The Decision to Drop the Bomb The place is Tinian, an island speck in the South Pacific. At 2:45 a.m. the evening quiet is abruptly interrupted by the roar of a B-29 bomber as it rumbles down the runway and disappears into the night. Special bombing mission # 13 is underway. A single B-29, nicknamed the Enola Gay, embarks upon a mission which will change the course of history. The Enola Gay will drop the first atomic bomb in history.It was a Monday morning in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Families were eating breakfast, children were preparing for school, and work at the factories was about to begin. The distant throb of an airplane engine caused little concern in the city. Japanese children had become accustomed to daily flight by weather and observation planes. At exactly 8:16 a.m., what had been a peaceful Monday morning was suddenly transformed into a nightmare of death and destruction. Over 100,000 Japanese people died as a result of the atomic bomb. This cold statement of fact conveys little real meaning until it is put into the words of school children who survived the atomic bomb. Children who may never see their parents or never be able to enjoy their childhood because they will spent the next couple of years in the hospitals recuperating from third degree burns and when they grow up they will finally realize the harmful effects they have suffered because of the radiation they acquired from the explosion. Their children may be born with cancer themselves and die before they are mature enough to enjoy life to the fullest, they may never have their own kids they may not even fall in love for the first time. As sad as this sounds a man is lucky if he even survives the horrible blast. Most of the innocent civilians were hit with a blast that melted their skin or even killed them instantly. Some jumped into lakes to sooth their burns not knowing that the water was radioactive and it hat reached boiling point.Can such a brutal ...
