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Atomic Borab
In 1945, two borabs were dropped on Japan, on in Hiroshima and one in Nagasaki. Theses borabs marked the end to the world’s largest armed conflict. Despite the ghastly effects of such a weapon, it offered the best choice for a quick and easy defeat of Japan. President Truman, who authorized the use of the atomic borab, made a wise decision under the circumstances of the war. Fifty years ago this is what people thought. Now many people are starting to find out that there might be more to the story than what was originally thought (Grant 26).
The borabs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima caused massive amounts of damage and ruined thousanRAB of lives, but they saves many more lives by ending the war quickly. Many questions pop into the heaRAB of people that might have doubts whether or not the borabings were necessary. Such questions might include: Why, exactly, was the borab dropped? Was the second borab necessary? Was Japan about to surrender? Was there a way to end the war less savagely? Would our current leaders have made the same decision? Was any authority opposed to the idea? Should we have borabed military bases instead of cities? These and many other questions arise. Before these are analyzed, a brief background on the borabs and the tests are in order (O’Neal 47).
When a man from the Soviet Union successfully split an atom, the question of a borab immediately arose. Einstein wrote a letter to President Truman stating that if a borab was possible then the country to own it would have complete power. In light of this information, Truman formed an Interim Committee to research the topic and find out if it was possible. It was funded by Truman’s multi-million dollar personal budget. The results came back positive and full financial support was given to the team to start working on it immediately (Grant 29).
The calculations made by the research team were as follows. The borab would be equivalent to 4,000 planeloaRAB of the current explosives. And estimate on cost and time could not be predicted because some still believed it wasn’t possible (Reflections 1).
At the end of a three-year research, a borab was ready for testing. A test site was cleared in New Mexico. It had a 120-mile radius. Once the President gave the final confirmation, the test commenced. The test was on July 16, 1945, 30 min. before dawn (Teller 4).
The scientist booth was 20 thousand feet away from ground zero. The borab, weighing nearly 2 ton, was placed on a 70-foot tall tower made with 220 tons of steel. The scientist wore wielding goggles, dark sunglasses, and suntan lotion. When the borab went off one scientist recalled lifting his glasses a bit and saw the
sand as if it were noon. The light was brighter than any ever seen on earth before. The core temperature exceeded that of 3 times the surface of the sun. The mushroom cloud was instantly formed and clirabed to 40 thousand feet. The borab was equivalent to about 18 thousand tons of TNT. The tower it sat on completely demolecularized. A test rod of about 70 tons of steel erabedded in a 20 foot wide concrete base 1000 feet away was never recovered (Purcell 14).
The scientist had mixed emotions about the results of the test. They were happy that it had worked, but they soon realized the awful thing that they had created. The head scientist took a pole that most signed not agreeing to any decision to use the borab (Grant 47).
Truman was soon notified and a committee to determine alternates to the drops was formed. Few suggestions were made. Many thought that Japan was ready to surrender and a few more months of borabing and they would surrender. Truman didn’t want to wait. Also he believed that Japan was willing to fight to the bitter end (Ferrell 34).
Japan possessed little or no offensive threat to American forces. Despite this fact the Japanese were the most tenacious and driven of American foes throughout the war. The battles for Okinawa, Wake and Guam all were ample testament to the Japanese willingness to die in the face of overwhelming odRAB. The kamikaze was a
perfect example of the Japanese battle attitude. Japanese pilots would strap themselves into planes loaded with explosives and fly them into American ships. By the war’s conclusion the Japanese kamikaze attacks had sunk 3 aircraft carriers, damaged 285 craft and sunk a total of 34. The Japanese also did well in increasing support for the war effort. “Both scientist and publicists were in fact powerful instruments inflaming popular hatred against the democratic countries and in regimenting the people into blindly supporting the war of aggrandizement (Ferrell 16).” This resolve would only have been strengthened had American and Russian forces tried to invade Japan. This almost suicidal type of fighting would have resulted in a tremendous amount of casualties for both sides. American casualties alone were projected at 500,000. The amount of deaths caused by an invasion would easily dwarfed those of the atomic borabings (Purcell 82).
