The threat of the atomic bomb has been around for a long time.  Everyone knows something about the bomb and the potential it has.  But many things are not commonly known about the science, people, and reasons behind the atomic bomb itself.  It is for this reason that I will take you back in time to see how it all happened.

It all started in Germany, in 1938, when two men named Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann discovered fission.  To explain this properly, I need to remind you of what you learned in chemistry.  An atom is made up of three different things, protons, neutrons, and electrons.  The protons and neutrons make up the center of the atom while the electron circles them.  Fission is when a lone neutron is fired at high speed into another element and splits the element into two pieces.  A lot of energy is released by this “atom breaking” and also a few other neutrons.  Those neutrons hit other atoms and split them, thus, you have a chain reaction until all of your element is “fissioned.”  Altogether this releases a massive amount of energy, which can be channeled into a power source or an explosion.
A bit before and during the time fission was being discovered, Hitler came to power in Germany and began implementing new laws against non-Aryans.  Many prominent scientists left Germany in fear of their lives because of these laws.  One of these was Leo Szilard.  He feared the power of German science, because while many scientists had fled, others stayed loyal to Hitler.  He began to lobby the US government to start a nuclear research program of its own.  He had very little success until he decided to enlist the help of one of his old friends and the most famous scientists in the world, Albert Einstein.  Einstein agreed to help Szilard to get through to the United States, so he wrote a note to President Franklin Roosevelt to encourage him to start a nuclear program.  The President took this into careful consideration and decided that a nuclear project would be a wise idea.  It was not a large or well funded project, but it was a start.  Later, Einstein regretted his part in the project saying, “I made one great mistake in my life-----when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that an atomic bomb be made .” 

Then, in November of 1940, $40,000 was given to an Italian scientist, Enrico Fermi, in order to conduct an experiment to see if controlled fission was possible.  That meant that the experiment would attempt to limit the number of neutrons coming off of atoms, thereby limiting the amount of fission taking place.  If it worked it would give rise to the atomic bomb.  The experiment began on December 2, 1942, almost a year after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.  The main part of the experiment was a 500 ton pile of graphite bricks, stacked 57 layers high.   Implanted in the graphite were blocks of uranium and uranium oxide which emitted neutrons.  The graphite slowed the neutrons and cadmium, which was put onto rods, absorbed them.  When the cadmium rods were slowly pulled out, less neutrons were absorbed, making more reactions.  If the rods were put back in, they would absorb more neutrons and so less reactions would take place.

Two emergency measures were implemented to keep the pile from over-reacting and blowing up.  The first was an extra cadmium rod that could be dropped into the pile, and the second was the “suicide squad,” three men that stood above the pile holding buckets of cadmium salt, ready to dump it on the pile.  The system was a success.  Fission could be contained.  So, the next step in nuclear weapons was taken.

The nuclear project President Roosevelt started in 1939 was nicknamed the Manhattan Project and was top secret.  It was headed by General Leslie R. Groves who had just overseen the building of the Pentagon.  The head scientist was J. Robert Oppenheimer.

So, the atomic race began.  The majority of the people involved in the Manhattan Project were pretty sure that Germany was at least even with the United States in nuclear development, if not ahead.  As Leo Szilard said, “… we were motivated to produce the bomb because we feared the Germans would get ahead of us and the only way to prevent them from dropping bombs on us was to have bombs in readiness ourselves.”   Everyone knew that if Hitler had atomic weapons he would have absolutely no qualms about using them.  In fact, the fear that Hitler had atomic bombs was so great that on D-day, some American officers had Geiger Counters, devices used to measure radioactivity, with them.  Fortunately, Hitler did not have any bombs.  No one was exactly sure why Germany’s bomb program failed, but one can make a pretty good guess.  In my opinion, it was the fact that so many scientists fled when Hitler came to power. As for the other Axis power, Japan, they had no resources to compete in the race at all.

