Hiroshima and Nagasaki Bombing

Where is Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Hiroshima and Nagasaki are located on

Honshu and Kyushu respectively. They are
both islands of Japan.
What happened in the year 1945?:
• The united states detonated two atomic bombs over the cities of hiroshima and Nagasaki
on the 6th and 9th of august respectively. These bombings would lead to the death of
129,000 and 225,00 people, most of whom were civilians. After arriving at the U.S. base
on the Pacific island of Tinian, the more than 9,000-pound uranium-235 bomb was
loaded. The plane dropped the bomb—known as “Little Boy”—by parachute at 8:15 in
the morning, and it exploded 2,000 feet above Hiroshima in a blast equal to 12-15,000
tons of TNT, destroying five square miles of the city. Hiroshima’s devastation failed to
elicit immediate Japanese surrender, however, and on August 9 Major Charles Sweeney
flew another B-29 bomber, to a secondary target, Nagasaki, where the plutonium bomb
“Fat Man” was dropped at 11:02 that morning. More powerful than the one used at
Hiroshima, the bomb weighed nearly 10,000 pounds and was built to produce a 22-kiloton
blast. The topography of Nagasaki, which was nestled in narrow valleys between
mountains, reduced the bomb’s effect, limiting the destruction to 2.6 square miles.
What caused the bombings?:
It was suggested that it was
necessary to drop the bomb
on Japan in order to bring
about a speedy conclusion to
world war 2 and save lives.
Even today many people
genuinely believe that the
bomb was necessary to bring
about a Japanese surrender
and to avoid the need for an
invasion of Japan by the US,
which might have cost
hundreds of thousands of
lives.
What effect did this have on human life?
• Though exposure to radiation can cause acute, near-immediate effect by killing cells and
directly damaging tissue, radiation can also have effects that happen on longer scale,
such as cancer, by causing mutations in the DNA of living cells. Mutations can occur
spontaneously, but a mutagen like radiation increases the likelihood of a mutation taking
place. In theory, ionizing radiation can deposit bond-breaking energy, which damage
DNA, thus altering genes. In response, a cell will either repair the gene, die, or retain the
mutation. for a mutation to cause cancer, it is believed that a series of mutations must
accumulate in a given cell and its progeny. Among the long-term effects suffered by
atomic bomb survivors, the deadliest was leukemia. An increase in leukemia appeared
about two years after the attacks and peaked around four to six years later. Children
represent the population that was affected most severely. For all other cancers, incidence
increase did not appear until around ten years after the attacks. Nearly seventy years
after the bombings occurred, most of the generation that was alive during the attack has
passed away.
What state is Hiroshima and Nagasaki in
today?
What countries use nuclear weaponds
today?
• Russia - 6,255 nuclear warheads
• United States of America - 5,550 nuclear warheads
• China - 350 nuclear warheads
• France - 290 nuclear warheads
• United Kingdom - 225 nuclear warheads
• Pakistan - 165 nuclear warheads
• India - 156 nuclear warheads
• Israel - 90 nuclear warheads
• North Korea - none, but material to build 40-50 nuclear
warheads
What should we learn from this bombing?
• The Presidency of Harry Truman, Roosevelt’s Vice-President and successor,
will forever be remembered and linked with his decision to drop atomic bombs
on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki due to his fear of Japanese
invasion . Hiroshima and Nagasaki were experiments in a new kind of warfare,
whose full implications were not entirely understood at the time. The bombing
of these cities in August 1945 brought an end to the Second World War, but at a
terrible cost to the Japanese civilian population and signaling the dawn of the
nuclear age. We are morally obligated to take heed of those lessons, for
instance by reminding ourselves how many lives were lost in this attack .The
existence of nuclear weapons, because of their destructive power, makes it
imperative to understand the wrath which they create.

• Margaret Thatcher, the former Prime Minister, of the United Kingdom, once
remarked that “A world without nuclear weapons would be less stable and
more dangerous for all of us.”
What if the fat man (Nagasaki bomb) were
to fall on Trinidad?
What if the little boy (Hiroshima bomb) were
to fall on Trinidad?