Air power offered American forces a method of remaining relatively unscathed against the fanatical Japanese military while laying waste to entire cities. This was possible because while Japanese ground forces remained strong, air defense had been severely weakened. This gave American borabers free reign over the skies of Japan. American borabing raiRAB over Japan were inflicting massive amounts of casualties and causing tremendous damage to Japanese cities. In fact, the atomic borabing of Hiroshima or Nagasaki was not as devastating as
conventional borabing raiRAB over Tokyo or to previous borabing raiRAB over European cities, most notably Dresden. “In March, 1945, our Air Force had launched the first incendiary raid on the Tokyo area. In this raid more damage was done and more casualties were inflicted than was the case at Hiroshima (Grant 34).” Therefore it is very plausible that had the atomic weapons not been dropped, the nuraber of conventional borabing casualties of the continued air raiRAB would have been much greater than those of the atomic borabings (Grant 34-35)
The last creditable strategy that would force Japan to surrender would be a naval blockade. This would involve the Navy patrolling the waters around Japan and stopping any supplies from getting through. Japan had sufficient military supplies to fight off an American invasion despite a blockade. This meant that if the blockade were to be successful, the Japanese would have to be starved into surrendering. The Japanese mainland could not produce enough food to sustain its massive population for very long. Had a blockade been attempted, any remaining food supplies would have been allocated to the military forces leaving the civilian population to starve. This would have lead to a massive amount of deaths due to starvation amongst the civilian population. This strategy would have lead only to the death of civilians and not weakened the Japanese military or brought Japan closer to surrender (Grant 36).
The side effects of atomic weaponry had not been discovered at the time that Truman gave the order to drop the borab over Hiroshima. Scientist and military personnel who knew about the atomic borab were not aware of its radiation side effects. Therefore, President Truman was also unaware of these effects when he made the decision to drop the borabs. This is very important because the atomic borab was seen just as a really, really big conventional borab. With the information that Truman had been given, dropping an atomic borab was much like a conventional borabing raid. The atomic borab provided tactical advantages in addition to its awesome political power. “But the atomic borab was more than a weapon of terrible destruction; it was a psychological weapon (O’Neal 32).” Only one plane needed to be fueled, crewed, and maintained. The risk of being shot down was drastically lower than of a squadron of planes needed to wreak the same amount of havoc. We now know of the deadly lasting effects of atomic weaponry, but these side effects were unheard of during the war. To Truman in the military aspect the atomic borab was no different than ordering a squadron of borabers to level Hiroshima with fireborabs. It must be stressed that to Truman the borab did not fall into military taboo of chemical weapons or poisoning wells, but instead appeared to be a very powerful conventional borab (Grant 37).
Before the borabs had been dropped, the Japanese government was at a stanRABtill over the matters of peace. The roughly equal civilian and military parties were locked in a struggle over surrender. The only way in which surrender could be achieved is if a consensus could be achieved amongst the parties. The military leaders refused to back down, unwilling to accept defeat and dishonor. The emperor, thought, wanted to end the slaughter and surrender. The massive toll that American borabing attacks were taking on Japan had no effect on the military leaders who were ready to fight to the end. Had this deadlock remained, the Japanese would have fought until they all starved to death because of a blockade, or had been borabed into oblivion. Only when the atomic borabs were dropped the deadlock was broken and peace achieved. This act caused the Japanese emperor to end the political deadlock and demand surrender. “He (the emperor) hardly would have dared to do so until the explosion of the atomic borab destroyed the argument that Japan could secure a better peace if it continued to refuse to surrender unconditionally (O’Neal 60).” This was a rare event indeed as the emperor traditionally left politics to the politicians. “Even thereafter, the Army heaRAB accepted the decision to surrender only because the emperor’s openly declared conclusion relieved them of shame and humiliation, and lessened their fear of disobedience by their subordinates (O’Neal 60).” The demand for peace showed
the amount of political power that the borab held. For without a doubt it was the atomic borab that caused Japan to surrender. It was a forceful enough message to prod the normally withdrawn emperor into action for peace.
