The Atomic Bombings of Japan during World War II

At the end of the Second World War United States President Harry S. Truman was desperate for the war to come to a close. It was in this vein that after more than six months of intense bombing during which the Empire of Japan refused to surrender, that he ordered to use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As of today, these are the only atomic weapons to ever have been used on a populace. Many people do not realize that the two attacks were actually three days apart. Hiroshima was bombed first, and the blast is reported to have killed more than one hundred and forty thousand people. The bomb in Nagasaki claimed eighty thousand lives. Most of them died on the day of the bombing, but many others died later due to intense burns, radiation exposure, and other bombing related injuries.
Hiroshima was chosen because of its significance at the time as a minor industrial and military zone. It has also been said that another reason it was given such high priority as a bombing site was that it was without any prisoner of war camps, so there was little chance of collateral damage to U.S. troops who might be in Japanese custody. At the time of the bombing, it is estimated that Hiroshima’s population was around two hundred and fifty-five thousand.
On August 6th, 1945, the crew of the Enola Gay departed from an island roughly six hours away from the blast site. The atomic bomb nicknamed “Little Boy” was released at eight fifteen in the morning, and it detonated over Shima Surgical Clinic with a blast unlike anything the world had ever seen. The thirteen kiloton equivalent of TNT decimated the city in mere moments with a path of complete destruction going out from the radius for close to a mile. The fires that sprang up as a result of the intense heat stretched out from the nucleus with a radius of more than four additional miles. From this it has been estimated that over ninety percent of Hiroshima was either significantly damaged or completely destroyed on that day. It is believed that some of the survivors from this blast may have ended up in Nagasaki where they were immediately bombed again.
After the bombing, Truman declared that if Japan did not surrender to the Allies that they would continue to rain “ruin from the air the likes of which has never been seen on this earth.” However, Emperor Hirohito and the Japanese government decided not to react to the declaration. Originally the plan had been to drop the second bomb on Kokura on August 11th, but due to the predicted onset of bad weather conditions the date was moved up to August 9th. On the day of the bombing, the crew flew to Kokura; however, a large cloud cover kept them from being able to secure a visual target for the bombing. At the last minute as the planes were running low on fuel, Nagasaki was chosen for a bomb site instead.
Nagasaki was most likely chosen as a secondary bomb site because it was an incredibly large and important sea port in the south of Japan. It was considered to be important during wartime because it could produce both ships and other military related materials through the breadth of industrial activity which was capsulated inside the city. It experienced very little of the larger scale bombing raids that had occupied so much of Japan during the end of the war. While the bombing on Nagasaki was not officially designated until the last minutes of that mission, events had taken place which somewhat helped to reduce the number of civilian casualties. This was because the United States had dropped a number of high impact bombs on the city beginning at the first of August. Since the city had not known of an attack before, this concerned them and caused them to take many of the children, sick, and elderly, to be evacuated to more rural areas. Since this occurred just nine days before the atomic blast, many of them were still out of the city area.
On August 9th, 1945, the atomic bomb nicknamed “Fat Man” was released over Nagasaki. At 11:01 a.m. the clouds broke over Nagasaki, allowing them to release the bomb at the last minute. It detonated approximately fifteen hundred feet above the ground near the Mitsubishi Steel plant, more than two miles from the planned drop point. This bomb contained even more firepower than “Little Boy” had and detonated with a force equal to twenty one kilotons of TNT. Official documents have shown that the government of the United States was prepared to continue dropping nuclear bombs over Japan until they either surrendered or an invasion had begun in full.
The display of atomic weaponry by the United States combined with the recent declaration of war on the Japanese by the soviets, forced them to surrender shortly thereafter. On August 14th, Emperor Hirohito addressed the nation of Japan and surrendered. Occupation of Japan began shortly thereafter led by General Douglas MacArthur.
In an attempt to understand the power of the atomic bombs that had been released on Japan, President Truman set up the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC). The purpose of this commission was to establish what kind of long-term effects the radiation from the blasts had on the survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However the ABCC later came under fire as some people claimed that they did not offer medical treatment to some people in order to get better results on their studies of radiation poisoning and its affects. In 1975 the responsibilities that had been established by the ABCC were formerly taken over by the Radiation Effects Research Foundation.
The people who survived the atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki eventually became known as the hibakusha, or “explosion-affected people.” It was through these people’s suffering that the country of Japan began to see the dangers of nuclear weaponry and since then have called for an abolishment of the weapons ever since. There are currently close to two hundred and fifty thousand hibakusha who are formerly recognized by the Japanese government still living, and it is estimated that one percent of these still suffer from illnesses caused by the radiation from the bombings. Memorials in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki hold the names of the victims of the blast and are updated each year on the anniversary of the bombings with the names of those hibakusha who have passed away during the preceding year.
In the years after the bombings it has been found that there were some unintended casualties from the blasts. These include prisoners of war, Korean and Chinese workers, students from other countries, and over three thousand Japanese-American citizens who had returned home. For many years after the bombs, the Koreans who suffered from illnesses could not get their medical expenses covered because they had been denied recognition as hibakusha, or bombing victims, even though it has been estimated that nearly thirty percent of all killed in Hiroshima was of Korean descent. In recent years many of these issues have been addressed through lawsuits and most of the Korean survivors are receiving the benefits and treatment they need.
The decision to drop the atomic bomb is one that still comes under fire from groups who believe that it was an unnecessary display of force on an already weakened country. Some have even gone so far as to call it state sponsored terrorism. While it is not an issue that is likely to be resolved any time soon, many have speculated that if Truman had known about the long-term health affects and utter devastation of the bomb that he may not have been so quick to use it. It is through the examples of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in which many have seen the devastating effects of this type of weapon and vowed never to allow its use again.