After hiring people to run the project, next came the need to find a location, or rather, several locations.  Multiple places were needed for the production of a bomb.  For instance, a site was needed to produce useable uranium, another site to produce useable plutonium, an additional site was needed for the building of the bomb, and so on.  All that land had to meet certain specifications: it had to be isolated, warm enough for the employees to work outdoors all year round, have trouble-free access to trains and highways, and have a large enough space to test the weapon.
The unfortunate part of buying all this land meant that a lot of people had to move.  A farmer described it this way, “… one day a man came to our house and said he was from the Government.  ‘We’re going to buy up your land,’ he said to me.  ‘All of it?’  I asked.  ‘Yes sir,’ he said, ‘we’re going to buy all the land in this section.  Everyone has to go.’”   Since the Manhattan Project was such a secretive deal, no evicted person knew why they were being kicked out.

After finding locations, one of them had to be chosen as a central laboratory.  The “perfect place” was in the middle of New Mexico near Los Alamos Ranch School.  The lab was officially named “Site Y” but the residents all just called it “The Hill.”   It was here that the major design and construction of the two atomic bombs, “Fat Man” and “Little Boy” would be done.  The Government spent $440,000 dollars on 9,000 acres of land to put the facility on.
I’ll use the city of Oak Ridge as an example to show you what it was like living in the Manhattan Project cities.  Oak Ridge was in Tennessee and produced the uranium needed for the project.  The first building stage had plans for a city that could hold 12,000 people.  The next building stage, which occurred in 1943, grew the city to 42,000 people.  A year later the population was 66,000, and by the time the bombs fell on Japan, it was at 75,000.  It was the fifth largest city in Tennessee although very few people actually knew about it. 

Oak Ridge had 22 separate church congregations and 165 businesses, which included 13 groceries, nine drugstores, seven movie theaters, a department store and 17 restaurants.  There were also 400 civilian policeman, 740 military policeman, and 4,900 civilian guards.   Every house had a picture window in the living room, a fireplace, hardwood floors, a refrigerator, and a coal furnace.  There were seven different kinds of houses labeled A through H skipping E.  A and B houses were small houses with only two bedrooms.  C houses had three bedrooms; D houses had a separate dining room, and F, G, and H houses were built later on for top level officers.  Housing arrangements were similar in other cities as well.

Of course, even with a city as developed as that, there were plenty of things that could go wrong.  The main complaint in the Manhattan Project cities were the shortages of everything anyone needed.  With so many people, it was hard to get enough for everyone.  However, the army did the best they could, because they knew that, after all, a happy worker is a good worker.  Other problems plagued the cities too.  Mud, dust, segregation, long lines everywhere, and hutments.  Hutments were tiny, 16 square-foot plywood “houses” that usually contained four to five people.

Another problem was security.  Keeping such a large and touchy subject a secret was tough at best.  As General Groves said, “Maintaining security is always a losing battle in the end.”   Nevertheless, as many precautions had to be taken as possible.  For instance, all workers had to wear a badge at Los Alamos and Oak Ridge.  That badge had a roman numeral on it.  The higher the Roman numeral you had (up to V) meant that you could receive more information than someone with a lower number on their badge.  Another security measure was “compartmentalization.”  Basically what that meant was that a worker only knew how to do his or her own job.  They didn’t know what the end product was to be or what anyone else was working on.  Additional security methods included superiors always reminding the workers to keep their mouths shut off site and the placement of 500 undercover agents throughout the program.  The worst thing that could happen to a worker was they could get fired, which, while it put them out of a job, also blacklisted them for any other government job ever again.
However, despite all of the security, spies still got through.  The majority of the spies were from the Soviet Union.  Quite a few were able to get in and get information to Josef Stalin about the project.  The most famous of these was Julius Rosenberg.  Arrested on July 17, 1950, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of giving information to the Soviet Union.  But no one was able to fully prove this fact so the Rosenbergs remained in jail for almost three years, a time period in which many appeals were sent in to get them freed.  It was all for nothing.  They were executed by electric chair on June 19, 1953.  It was later discovered that Julius Rosenberg was definitely guilty, but no one ever really knew about his wife, Ethel.