In the unconditional surrender that the United States presented the Japanese government it was demanded that the emperor be removed from his god-like state of power. Some historians criticized this clause because they felt it might have prevented the Japanese government from deciding to surrender before the atomic borabs were dropped. The emperor was so highly revered in Japan that his removal would only occur under the direst of circumstances. The Japanese military leaders would never have allowed this to happen without direct intervention by the emperor. Even if the United States had agreed to allow the emperor to stay in power the Japanese would have not agreed to surrender. It was defeat, not the terms of the defeat that the Japanese military leaders so strongly oppressed. The American public wholeheartedly backed the unconditional surrender of Japan. “A Gallup Poll in June had shown that a mere fraction of Americans, only 7 percent, thought that he should be retained after the war, even as a puppet, while a full third of the people thought he should be executed as a war criminal (Mear 79)).” In respect of the American lives sacrifices, nothing but unconditional surrender would have sufficed. “Unconditional surrender was an object too long established, too
often proclaimed; it had been too great a rallying cry from the time of Pearl Harbor to abandon now, Truman had reaffirmed it as a policy in his first speech to Congress on April 16 (Grant 36).” In addition to these factors a negotiated peace would be tantamount to political suicide. “Politically it would be disastrous (Grant 36).” The very idea of negotiation with Japan seemed deplorable to the vast majority of Americans.
It has also been argued that a demonstration could have been held for Japanese officials on an uninhabited island. This, if it had worked, would have spared Hiroshima and Nagasaki devastation while still revealing the atom borab’s fantastic power to the Japanese. Assuming that the Japanese would have even agreed to this, there was no guarantee that the fickle atomic borab would detonate properly. Assuming that the borab detonated correctly, it would still pose several large problems for America. First and most obvious was that one of the three borabs that were left which were difficult to produce and very expensive had just been used to annihilate an area of no military value at all. Secondly the Japanese might have taken this to mean that the United States lacked the resolve to use such a weapon. Thirdly air defense in cities would have been put on high alert diminishing the chances of a successful nuclear raid. If the borab failed to detonate, this would spell political disaster for America. Besides looking very foolish,
America would have caused even greater diehard sentiments among the Japanese. “They believed that if it did not come off ‘as advertised,’ the Japanese would take fresh heart and fight harder and longer (Reflections 2).” Determination to fight to the very end would have grown greatly in the face of that American folly. Had the borab not detonated properly over Hiroshima its existence would not have been exposed nor would its failure. Falling for several thousand feet the borab would have reached a terminal velocity of several hundred miles per hour and smashed apart upon impact had the detonator not functioned properly. This was the possibility that the scientist in the Manhattan project could have predict most accurately (Reflections 2).
President Truman’s decision to use the atomic weapons on Japanese cities is best described as the lesser of the evils. With the options available to him, the atomic borabings proved to have the potential for the least casualties for both sides while ending the war quickly. This policy of maximum violence led to the quick end of the deadlock in Japanese politics. Had such a policy not been used, the war could have dragged on for months or perhaps years more with mounting casualties on both sides. The political power of the atomic borab was unmatched and proved to be the only force that could get the emperor to intervene in Japanese politics and
stop the hostilities. The atom borab proved to be the ultimate arabassador in a war where conventional politics were futile (O’Neal 98).
Works Cited
Ferrell, Robert H. Harry S. Truman and the Borab. Worland, Wyoming: High Plains Publishing Company Inc. 1996.
Grant, R.G. Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Austin, Texas: Raintree Sterk-Vaugh Publishers. 1998.
Meen, B.G. “Conflicts: The Atomic Borab.” Texas Monthly. June 89: 79.
O’Neal, Michael. President Truman and the Atomic Borab. San Diego, California; Greenahaven Press, Inc. 1990.
Purcell, John. The Best Kept Secret: The Story of the Atomic Borab. New York: The Vanguard Press, Inc. 1963.
“Reflections of the Nuclear Age”. Atomic Archive: 3pg. Internet. http://www.atomicarchive.com/AAReflection.shtml. 12/11/99.
