HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI BOMBING Fifty four years ago, the detonation of the first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima (and later on Nagasaki) ushered to the Nuclear Age. It was a moment full of horror, in which the eyes of the whole world were opened to the unimaginable possibility of nuclear holocaust. The experience on what happened to those cities and what is still happening to many of the survivors there, leads to explore what happened to America as a consequence of Hiroshima; both the bomb's existence in the world, and the United States having used it. The dropping of the bomb was born out a complex abundance of military, domestic and diplomatic pressures and concerns. The popular tradition view that dominated the 1950s and 60s, put by President Harry Truman and Secretary of War Henry Stimson, was that the use of the bombs was a solely military action that avoided the loss of as many as a million lives in the upcoming invasion of the Island of Kyushu. But while the attacks brought peace, they were also two of the worst-caused disasters. United States was willing to use nuclear weapons at whatever expense to enemy forces, civilians, infrastructure, or, indeed, the global environment. Many issues have been unresolved and have created a debate on the proliferation and use of the nuclear arms as a result of this. Hiroshima marks a powerful psychological turning point in our attitude toward our own science and technology, because it not only exceeded all previous limits in destruction but had, in effect, declared that there were no limits to destruction. On December 7, 1941 the Japanese attacked the American fleet at Pearl Harbor. Taking the Americans by surprise 19 ships were sunk and about 2,400 American soldiers and sailors were killed. Four years later, on August 6 and August 9, 1945 the Americans would take the Japanese by surprise by destroying the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with two atomic bombs. The at...
