The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima

On August 6, 1945, for the first time ever, a nuclear weapon was used to vaporize a city filled with human beings. Many rationalizations have been made for doing so, but anyone who understands a modicum of American history shouldn’t be surprised at the nation’s willingness to commit such an atrocity.

--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: August 6, 1945--

The simplistic argument has been often presented that the use of the bombs saved lives, and perhaps they did. Many numbers have been thrown around over time, and they’ve grown in the telling. The basic argument is that nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki—and killing a couple hundred thousand people in the process—brought a quick end to World War II, thereby removing the need for an amphibious invasion of the Japanese home islands, which allegedly would have cost significantly higher numbers of American and Japanese lives than were lost via the atomic bombings.

There is some logic to the argument, and the counterclaim that Japan was “ready to surrender anyway” is a subject of debate. Others contend that a naval blockade coupled with continued conventional bombing would have secured an unconditional surrender. Regardless, the decision to use nuclear weaponry on Japanese cities has another component that few know or understand. It involves the former Soviet Union.

The United States and Russia were tenuous allies during WWII due to a common enemy, Germany. Russia was obligated by the 1943 Tehran Conference to enter the war with Japan after Nazi Germany was defeated. Said defeat was accomplished two months before the first atomic weapon was tested at the Trinity site in the New Mexico desert on July 16, 1945. Under the desperate conditions of 1943, the United States welcomed help in defeating Japan, even from the USSR, but seeing that first-ever atomic mushroom cloud created new possibilities: If the United States could use their new fission-kaboom playthings to end the war quickly without Soviet assistance, they could thereby prevent Russia from having postwar influence in how Japan was administered.

There is more. It is likely the United States also wanted to show off her new toys. There was motivation to send a “You guys really need to unconditionally give up” kind of message to Japan, but also important was the need to broadcast to the Soviet Union what the bombs could do.

There were a number of reasons why the target cities were chosen, but an important one for Hiroshima was that it was a “pristine” target; it had not been hit with conventional bombs prior to its August 6, 1945, destruction via the airburst detonation of a 15-kiloton uranium nuclear device nicknamed “Little Boy.” (The 21-kiloton “Fat Man” dropped on Nagasaki three days later was a plutonium weapon.) Choosing Hiroshima meant the United States could both see for themselves and display to Russia the full destructive power of these new weapons as a big “Whaddya think of that, you commie fucks?” As you likely know, Russia thought, Holy Jesus Fuck Farts! We need to have those too!

And so, Soviet agents stole the technology from the Americans a few years later, and the nuclear arms race began.

NOTE: This piece was researched and written by a human, not some bullshit “ai” plagiarism software.

Those who cannot remember the past need a history teacher who says “fuck” a lot. Get both volumes of ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY SH!T WENT DOWN.