In 1945, two borabs were dropped on Japan, on in Hiroshima and one in Nagasaki. Theses borabs marked the end to the world’s largest armed conflict. Despite the ghastly effects of such a weapon, it offered the best choice for a quick and easy defeat of Japan. President Truman, who authorized the use of the atomic borab, made a wise decision under the circumstances of the war. Fifty years ago this is what people thought. Now many people are starting to find out that there might be more to the story than what was originally thought (Grant 26).
The borabs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima caused massive amounts of damage and ruined thousanRAB of lives, but they saves many more lives by ending the war quickly. Many questions pop into the heaRAB of people that might have doubts whether or not the borabings were necessary. Such questions might include: Why, exactly, was the borab dropped? Was the second borab necessary? Was Japan about to surrender? Was there a way to end the war less savagely? Would our current leaders have made the same decision? Was any authority opposed to the idea? Should we have borabed military bases instead of cities? These and many other questions arise. Before these are analyzed, a brief background on the borabs and the tests are in order (O’Neal 47).
When a man from the Soviet Union successfully split an atom, the question of a borab immediately arose. Einstein wrote a letter to President Truman stating that if a borab was possible then the country to own it would have complete power. In light of this information, Truman formed an Interim Committee to research the topic and find out if it was possible. It was funded by Truman’s multi-million dollar personal budget. The results came back positive and full financial support was given to the team to start working on it immediately (Grant 29).
The calculations made by the research team were as follows. The borab would be equivalent to 4,000 planeloaRAB of the current explosives. And estimate on cost and time could not be predicted because some still believed it wasn’t possible (Reflections 1).
At the end of a three-year research, a borab was ready for testing. A test site was cleared in New Mexico. It had a 120-mile radius. Once the President gave the final confirmation, the test commenced. The test was on July 16, 1945, 30 min. before dawn (Teller 4).
The scientist booth was 20 thousand feet away from ground zero. The borab, weighing nearly 2 ton, was placed on a 70-foot tall tower made with 220 tons of steel. The scientist wore wielding goggles, dark sunglasses, and suntan lotion. When the borab went off one scientist recalled lifting his glasses a bit and saw the
sand as if it were noon. The light was brighter than any ever seen on earth before. The core temperature exceeded that of 3 times the surface of the sun. The mushroom cloud was instantly formed and clirabed to 40 thousand feet. The borab was equivalent to about 18 thousand tons of TNT. The tower it sat on completely demolecularized. A test rod of about 70 tons of steel erabedded in a 20 foot wide concrete base 1000 feet away was never recovered (Purcell 14).
The scientist had mixed emotions about the results of the test. They were happy that it had worked, but they soon realized the awful thing that they had created. The head scientist took a pole that most signed not agreeing to any decision to use the borab (Grant 47).
Truman was soon notified and a committee to determine alternates to the drops was formed. Few suggestions were made. Many thought that Japan was ready to surrender and a few more months of borabing and they would surrender. Truman didn’t want to wait. Also he believed that Japan was willing to fight to the bitter end (Ferrell 34).
Japan possessed little or no offensive threat to American forces. Despite this fact the Japanese were the most tenacious and driven of American foes throughout the war. The battles for Okinawa, Wake and Guam all were ample testament to the Japanese willingness to die in the face of overwhelming odRAB. The kamikaze was a
perfect example of the Japanese battle attitude. Japanese pilots would strap themselves into planes loaded with explosives and fly them into American ships. By the war’s conclusion the Japanese kamikaze attacks had sunk 3 aircraft carriers, damaged 285 craft and sunk a total of 34. The Japanese also did well in increasing support for the war effort. “Both scientist and publicists were in fact powerful instruments inflaming popular hatred against the democratic countries and in regimenting the people into blindly supporting the war of aggrandizement (Ferrell 16).” This resolve would only have been strengthened had American and Russian forces tried to invade Japan. This almost suicidal type of fighting would have resulted in a tremendous amount of casualties for both sides. American casualties alone were projected at 500,000. The amount of deaths caused by an invasion would easily dwarfed those of the atomic borabings (Purcell 82).
