it was only after the bombs had dropped on Hiroshima (6th) and Nagasaki (8th) in August 1945 that Stalin was informed on the weapon’s existence by Truman. Īfter the bomb was tested at the desert in Alamagordo, New Mexico on 16 July 1945 this advantage over the rest of the world was proved. Truman reportedly agreed and said I’ll certainly have a hammer on those. The Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, advised that after VE Day the nuclear bomb could act as a deterrent against expanding Soviet influence in Eastern Europe. However, the USSR was expected to catch up within four years. ![]() When he was briefed on the project in April 1945, Truman was told that the US was the only nation which could produce a weapon so destructive it could destroy the whole world. The Manhattan Project was top-secret even within the US government: Truman didn’t know about it when he was Vice President, and only found out about it when he became President after Roosevelt’s death. The USA’s top scientists worked on the Manhattan Project alongside some European and Jewish scientists. ![]() The Manhattan Project, the USA’s secret project to develop the atomic bomb, had begun in 1939 based on the fear that the Germans were developing something similar – Albert Einstein had warned them of this. You may want to discuss the fact that espionage contributed to the worsening relationship between the superpowers. American ' nuclear hegemony ' would not last long. Stalin himself remarked that future wars were inevitable and the Soviet Union now stepped up its own programme of atomic research. Whatever the intention, the USA had changed the nature of warfare, and for the remainder of the Cold War the threat of atomic weapons and nuclear war would be a constant theme. Some historians have speculated that the bombs might also have had another purpose - to send a warning to the Soviet Union about the strength of the American arsenal. The official US justification for the dropping of the two atomic bombs was to force the Japanese government to surrender, which it did on 14 August 1945. The damage caused by the atom bomb attack on Hiroshima on 6th August 1945
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