Paul Tibbets: The Little Boy And Fat Man

The United States dropped their first atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945. The explosion was tragic, “90 percent of the city was wiped out and immediately killed 80,000 people; tens and thousand more would later die to radiation exposure” (Lemay and Paul). Innocent children and citizens would die.

“The city was hidden by that awful cloud . . . boiling up, mushrooming, terrible and incredibly tall," said Colonel Paul Tibbets, pilot of the modified B-29 bomber that dropped the world’s first atomic bomb over Hiroshima. The bombings resulted in the death of thousands, including not only Japanese citizens, forces, and military but also American captive soldiers. In the midst of World War II the United States forced Japan to surrender by dropping bombs in the major cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They released the second atomic bomb shortly after, in Nagasaki, Japan.

within a two-mile radius of the center of the blast resulted in miscarriage or stillbirth

The casualties due to the atomic bomb launched by the United States in 1945 were recorded at a horrifying high body count in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. The atomic bomb that hit Hiroshima was known as “Little Boy” and the one that struck Nagasaki was known as “Fat Man.” Several dozens of thousands of people died from these two carcinogenic, lethal bombs.

First, the bombs had a huge effect on the Japanese people, the countries that surrounded Japan such as Korea, and World War Two as a whole. The two bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Little Boy and Fat Man, killed at least 129,000 people in total. It ended up causing other issues, such as child birth defects and a boost in illness. In the year following the bombs dropped, 1946, there were an astounding 1900 deaths from cancer. This is said to come from the bombs radiation fallout. One good result that came from all the tragedy of the war, is that Japan ended up surrendering to the Allies. This was around the same time that Germany surrendered, so the allies took the win.

The first bomb in Hiroshima killed 140,000 people by the end of 1945. The explosion its self killed 80,000 people instantly. The other major toll the bomb took on the city was the fact that it had killed 60,000 people in the next five years due to sickness from radiation from the bomb. The second bomb Fat Man killed 70,000 people by the end of 1945. Fat man killed 39,000 people instantly but left 25,000 people injured from the blast. If people who had cancer from the radiation that adds close to another 100,000 people who died from the second bombs. In the next five years 140,000 people died from sickness due to the bomb. In total in the five years after the bombs exploded 210,000 people died from effects from the bomb.

When the Atomic Bomb exploded over the city of Hiroshima, the people who experienced it were not expecting it to occur the way it did. We were given an insight of the lives of several characters on that fateful morning in August in 1945. Neighboring towns had all been bombarded by American B-29 raids, but so far Hiroshima had been spared and rumors spread that “something special” was in store for them. Every plane that flew overhead was a considered a threat and would set off the air raid warning, consequently that morning people even though the siren sounded earlier people were either going about their everyday routines or preparing for the worst. The people of Hiroshima were completely confused when the atomic bomb was dropped over their city because they were all expecting a warning of some kind, either from the U.S or the air-raid sirens but there was nothing heard before the bomb was dropped. Hersey describes it as a “noiseless flash,” which conjures the image of silence and a startlingly bright light as total buildings were decimated. With the dropping of the Atomic Bomb over Hiroshima, we ushered in a new age of

The bomb also destroyed buildings. Kids and adults were killed and had radiation poisoning if they were not killed by the initial blast.. “Children in bicycles screamed as they were blinded by the flash of the fireball and an instant later their skin was charred”( Knoll and Postol 19). This shows that innocent people are in danger of the effects of the atomic bomb.

Over the next four to six months the effects of the atomic bombing killed 90,000 to 146,000 people in Hiroshima and 39,000 in Nagasaki.

During the summer of 1944, Tibbets received a strange phone call telling him to report right away to Ent’s office in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He was interrogated until it was decided that he could be briefed on his new mission, to drop an atomic bomb. He learned the basics of how the bomb would work and approximately how powerful the explosion would be. It was his job to devise a plan to fly over enemy territory, release the bomb on target, and put enough distance between the plane and the site so the explosion would not kill everyone on the plane. He selected a base in Wendover, Utah as his training site, and he hand-picked a crew of men he had flown with before. Tibbets once said, “At the age of twenty-nine, I had been entrusted with the successful delivery of the most frightful weapon ever devised. Although the weapon was beyond my comprehension, there was nothing about flying an airplane that I did not understand. If the bomb could be carried in an airplane, I could do the job.” On August 5, the bomb, codenamed Little Boy was loaded into Tibbets’ plane, the Enola Gay, and at 8:30 a.m. he decided to drop the bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The crew successfully detonated the bomb, but they were in utter disbelief when they saw what they had done to the city; the only thing that was visible was an enormous mushroom cloud of smoke where a busy city had been only minutes

“President Harry Truman gave permission to drop the atomic bomb on Japan August 5,1945.” as stated by biography.com. At 2:45 pm on August 6th the Enola Gay, named after Paul's mom, and its 12 man crew were lifting off North Field en route to Hiroshima. At 8:15 am on August 7, local time, the world's first atomic bomb used in war exploded. The blast killed 80,000 people and wounded nearly as many as it obliterated the entire city in seconds. The course of history and warfare was changed forever.

The dropping of the Atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945 and Nagasaki on August 9th, 1945 was the first and last time the weapon has been used to date; the atomic explosions exposed the true potential of nuclear warfare whilst also highlighting the global superiority that America possessed at the conclusion of World War II. On August 6th, 1945 “Little Boy”, a uranium atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in an effort by the United States (U.S.) and backed by the Soviet Union, the British and the Chinese to force a Japanese surrender. However, American intelligence suggested no evidence of Japanese surrender which acted as the catalyst for the second use of a plutonic implosion type bomb, “Fat Man” on Nagasaki on August 9th, 1945. The sheer force of the bombs reportedly killed 66,000 residents in Hiroshima and 39,000 residents in Nagasaki as well as injuring another 94,000 residents suffering symptoms of intense third degree burns.

On August 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb, killing a hundred thousand people in Hiroshima, Japan. In the book Hiroshima John Hersey tells the stories of six atomic bomb survivors from the exact moment to the years following. Reverend Mr. Kiyoshi Tanimoto was a Methodist pastor that on the day of the bombing jumped between two large rocks for protection. He escaped with minimal wounds and went on a search for his family towards the center of the city.

On August 6, 1945, during World War II an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Japan’s Emperor

On the 6th November 1945, a United States bomber flies over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The only cargo aboard that B-29 bomber was an atomic bomb waiting on its target. At 8.15am the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, taking 140,000 lives with it. Most of the 140,000 died instantly, horrifyingly the rest of the innocent civilians that were not in direct contact with the bomb died painful deaths in the four months following. They died from radiation sickness and different types of cancers.