On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb in history, pulverizing the Japanese city of Hiroshima and a large part of its population. Three days later, the city of Nagasaki suffered the same fate. The carnage caused by the blast, and even more so by the radiation, hastened Japan’s surrender. The world discovered the full horror of nuclear fire.
In the summer of 1945, while the European front was being liberated from the grip of Nazi Germany and its Italian ally, the Pacific front held by the Japanese was still resisting American attacks. Despite repeated incendiary bombings of cities including Tokyo, Emperor Hirohito intended to lead the Japanese people in the fight to the bitter end.
It was in this context that US President Truman and his military advisors saw the successful test of the first atomic device in the New Mexico desert as a weapon capable of ending the war by causing the “total and complete destruction” of entire cities.
The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki directly and indirectly killed at least 214,000 people.
Manhattan Project
In 1939, several scientists, including Albert Einstein, were concerned about the discovery of uranium fission in Germany and urged the US government to pre-empt the Nazis in developing a super bomb.
It was not until December 1942 that the United States launched the Manhattan Project. With a budget of $2 billion (equivalent to approximately $30.6 billion in 2021), this top-secret, high-priority project, led by American physicist Robert Oppenheimer, aimed to design two types of weapons: one based on plutonium and the other on enriched uranium.
The fruit of these years of research came to fruition on July 16, 1945, in Alamogordo. In the early morning, in the New Mexico desert, the Trinity test took place. Robert Oppenheimer witnessed the first test of an atomic bomb containing plutonium from a bunker located 10 km away from the detonation point. The test exceeded the scientists’ expectations in terms of its power.
The energy generated was equivalent to the explosion of approximately 20,000 tons (20 kt) of TNT. The mushroom cloud rose to an altitude of 12 km, temporarily eclipsing the sun. The shock wave was felt 160 km away.
Long opposed to the use of thermonuclear weapons for military purposes, Robert Oppenheimer eventually saw them as a way to “shorten” the conflict and “spare” the lives of thousands of American soldiers.
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