Blake Smith

HIST 201, Section 0112

Spring 2018
Writing Assignment 1

On August Fifth, 1945, at 7:15pm, a new era of war was ushered into view by none other than
the United States. This was done so by the first ever publicly known use of atomic energy, which
was the dropping of an atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan. The next day, Harry S. Truman, the
thirty-third President of the United States, informed the world of exactly what had occurred.
Truman’s speech entailed not only the fact that the United States had dropped the most powerful
bomb of all time on Japan, but it also revealed some information about the development of said
bomb, as well as some future plans for the energy used to explode the bomb. The United States,
in collaboration with Great Britain, had created the most powerful energy source ever created by
man, and by many fold. They had used it to destroy an important army base in Japan. Because
the Germans, the opposing forces in World War II, had also been researching similar energies
during the war, bomb development turned into a “battle of the laboratories”, as nuclear energy in
the hands of the Germans would turn the war strongly against the allies.1 The American Presidency
Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=12169.

1
Harry Truman, “Statement by the President Announcing the Use of the A-Bomb at Hiroshima.” (speech,
Washington, DC, August 6, 1945),

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