Nagasaki’s Bombing Essay Example

Imagine you are going about your morning as you always do, nothing out of the ordinary, you go to take a sip of coffee, and then you see it, a flash of light followed by a loud boom. You feel an immense pain, and then nothing. This was the reality for many people in the city of Nagasaki at 11:02 AM on Thursday, August ninth, 1945. Nagasaki is a large city in Japan, commonly associated with Hiroshima since they both were attacked in WWII by nuclear bombs. The bomb used on Nagasaki was named “Fat Man” and had a blast of approximately 22 kilotons. The attack on Nagasaki would go down in history as only one of two times where a nuclear weapon has been used in war. The bomb was also made from plutonium, and weighed about 5 tons! There were many negative effects created by the bomb's detonation in Nagasaki, its environmental, political, and humanistic impacts are undeniable. Nagasaki’s attack in WWII took a plethora of research and planning, this bomb was the first of it's kind after all.

The bomb used in Nagasaki was not made out of thin air, its creation took extensive research from many people. As explained by Britannica, the development of the bomb took more than 100,000 peoples involvment. Almost all of the people doing research relating to the development of the bomb had no idea that they were part of “The Manhattan Project”. (atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) If people had known that they were participating in this devastating creation they may have had objections. Research on nuclear fission was new at the time and was not understood very well, so it was not known by many just how many deaths they could be a part of causing.

Nagasaki's bombing was very quick, it went from a normal morning to a travesty. The National WWII Museum of New Orleans claims that Nagasaki was not the first choice as a target, it was actually supposed to be Kokura, a city about 100 miles from Nagasaki. Over Kokura there had not been ideal conditions so the second pick (Nagasaki) was used instead. (The Bombing of Nagasaki, August 9, 1945)  Kokura was not visible from the sky the day of the bombing because of fog. Nagasaki contained a large population and materials to make it a worthy target. If Kokura had been hit instead of Nagasaki, countless things could have turned out differently.

There were a few reasons for the United States to bomb Japan. Reasons for the bombings include showing the world that the US is a force to be reckoned with, ending the war, and testing the most powerful weapons we had at the time. Britannica states that when the capabilities of nuclear fission were discovered, there were many ideas of what it could be used for. The United States government decided they wanted to research nuclear fission and discovered that a very large bomb could be created with it. (Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.) Surprisingly, at first they did not plan on using it for war, instead they wanted to use it to create electricity. Nuclear reactions are used today in power plants to create electricity.

Nagasaki’s bombing effectively ended the war, in addition to the bombing of Hiroshima. The National WWII museum claims that the United States was forced into the war, and decided that they wanted to bring it to an end. The US bombed Japan in the two cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (The Bombing of Nagasaki, August 9, 1945) When the United States bombed Nagasaki and Hiroshima, they proved to Japan (and the rest of the world) that they were to be feared in war. At the time, nuclear bombs had not been used before in warfare, and in most countries, had not even been discovered yet. The bombings were also used to show that you cannot do something like attack an American naval base and not see consequences, if we had done nothing about Pearl Harbor the world would view the US much differently.

Luckily, the bombs did not have effects that lasted too long. Nagasaki was rebuilt and is occupied today. Science.org points out that ABCC researchers did not find a massive correlation between the bombing and birth defects of children that were born afterward. (Normile) There were many worries that the bombs may have caused lasting birth defects and that the are would be uninhabitable for many many years, similar to the explosion at Chernobyl. Almost all of the buildings in Nagasaki were completely leveled, though the city was rebuilt.

Ultimately, Nagasaki’s bombing was a terrible event that caused many deaths. Though in the end, some good did come from this, it ended the Second World War! If Nagasaki had not happened, the war could have ended very differently. While it was a travesty, Nagasaki did help the world in some form.

Works Cited

"Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki." Britannica School, Encyclopædia Britannica, 3 May. 2021. school.eb.com/levels/high/article/atomic-bombings-of-Hiroshima-and-Nagasaki /633399. Accessed 20 Apr. 2022.

“The Bombing of Nagasaki, August 9, 1945: The National WWII Museum: New Orleans.” The National WWII Museum | New Orleans, The National World War II Museum, 8 Aug. 2020. nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/bombing-nagasaki-august-9-1945. 

Normile, Dennis. “How Atomic Bomb Survivors Have Transformed Our Understanding of Radiations Impacts.” Science.org, 23 July 2020, science.org/content/article/how-atomic -bomb-survivors-have-transformed-our-understanding-radiation-s-impacts.