Earlier, in 1944, a problem was discovered, there was not going to be enough uranium for more than one bomb.  When this was revealed, they realized they would have to revert to something else.  Plutonium was the next best thing, but it was quickly grasped that it wouldn’t work using the same method as the uranium bomb.  No one knew how they could get it to work out.  Finally, it was young physicist, Seth Neddermeyer, that came up with an idea.  No one thought his idea was any good until famous scientist, John von Neumann, gave it his backing. Only then was it considered.  The problem now was that the idea had to be tested.  And that meant it had to be blown up in the United States somewhere.  With the uranium bomb, careful and long calculations had concluded that it would explode.  With the plutonium bomb, nobody was absolutely sure.

It was at this time that a tragic event occurred.  President Roosevelt died while on vacation.  Vice-President Harry Truman was sworn in later that day and told about the Manhattan Project an hour later.  It was a week before he was given a full report.

Meanwhile, the test of the plutonium bomb continued on schedule.  The test was nicknamed “Trinity,” though no one was exactly sure why.  The test date was set for July 16, 1945.  The first part of the test occurred on May 7.  It was called the 100-ton test, and exploded 100 tons of high explosives laced with radioactive materials as a kind of forerunner to the Trinity test. 

The next event in the Trinity Test stemmed off of a fear that the bomb wouldn’t work.  It was the building of a giant steel container, nicknamed Jumbo, that weighed 214 tons and had 15 inch thick walls.  The plan was to put the bomb into the container so that if it failed, the valuable plutonium could be retrieved.  If it succeeded it would destroy the container completely.  The problem was, by the time it was ready, all the calculations of the scientists had indicated that the test would most likely be a success, so Jumbo wouldn’t be needed after all.  General Groves attempted to destroy it later to avoid questions, but failed.

At about the same time that there was enough uranium for one bomb, the plutonium bomb nicknamed the “Gadget,” was ready for testing.  The place chosen was in New Mexico and was named the Alamogordo Bombing Range.  The Gadget was hoisted to the top of a hundred foot steel tower and prepped for detonation.  Everyone knew that there would probably be one of three options for the bomb.  As Edwin McMillan, one of the discoverers of plutonium, told his wife, “We know that there are three possibilities.  One, that we all [may] be blown to bits if it is more powerful than we expect.  Two, it may be a complete dud.  Three, it may, as we hope, be a success, we pray without loss of any lives.”   The explosion was scheduled for 4:00 a.m. in the morning on July 16 but was delayed till 5:30 because of a thunderstorm.  At 5:00, the arming team armed the bomb and then raced away.  The explosion occurred right at 5:30.

Let it suffice to say that the explosion was beyond what anyone had ever seen before.  It broke windows 125 miles away, it flashed brighter than twenty suns, it created a crater six feet deep and 1,200 feet in diameter.  It was visible more than 200 miles away and audible for more than 40 miles.  In minutes, the mushroom cloud was eight miles tall.  Isidor Rabi, one of the scientists present said,

“Suddenly there was an enormous flash of light, the brightest light I have ever seen or that I think anyone has ever seen.  It blasted; it pounced; it bored its way right through you.  It was a vision which was seen with more than the eye.  It was seen to last forever.  You wish it would stop; altogether it lasted about two seconds.  Finally, it was over, diminishing, and we looked toward the place where the bomb had been; there was an enormous ball of fire which grew and grew and it rolled as it grew; it went up into the air, in yellow flashes and into scarlet and green.  It looked menacing.”