What effect did world war II have on the lives of women and african americans?

Many women were able to leave the poorly paid jobs they had been in before the war and take better-paid jobs in defense. As a result, a lot of restaurants and laundries had to close because of lack of help. Peggy Terry, who got a job with her mother and sister at a shell-loading plant in Kentucky said "We made the fabulous sum of thirty-two dollars a week. It was just an absolute miracle. Before that, we made nothing." Although most unmarried women were already working when the war started, a number of college student quit school to join the war effort, and among the other early volunteers were the wives of servicemen. Rose Kaminski of Milwaukee, whose husband served in the navy, got a job as a crane operator at an ordnance plant to move the huge howitzer gun barrels. "Well, I was running one in three days" she recalled much later. "It just came to me, I loved it."The shortage of teachers impelled most school boards to drop their rules against married women, and some actually appealed to married ex-teachers to return. The Office of War Information suggested articles it would like to see in print in newspapers and magazines "stories showing the advent of women in logging camps, on the railroads, riding the ranges, and showing them not as weak sisters but coming through in manly style. For a few women on the home front, the war opened up opportunities that might otherwise have been unimaginable. People started dancing to all-girl bands. The owner of the Chicago Cubs started an All-American Girls league.More than 350,000 women enlisted during the war, mostly in the Women's Army Corps (WAC) and the nursing corps. The Women's Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) was created to free male fliers for service overseas. The 1,000 women who were accepted flew 60 million miles during the war, in every type of plane manufactured by the military.African American women had difficulty breaking into the high-paying defense factory jobs. In 1943, at the height of the labour shortage, the United Auto Workers surveyed 280 factories that employed women workers and found only 74 that were willing to hire an African American. Most employers, when challenged, claimed they could not hire black women because white women refused to work with them. This was often true, though companies that took a firm line and forced their employees to choose between integration and loss of their lucrative jobs generally managed to overcome the problem fairly quickly.It was not until 1944, under heavy pressure from Eleanor Roosevelt, that black women were welcomed into the military. The WAC eventually enlisted 4,000 black recruits. Despite its grave shortage of nurses, the army was reluctant to take black RNs - particularly if they would be treating white soldiers. The corps eventually took 500 and then enraged the black community by assinging some of them to work in prisoner-of-war camps.In civilian live, black women moved into whatever slots white women left. They often took over low-paying jobs like elevator operators and car cleaners on railroads, but whatever the job, they saw it as an improvement over domestic work. "My sister always said that Hitler was the one that got us out of the white folks kitchens" said Tina Hill, a Los Angeles aircraft plant worker.
Source(s):
'America's women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, helpmates and heroines' by Gail Collins

Profound Effect on U.S. Economy Seen in a War on Iraq!

