Can you imagine a device, the size of a small Volkswagen, that could destroy an entire city, kill more than 100,000 people, and leave a location almost inhabitable for 50 years to come? The Hiroshima Bombing, as it is called, happened on August 6th, 1945, and it was when the United States first released a nuclear bomb on one of Japan's cities, Hiroshima. Although there isn't an exact number accounting all deaths caused by the bomb, "Little Boy", estimates show that they rounded to nearly 140,000; mostly civilians. In the end, the bomb did force Japan to surrender, but more specifically, it forced Japan's Emperor to surrender, and that greatly demoralized the people. The deployment of the nuclear bomb showed the power that such an enormous weapon possessed, and set the grounds for future research, that would lead to much of the technology we have today, but it left its scars in the city and the people of Hiroshima until today. The U.S. chose to drop the bomb because they didn't want Americans to die in a land-based invasion. But was the U.S. justified in dropping these bombs? Was it really necessary to kill that many Japanese civilians, or did the US save more American's lives by dropping the bomb? .
The bomb itself, named "Little Boy", was the very first atomic bomb to be used in a populated area ever in history. It fell from the compartments of a B-52 Bomber aircraft, straight down to a few hundred feet over Hiroshima's soil, where it finally exploded off. It produced a cloud of intense heat and fire, which boosted up two miles in the air, and could be seen from 150 miles away. The energy blast generated by the explosion, called an EMP wave, fried every electronic component in a radius of several miles, immediately after the bomb went off. The heat from the blast melted the skin of all living things that were around it, and the blast of radiation caused their bodies to literally fall apart before their eyes.