Very few of the measuring instruments in the near area survived total destruction.  Others were ruined by the radiation and light.  Altogether, the blast was equivalent to 18,600 tons of TNT!
Meanwhile, while the Trinity test was happening, President Truman was at the Potsdam with Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin.  When he received word of the test and how well it had gone, he was greatly bolstered and was able to make some important movements.  He had already told Churchill about it so it was just Stalin left.  It was already known at this time that Stalin was trying to take as much of Europe for himself as possible and that the USSR would be the next world power.  Even though they were all allies, Stalin was still Communist and had opposing views from Churchill and Truman.  As a result, Churchill and Truman were slightly afraid to tell Stalin about the bomb as they were sure he would ask more about it and want one for himself.  So, at the end of the conference, Truman walked around the table and casually mentioned “a new weapon of unusual destructive force.”  Stalin showed no interest, only commenting that he hoped it would be put to good use.  Truman and Churchill were thrilled.  They thought it meant that Stalin didn’t care.  What they didn’t know was that he already knew about the bomb from his spies.

Now that there was confidence that the bombs would work, the next order of business was to find a Japanese target for them.  One of the aims of the bomb was a test, the scientists wanted to know how much damage it would do to a city.   That meant that they would have to choose a city that hadn’t been bombed much or at all.  Truman also wanted a “purely military target” bombed, not a civilian one.  Unfortunately, by the time the list was finished, the only military target on the whole list was Kokura Arsenal, and it wasn’t even on the top.

Some people thought that it wasn’t fair to the Japanese for the USA to just drop a bomb of immense power on them out of the blue.  They wanted a demonstration, a warning, or something similar.  Those ideas were quickly shot down though.  If there was a demonstration and something went wrong, the USA would look like fools.  If there was warning, then Japan might move allied prisoners of war to that area.  The main problem was that FDR hadn’t left any instructions for what to do with the bomb once it was done.

After the list was created, it was sent to Henry Stimson, the secretary of war, for a final check.  He took off the top target on the list, Kyoto, because of its significance to the Japanese.  He thought it was unnecessary to make the Japanese angrier with the USA.  The top three were now Hiroshima, Kokura, and Nagasaki.

Now, during this whole process there was the rationalization part of it, the reason why this was a good idea.  Truman said it was to save American lives.  The problem was, all the estimates of the casualties on an invasion of Japan were relatively low.  The Joint War Plans Committee guessed that just 46,000 men would die on an invasion of Japan.  General Douglas MacArthur predicted 100,000.  Truman was conjecturing up to 500,000 deaths.  Actually, his guesstimate changed.  At one point it was 200,000, at another time 250,000, a different time 300,000, on some public occasions, 1,000,000!  So, no one was exactly sure what he thought.  As for General Dwight Eisenhower, he was against it the whole time saying that, he, “hated to see our country to be the first to use such a weapon.”   About a year after the bomb was dropped, in 1946, a US bombing survey said that the bombs were needless, but by that time it was too late.

Another motive to use the bombs was to keep the USSR out of the USA’s way.  As I mentioned before, it was pretty well known that the USSR would be a world power soon.  However, the USSR hadn’t yet declared war on Japan and Truman wanted to keep it that way.  He knew that if the USSR got involved in the war in the Pacific, when Japan signed a peace treaty, the USSR would have more land under its communist fist.  Turns out that Truman dropped the bombs too late for that anyway.

There were a few other reasons to use the bomb, not the least of which was the fact that the Japanese did horrible things during the war including Pear Harbor.  America wanted revenge for those who had been tortured and brutally murdered.  Another more obscure reason was, as Arthur Compton put it, “If the bomb were not used in the present war, the world would have no adequate warning as to what was to be expected if war would break out again.”

As for what was happening in Japan at the time, that was a different story.  Some of the government was prepared to surrender to the USA, but the other half was adamant that they stick to their guns to the end.  Most of the people were ready to fight as well, even if it was just with bamboo spears.  The whole time this was happening, the Japanese were getting bombed constantly.  During ten days in March, 11 B-29 attacks wiped out 32 square miles of the four largest Japanese cities killing over 150,000 people and leaving more than a million homeless.  On May 10, a Tokyo bombing killed about 124,000 people.

