The Manhattan Project – Mass Murder or The Path to World Pea

The straight up facts of the Manhattan Project are well known. The Manhattan Project was the American effort to harness the power of atoms and apply it to a modern war effort, through a chain reaction of Uranium 235 isotopes (and later Plutonium). The Manhattan Project was sprung in October of 1939, after Einstein sent a letter to Roosevelt, outlining the possibility that atoms could be used for excessive amounts of energy, and he further outlined the mention of a bomb. As written by Einstein:

This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable - though much less certain - that extremely powerful bombs of a new type,

Shortly after, on August 14, 1945, Japan finally surrendered, and World War II came to a close. The Manhattan Project was similarly terminated on December 31, 1946. Now, a continuing controversy arises to question the need for the actual use of the atomic weapons without any fair warning. Firstly, the United States was unsure of whether the bombs would be entirely effective, and thus decided against any sort of warning. Truman decided against it. Many argue that Japan would have surrendered of its own accord, at some point in the near future, and thus the actions of the United States were nothing short of war crimes, while President Truman, who was the one who gave the order to bomb Japan, clearly stated that the choice was to save as many lives as possible. He wrote in his diary:

Three days later, the plutonium bomb, Fat Man, was loaded onto another B-29, Bockscar, and was ready to carry out its mission. On this mission, Captain Kermit K. Beahan would be the bombardier. Tibbets decided to saty behind for this mission, perhaps the images of the previous were too painful for him to endure a second time. The primary target, this time, was Kokura. Because of the delay of one of the mission's planes arriving at the rendezvous point too late, the mission was delayed 30 minutes. In those 30 minutes, Kokura's clouds moved in, making it impossible to bomb the city. As such, Kokura would be spared, and it would be the secondary target, Nagasaki, that would face the same fate as Hiroshima.

We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Area, after Noah and his famous Ark. [He recorded that he had instructed Stimson to use the bomb] so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children... He and I are in accord. The target is a purely military one.

After the successful test at Trinity, it was then time to adapt the weapon for a practical use, actually converting it into a bomb. The creation of the “super secret” 509th Composite group, in September 1944, was an effort to allow the weapon to be put into an effective method of offensive assault. Groves saw the need for a dedicated platoon of men that would be trained to drop the bomb on targets in Japan. There could not be a month's worth of time set-up if this bomb was to be effective. Meanwhile, Los Alamos was finalizing the Uranium bomb, "Little Boy," named for its 9000 pound thin-cigar shaped body, and the Plutonium bomb, named "Fat Man" for its large 10, 800 pound egg shaped body.3 The modification of B-29 bombers that could carry the bomb, as well as the training for pilots that may have been involved on this mission, was to take place at Tinian, located in the Marianas Group of islands in the South Pacific. 29-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Tibbets was chosen to assemble and command the operations at Tinian.

Some topics in this essay:
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