This essay is about the Hiroshima.

Essay by hfvira06 October 2003

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At 2:45 A.M. on August 6, 1945, an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, took off from the island of Tinian in the Mariana Islands carrying an atomic bomb. Shortly after 8:15 A.M. from an altitude of about 31,600 feet, the bomb was released over Hiroshima, Japan. It exploded with terrible fury over the center of the city, immediately killing more than eighty thousand people and maiming thousands more. The searing heat that resulted from the explosion set the city afire and utterly destroyed it. Two days later, on August 8, the U.S.S.R. declared war on Japan. On August 9, over Nagasaki, Japan, at about 11:00 A.M. the United States dropped a second atomic bomb, which killed more than forty thousand of the city's inhabitants. The destruction of Hiroshima was a shock to the Japanese, but Russia's declaration of war was devastating. The declaration of war removed all hope of Soviet mediation with the West to end the war.

Moreover, it necessitated that the Kwangtung Army--the force that Japanese extremists were hoping to bring home to face the anticipated Allied invasions--remain in Manchuria to protect the region from Russian invasion. Throughout the day and into the night, the Japanese Supreme War Council met in grim deliberation. At 2:00 A.M. on August 10, the Japanese Prime Minister asked the Emperor to decide Japan's future. Speaking softly, Emperor Hirohito told his ministers that he wished the war brought to an end. That day Japan announced that it would accept the terms of unconditional surrender that the Allies had demanded in the Potsdam declaration.

The dropping of the atomic bomb by the United States was one of the most portentous events in history. Development of the bomb had begun in 1939, after a small group of scientists persuaded the American government that such...