Before the bomb could be dropped, the Manhattan Project had to find planes and pilots to drop the bombs.  The plane that was chosen was the B-29.    The B-29’s chosen for the project had to be modified to fit the bombs in them. The bomb bay had to be changed to fit the larger bombs and an extra fuel tank in them.  After that, they were ready to fly.  Lieutenant Colonel Paul W. Tibbets was chosen to lead the bomber corps that would drop the bombs on Japan.

Tinian Island, in the Pacific, was chosen to launch the planes carrying the bombs.  They did this so that the planes didn’t run out of fuel; it was a shorter trip than if the planes flew from Midway or the US.  An interesting fact is that the ship that delivered the uranium core to Tinian, sunk four days after its drop off.

President Truman gave the order to drop the bomb on the 24th of July, 1945.  After that came a flurry of activity, but it was taking a long time to get the project actually going.  So, Paul Tibbets resolved that he would covertly send the secret code word to ship the bombing crew overseas to Tinian Island.  As he said later, “A load of responsibility had been thrown on my shoulders and I decided to exercise the authority that went with it.”   He was immediately called to Washington by General Groves and reprimanded, but after that, was quietly thanked for getting the project moving along.
Then, finally, the time came for the first bomb to be dropped on Japan.  It was named Little Boy, was ten feet long, 28 inches in diameter, weighed 9,700 pounds, and was equal to 12,000 tons of TNT.  It worked on collision theory.  A modified artillery gun was put into the bomb and, when detonated, it would shoot a 55 pound piece of uranium into an 85 pound piece of uranium.  The two would fission and, voila! A large explosion would occur.
On August 6, 1945, three planes took off from Tinian Island, the Enola Gay, flown by Paul Tibbets, which carried the bomb, and two escorts.  An earlier plane had flown over Hiroshima to check on the weather.  The weather was fine, so the operation carried on.  The bomb was armed in the air and when they were over the city, dropped.  It floated down on a parachute and then exploded 1,093 feet above the ground at 8:16 in the morning.  Fifty percent of the bomb’s power was blast, 35% heat, 10% residual radiation, and 5% initial radiation.  Almost instantly, 80,000 people were dead and 100,000 injured, a total of 60% of the population of Hiroshima, which was about 320,000 to begin with.  More than 90% of the city was destroyed, and houses were flattened 12.4 miles away.  Not long after the explosion, 500 mph winds kicked in quickly followed by a firestorm that destroyed what the bomb hadn’t.  Amazingly, despite all this destruction, approximately only 1.38% of the uranium fissioned!
Catholic Priest John Seimes, who was in Hiroshima when the bomb exploded, described it this way,
“[the sky] is filled by a garish light which resembles the magnesium light used in photography, and I am conscious of a wave of heat.  I jump to the window to find out the cause of this remarkable phenomenon, but I see nothing more than that brilliant yellow light.  As I make for the door, it doesn’t occur to me that the light might have something to with enemy planes.  On the way from the window, I hear a moderately loud explosion which seems to come from a distance and, at the same time the windows are broken in with a loud crash.  There has been an interval of perhaps ten seconds since the flash of light.  I am sprayed by fragments of glass.”
It was described by the tail gunner of the Enola Gay as,
“A column of smoke rising fast.  It has a fiery red core.  A bubbling mass, purple-gray in color, with that red core.  It’s all turbulent.  Fires are springing up everywhere, like flames shooting out of a huge bed of coals.  I am starting to count the fires.  One, two, three, four, five, six… fourteen fifteen… it’s impossible.  There are too many to count.  Here it comes, the mushroom shape… it’s coming this way.  It’s like a mass of bubbling molasses.  The mushroom is spreading out.  It’s maybe a mile or two wide and half a mile high.  It’s growing up and up and up.  It’s nearly level with us and climbing.  It’s very black, but there is a purplish tint to the cloud…  The hills are disappearing under the smoke.  All I can see now of the city is the main dock and what looks like an airfield.”
The copilot of the Enola Gay, Robert A. Lewis, summed it all up in his log, “My God, what have we done?”
The bomb was a horror, but the days afterwards were a nightmare.  Sticky black rain began falling from the cooling mushroom cloud.  The city was entirely destroyed so there was no shelter.  Fires raged for days for lack of firefighters and equipment.  People died constantly from their injuries as so few doctors were left.  Radiation sickness, which killed more people than the bomb itself, began to appear. 
The Japanese Government thought that it was just another large bombing raid, as all of the communications in Hiroshima were down and there was no way to correct them.   A Japanese General said when he visited the city,
“There was but one black dead tree, as if a crow was perched on it.  There was nothing there but that tree.  As we landed at the airport all the grass was red as if it had been toasted.  Everything had burned up simultaneously.  Some schools with blown-off roofs and broken windows were left standing at some distance from the center of the city.  But the city itself was completely wiped out.  That must be the word, yes, completely wiped out.”
Right after the bomb was dropped, the US dropped leaflets on the Japanese people encouraging them to surrender. but Japan was still given very little time to reply before the next attack came just 75 hours later after the bombing date was moved up two days.