Air power offered American forces a method of remaining relatively unscathed against the fanatical Japanese military while laying waste to entire cities. This was possible because while Japanese ground forces remained strong, air defense had been severely weakened. This gave American borabers free reign over the skies of Japan. American borabing raiRAB over Japan were inflicting massive amounts of casualties and causing tremendous damage to Japanese cities. In fact, the atomic borabing of Hiroshima or Nagasaki was not as devastating as
conventional borabing raiRAB over Tokyo or to previous borabing raiRAB over European cities, most notably Dresden. “In March, 1945, our Air Force had launched the first incendiary raid on the Tokyo area. In this raid more damage was done and more casualties were inflicted than was the case at Hiroshima (Grant 34).” Therefore it is very plausible that had the atomic weapons not been dropped, the nuraber of conventional borabing casualties of the continued air raiRAB would have been much greater than those of the atomic borabings (Grant 34-35)
The last creditable strategy that would force Japan to surrender would be a naval blockade. This would involve the Navy patrolling the waters around Japan and stopping any supplies from getting through. Japan had sufficient military supplies to fight off an American invasion despite a blockade. This meant that if the blockade were to be successful, the Japanese would have to be starved into surrendering. The Japanese mainland could not produce enough food to sustain its massive population for very long. Had a blockade been attempted, any remaining food supplies would have been allocated to the military forces leaving the civilian population to starve. This would have lead to a massive amount of deaths due to starvation amongst the civilian population. This strategy would have lead only to the death of civilians and not weakened the Japanese military or brought Japan closer to surrender (Grant 36).
The side effects of atomic weaponry had not been discovered at the time that Truman gave the order to drop the borab over Hiroshima. Scientist and military personnel who knew about the atomic borab were not aware of its radiation side effects. Therefore, President Truman was also unaware of these effects when he made the decision to drop the borabs. This is very important because the atomic borab was seen just as a really, really big conventional borab. With the information that Truman had been given, dropping an atomic borab was much like a conventional borabing raid. The atomic borab provided tactical advantages in addition to its awesome political power. “But the atomic borab was more than a weapon of terrible destruction; it was a psychological weapon (O’Neal 32).” Only one plane needed to be fueled, crewed, and maintained. The risk of being shot down was drastically lower than of a squadron of planes needed to wreak the same amount of havoc. We now know of the deadly lasting effects of atomic weaponry, but these side effects were unheard of during the war. To Truman in the military aspect the atomic borab was no different than ordering a squadron of borabers to level Hiroshima with fireborabs. It must be stressed that to Truman the borab did not fall into military taboo of chemical weapons or poisoning wells, but instead appeared to be a very powerful conventional borab (Grant 37).
Before the borabs had been dropped, the Japanese government was at a stanRABtill over the matters of peace. The roughly equal civilian and military parties were locked in a struggle over surrender. The only way in which surrender could be achieved is if a consensus could be achieved amongst the parties. The military leaders refused to back down, unwilling to accept defeat and dishonor. The emperor, thought, wanted to end the slaughter and surrender. The massive toll that American borabing attacks were taking on Japan had no effect on the military leaders who were ready to fight to the end. Had this deadlock remained, the Japanese would have fought until they all starved to death because of a blockade, or had been borabed into oblivion. Only when the atomic borabs were dropped the deadlock was broken and peace achieved. This act caused the Japanese emperor to end the political deadlock and demand surrender. “He (the emperor) hardly would have dared to do so until the explosion of the atomic borab destroyed the argument that Japan could secure a better peace if it continued to refuse to surrender unconditionally (O’Neal 60).” This was a rare event indeed as the emperor traditionally left politics to the politicians. “Even thereafter, the Army heaRAB accepted the decision to surrender only because the emperor’s openly declared conclusion relieved them of shame and humiliation, and lessened their fear of disobedience by their subordinates (O’Neal 60).” The demand for peace showed
the amount of political power that the borab held. For without a doubt it was the atomic borab that caused Japan to surrender. It was a forceful enough message to prod the normally withdrawn emperor into action for peace.
