The Atomic Bomb in WWII

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Atomic Bomb in World War II

The use of the atomic bomb during the close of the world war two has been a source of much debate and controversy in the past years . The bomb was used to force Japan to surrender . The use of the bomb on Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki resulted in the death immediate of between 100 ,000 and 200 ,000 people and later thousands of others who died from exposure to radioactive particles . Additionally , the bombing had a devastating

effect on the infrastructure in the two cities . Some of the buildings were completely brought down by the impact . Critics of the bombings have questioned the necessity and the justification for their use terming the act as barbaric and morally deficient . Others have argued that the bombings helped in hasting the surrender of Japan and this saved many more casualties of a prolonged war . This examines the motivation and justification as well as the role played by these bombings

History of the Development

The Atomic Bomb was designed and built by scientists from the US as well as some from Europe who has immigrated to the US in search of asylum Albert Einstein wrote to president Franklin Roosevelt in 1939 expressing fears that Germany and perhaps other countries had developed programs to design weapons of a similar nature as the atomic bomb (Wainstock , Dennis D . The US considering the threat of nuclear competition embarked on a comprehensive project named the Manhattan project to design and build an atomic weapon . The United Kingdom and Canada became participants in this project and later jointly issued the Potsdam declaration that called Japan to surrender . The Manhattan Project was headed by General Leslie Groves while the head of research was physicist Robert Oppenheimer

One of the greatest challenges that faced the Manhattan project was how to produce sufficient amounts of enriched Uranium required to uphold an exponentially growing nuclear reaction . These materials were to be amassed into supercritical mass at which point a reaction could be started . The process was an elaborate one that took more than five years to complete and about 2 billion dollars in costs for research and development . This set the project as one of the most costly projects of all times (Falk , Richard A , 3

The Bomb

The Atomic Bomb developed between 1939 and 1945 was the earliest weapon of mass destruction . The bomb had explosive capabilities of more than 500 kilotons of TNT . It is recorded that the bombs dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki utilized only 0 .1 of their explosive potential (Gaddis 54 . In addition to the explosive energy , the atomic bomb explosion released massive amounts of radioactive particles that killed thousands of those who survived the bombings . Other effects were felt by the generations that followed the bombings (Gaddis , 38

The rationale

When the program to develop and build the atomic began the motive was political in nature . Having the atomic would give the US an...