Fat Man was the next bomb to be dropped, the one that worked on the implosion theory.  The bomb itself was ten feet, eight inches long, five feet in diameter, and equal to 21,000 tons of TNT (9,000 more tons than Little Boy).  The plutonium inside of the bomb was only the size of a tennis ball and weighed about 13.6 pounds.  When the team went to put the bomb together, the casing was warped and didn’t fit.  After trying for a long time and only succeeding in getting a crew member thrown to the ground after the bit he was using jammed, they used some dummy casing instead.
Then it was time for takeoff.  When the plane that was carrying Fat Man, the Bockscar, got to its original target, Kokura, the weather was so bad that, after flying around for 45 minutes, they had to move on to the secondary target, Nagasaki.  They were also unable to access their second tank of fuel due to mechanical failure, so they had even less time to drop the bomb and get back to base.  In fact, they had so little fuel left after the flight that they couldn’t even taxi off of the runway when they landed!
When the Fat Man fell, it actually caused less damage then Little Boy despite being more powerful.  The bombardier had missed his target by more than one-and-a-half miles.  Still, 40,000 people were dead in a short time.  It was at this time that the word began to spread that Japan would surrender, so a third atomic bomb core was diverted from being sent to Tinian Island.  The death toll for Fat Man in January of 1948 was 70,000 and in 1950, 140,000.  Fat man and Little Boy together killed 275,000 people, about half of which died in the years after from radiation poisoning.
Japan’s cabinet then met to decide the final fate of the country.  They debated for two hours and were still deadlocked, with some saying they would fight to the end, while others wanted to surrender.  Finally, something happened that was never supposed to happen, the Emperor stepped in and made the final decision (the Emperor of Japan was just a figurehead, he usually didn’t make the decisions).  He said that the country would have to “bear the unbearable”.    Japan would surrender.  As Arthur Compton said, “It was not one atomic bomb, or two, which brought surrender; it was the experience of what an atomic bomb will actually do to a community, plus the dread of many more, that was effective.”   Not long after, the people of Japan heard their Emperor on the radio for the first time ever announcing that the war was over.
Several Japanese officers wanted to stage a coup and fight on, but it was called off when they could not gain the support of their seniors.  The Japanese surrendered on August 14, 1945, and the joy in the Allied nations was paramount.  Many people were happy, but the happiest were the soldiers who were going to have to storm Japan.  They were now safe.
The war was over, but the bomb did not go away.  In fact, more tests were set up to test bigger and more powerful weapons.  Operation Crossroads was the first of such peacetime tests.  Conducted at Bikini Atoll, which was chosen for its isolation, small population and shallow water, it contained two tests, Able and Baker.  They were both to test the effectiveness of using a bomb on a large fleet of ships.  Able would test a bomb being dropped from a plane and Baker would be a test of a bomb being under the water.  The test ships were either old American ships, or captured Japanese ships.  The tests were open to a political and international audience as well as the press.  The first test went fine but was not very impressive.  Many people were relived.  Maybe the bomb wasn’t a future threat after all.  But the second test blew the relief away.  The Baker bomb destroyed nine more ships than the Able bomb and created a huge tower of water 975 feet thick and climbing at 11,000 feet per second.  It also created huge waves.
The side effects of the test weren’t obvious till later.  Radiation contaminated all of the ships not destroyed, so they were useless.  There was no way to clean them so some were sunk, while others were put into “isolation” and left for the remainder of their lives.
It was not long after this that the Cold War started with the USSR detonating their first atomic bomb on August 29, 1949.  Other countries were testing nuclear weapons as well.  From 1945-1998, more than 2,000 tests were conducted around the world.  Then, in the early 1950s, a new type of bomb was created, the hydrogen bomb.  The way it worked was, when two types of hydrogen molecules collided, they would fuse, creating one helium atom.  The process released energy and one neutron.  This fusion, as it was called, because it was fusing two atoms, did not necessarily create more energy per reaction, but hydrogen is much smaller than uranium or plutonium, therefore, more was able to fit in the same amount of space.  Other new developments were nuclear rockets which could be fired from planes, submarines, or the ground and hit targets far away.
The US detonated its first hydrogen bomb in 1952 in the Marshall Islands.  The explosion was so great, it entirely destroyed the island of Elugelab.  It was 500 times more powerful than Fat Man.  It was also at this time that people began favoring peace and getting rid of nuclear weapons.  With so many weapons of such mass destruction, civilians were bound to get hurt no matter what.
Finally, after almost 50 years of tense relations, the Cold War ended.  At the peak of the “war” the United States and the Soviet Union combined had enough nuclear weaponry to destroy the world 100 times over.  Now that it was over, many thought that that would be the end of nuclear warfare forever.  Others thought it was just the beginning.
Today, many of the countries that were a part of the Soviet Union still have nuclear weapons.  Also, in the last 60 years there have been 32 “Broken Arrows.”  A Broken Arrow is when an unexpected event results in the accidental launching, firing, detonating, theft, or loss of the device .  By 2006, six nuclear weapons had been lost and not recovered.
This concludes the history of the atomic bomb, from its conception, to its detonation, to today.  From Enrico Fermi’s device to the Cold War.  Albert Einstein to Paul Tibbets, the atomic bomb has changed a lot.