An American attack on Iraq could profoundly affect the American economy, because the United States would have to pay most of the cost and bear the brunt of any oil price shock or other market disruptions, government officials, diplomats and economists say.
Eleven years ago, the Persian Gulf war, fought to roll back Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, cost the United States and its allies $60 billion and helped set off an economic recession caused in part by a spike in oil prices. For that war, the allies picked up almost 80 percent of the bill. Today, however, as the Bush administration works on plans to overthrow Saddam Hussein, the United States is confronting the likelihood that this time around it would have to pick up the tab largely by itself, diplomats said.
Unless the economic outlook brightens, the government could well find itself spending heavily on the military even as the economy recovers falteringly from last year's recession. Senior administration officials said Mr. Bush and his top advisers had not begun to consider the cost of a war because they had yet to decide what kind of military operation might be necessary. Whatever choice is made, experts say, the costs are likely to be significant and therefore may ultimately influence the size, scale and tactics of any military operation.
Already, the federal budget deficit is expanding, meaning that the bill for a war would lead either to more red ink or to cutbacks in domestic programs. If consumer and investor confidence remains fragile, military action could have substantial psychological effects on the financial markets, retail spending, business investment, travel and other key elements of the economy, officials and experts said.
If oil supplies are disrupted, as they were during the 1991 gulf war, and prices rise sharply, the economic effects would be felt in the United States and around the world. All of that could present a complicated political problem for President Bush, both in the Congressional mid-term elections in November and as he manages a war and looks ahead to his re-election campaign in 2004.
"I think a good case can be made that voters will want to understand the case for a war or any kind of extended military action better than they do now because the economic considerations are considerable," said Kim N. Wallace, a political analyst for Lehman Brothers in Washington. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Japan divided the cost of the 1991 war with the United States, but today none has offered to assist with financing a new military campaign. In fact, each has signaled that it is not eager to be asked, diplomats say.
"Just open a map," said a member of the Kuwaiti royal family in close consultation with Washington. "Afghanistan is in turmoil, the Middle East is in flames, and you want to open a third front in the region?" "That would truly turn into a war of civilizations," he added.
If Mr. Bush decides on a large-scale invasion plan for Iraq involving as many as 250,000 troops, as some commanders advocate, the country would face a significant military mobilization and call-up of reserves as early as this fall to be ready for a military campaign early next year.
James R. Schlesinger, a member of the Defense Policy Board that advises the Pentagon who held senior cabinet posts in Republican and Democratic administrations, said he believed that the president would opt for a significant ground presence in Iraq. He said he did not think that fear of economic instability by itself would cause the United States to refrain from trying to unseat the Iraqi leader. "My view is that given all we have said as a leading world power about the necessity of regime change in Iraq," Mr. Schlesinger said, "means that our credibility would be badly damaged if that regime change did not take place."
The Persian Gulf war cost $61.1 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service, of which $48.4 billion was paid by other nations. The House Budget Committee's Democratic staff said that in 2002 dollars, the cost of the war was $79.9 billion, providing a very rough benchmark for what a conflict of similar dimensions might cost today.
Representative John M. Spratt Jr. of South Carolina, the senior Democrat on the House Budget Committee and a member of the Armed Services Committee, said the United States would come up with whatever money was necessary. But he said planning for a war now would have to recognize the nation's deteriorating fiscal condition and the need to address other priorities.
"While it's not beyond our means, we can't have it all," Mr. Spratt said. "Since there is no surplus in the budget from which the cost could be paid, there will be trade-offs, making initiatives like Medicare drug coverage harder to do, and there almost certainly will be deeper deficits and more debt."
James A. Placke, a former senior diplomat specializing in the Persian Gulf and now a senior associate of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, said the market reaction to any invasion of Iraq was at best uncertain. "Given the marked lack of enthusiasm for this venture, I wouldn't think the market reaction would be very good," he said. "When weapons start going off in the Middle East, markets generally go down, gold prices go up, and oil prices shoot to the moon," he added, "and I expect that this is the short-run pattern that we can reasonably anticipate."
The United States is best prepared among the Western powers to withstand fluctuations in oil markets through drawdowns from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which today holds about 580 million barrels of oil. But Richard N. Cooper, a Harvard economist who headed the Central Intelligence Agency's top analytical body during the 1990's, cautioned that "psychological factors come into play" even in the face of prudent preparation.
He pointed out that after Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait in August 1990, oil prices climbed rapidly from a low of $15 a barrel and peaked at $40 in October 1990, although it was well known that the United States would release oil from the strategic reserve. Prices remained high for more than a year in what many experts saw as a tax on worldwide consumers that allowed Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to pay down the American and allied bill for the war.
"I am firmly of the school that the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait precipitated the American recession in 1991," Professor Cooper said, adding that while he generally praised the first President Bush's handling of the war, "the one area of fault was that they dallied on their commitment to release oil supplies from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve."
Last Nov. 13, a month after the United States began bombing Afghanistan to dislodge the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the president's advisers debated whether Iraq should be the focus of phase two of the campaign against terrorism. Mr. Bush directed Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham to add more than 100 million barrels to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Since Jan. 1, oil shipments into the reserve have reached record levels, about 150,000 barrels a day. One oil strategist in London noted that United States government acquisitions for the reserve were accounting for more than half of the growth in demand for oil this year.
With a capacity of 700 million barrels, the reserve could be used to disperse 4.2 million barrels of oil a day to jittery markets — more than enough to make up for the 1 million barrels a day of Iraqi crude lost because of military operations. "What I am hearing from Washington," said Adam Sieminski, an oil markets analyst for Deutsche Bank in London, "is that serious consideration is being given to a coordinated Strategic Petroleum Reserve drawdown by the United States, Germany and Japan if military action takes place because this Bush does not want to make the mistake his father did."
Still, the fear is that Mr. Hussein, who set afire oil fields in Kuwait a decade ago, might strike out with chemical, biological or radiological weapons at Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil producer with the largest capacity to expand its oil production to stabilize oil supplies. "Everybody's nightmare is Saudi Arabia," said an Energy Department oil analyst. "People are deathly afraid of any military campaign spreading to Saudi Arabia." That country contains one half of the spare production capacity in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. .

(Ref. by Global Policy)