'A bright light filled the plane. We turned back to look at Hiroshima. The city was hidden by that awful cloud . . . boiling up, mushrooming.' (www.csi.ad.jp) What could cause such devastation? Fat Man and Little Boy, the bombs that ended World War II and brought the world into the nuclear age.
In September 1940, after the fall of France, Hitler and Mussolini made an alliance with Japan. The Tripartite Pact provided the right of entry of Japanese troops into Indochina. Japan quietly extended her influence in the Pacific, threatening the Burma Road, occupation of French Indochina, and into the Southern Regions, rich in raw materials.
The United States, along with Great Britain and the Netherlands, warned the Japanese against territorial expansion by force. After Japan's occupation of Indochina, President Franklin D. Roosevelt immediately froze Japanese credits in the United States and placed an embargo on war materials to Japan.
This image was selected as a picture of the week o...
The Enola Gay and its crew, who dropped the "Littl...
English: Superfortress B-29 Enola Gay, the aircraf...The Japanese demanded that trade be reestablished between the two countries. The United States responded that trade would begin as before only if the Japanese would support the principle of noninterference in the affairs of other countries.
In November 1941, a special Japanese peace convoy arrived in Washington, D.C. for reaching a peaceful settlement of the trade problem. However, this was only a cover. Japan was planning for a strike against the United States.
Sunday, December 7, 1941, Japan led a sneak attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Japanese planes sank five battle ships and damaged three more, killing twenty-five thousand soldiers, sailors and civilians. The US was out of Pacific naval striking commission for months. This was just one of a series of Japanese offensives planned by Admiral Yamamoto, against the countries in the western and southwestern Pacific region. Japan formally declared war...