Works Cited

Delgado, James P.  Nuclear Dawn.  New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1990.

Harris, Nathaniel.  Hiroshima.  Chicago, IL: Heinemann Library, 2004.

O’Neal, Michael.  President Truman and the Atomic Bomb.  San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, Inc., 1990.

Sullivan, Edward T.  The Ultimate Weapon.  New York: Holiday House, 2007.

Takaki, Ronald.  Hiroshima.  Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1995.

Bibliography

Bodden, Valerie.  The Bombing of Hiroshima & Nagasaki.  Mankato, MN: Creative Education, 2008.

Delgado, James P.  Nuclear Dawn.  New York, NY: Osprey Publishing, 2009.

Diagram Group, The.  Weapons.  New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1990.

Harris, Nathaniel.  Hiroshima.  Chicago, IL: Heinemann Library, 2004.

Lawton, Clive A.  Hiroshima.  Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press, 2004.

O’Neal, Michael.  President Truman and the Atomic Bomb.  San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, Inc., 1990.

Rosinsky, Natalie M.  The Story of the Atomic Bomb.  Mankato, MN: Compass Point Books, 2010.

Sullivan, Edward T.  The Ultimate Weapon.  New York: Holiday House, 2007.

Takaki, Ronald.  Hiroshima.  Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1995.

Tames, Richard.  Hiroshima.  Chicago, IL: Heinemann Library, 2000.