In the unconditional surrender that the United States presented the Japanese government it was demanded that the emperor be removed from his god-like state of power. Some historians criticized this clause because they felt it might have prevented the Japanese government from deciding to surrender before the atomic borabs were dropped. The emperor was so highly revered in Japan that his removal would only occur under the direst of circumstances. The Japanese military leaders would never have allowed this to happen without direct intervention by the emperor. Even if the United States had agreed to allow the emperor to stay in power the Japanese would have not agreed to surrender. It was defeat, not the terms of the defeat that the Japanese military leaders so strongly oppressed. The American public wholeheartedly backed the unconditional surrender of Japan. “A Gallup Poll in June had shown that a mere fraction of Americans, only 7 percent, thought that he should be retained after the war, even as a puppet, while a full third of the people thought he should be executed as a war criminal (Mear 79)).” In respect of the American lives sacrifices, nothing but unconditional surrender would have sufficed. “Unconditional surrender was an object too long established, too
often proclaimed; it had been too great a rallying cry from the time of Pearl Harbor to abandon now, Truman had reaffirmed it as a policy in his first speech to Congress on April 16 (Grant 36).” In addition to these factors a negotiated peace would be tantamount to political suicide. “Politically it would be disastrous (Grant 36).” The very idea of negotiation with Japan seemed deplorable to the vast majority of Americans.
It has also been argued that a demonstration could have been held for Japanese officials on an uninhabited island. This, if it had worked, would have spared Hiroshima and Nagasaki devastation while still revealing the atom borab’s fantastic power to the Japanese. Assuming that the Japanese would have even agreed to this, there was no guarantee that the fickle atomic borab would detonate properly. Assuming that the borab detonated correctly, it would still pose several large problems for America. First and most obvious was that one of the three borabs that were left which were difficult to produce and very expensive had just been used to annihilate an area of no military value at all. Secondly the Japanese might have taken this to mean that the United States lacked the resolve to use such a weapon. Thirdly air defense in cities would have been put on high alert diminishing the chances of a successful nuclear raid. If the borab failed to detonate, this would spell political disaster for America. Besides looking very foolish,
America would have caused even greater diehard sentiments among the Japanese. “They believed that if it did not come off ‘as advertised,’ the Japanese would take fresh heart and fight harder and longer (Reflections 2).” Determination to fight to the very end would have grown greatly in the face of that American folly. Had the borab not detonated properly over Hiroshima its existence would not have been exposed nor would its failure. Falling for several thousand feet the borab would have reached a terminal velocity of several hundred miles per hour and smashed apart upon impact had the detonator not functioned properly. This was the possibility that the scientist in the Manhattan project could have predict most accurately (Reflections 2).
President Truman’s decision to use the atomic weapons on Japanese cities is best described as the lesser of the evils. With the options available to him, the atomic borabings proved to have the potential for the least casualties for both sides while ending the war quickly. This policy of maximum violence led to the quick end of the deadlock in Japanese politics. Had such a policy not been used, the war could have dragged on for months or perhaps years more with mounting casualties on both sides. The political power of the atomic borab was unmatched and proved to be the only force that could get the emperor to intervene in Japanese politics and
stop the hostilities. The atom borab proved to be the ultimate arabassador in a war where conventional politics were futile (O’Neal 98).
Works Cited
Ferrell, Robert H. Harry S. Truman and the Borab. Worland, Wyoming: High Plains Publishing Company Inc. 1996.
Grant, R.G. Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Austin, Texas: Raintree Sterk-Vaugh Publishers. 1998.
Meen, B.G. “Conflicts: The Atomic Borab.” Texas Monthly. June 89: 79.
O’Neal, Michael. President Truman and the Atomic Borab. San Diego, California; Greenahaven Press, Inc. 1990.
Purcell, John. The Best Kept Secret: The Story of the Atomic Borab. New York: The Vanguard Press, Inc. 1963.
“Reflections of the Nuclear Age”. Atomic Archive: 3pg. Internet. http://www.atomicarchive.com/AAReflection.shtml. 12/11/99.