1. Was the dropping of atomic bombs justified?

2. Why did the US decide to drop the bomb?
Pacific war
Millions invested in development
Growing threat from USSR
Vengeance for torture & suicide attacks

3. What happened when the bomb was dropped?
6 August 1945 Enola Gay dropped atomic bomb on Hiroshima
70,000 immediate deaths
200,000+ deaths radiation and fall out
9 August, Nagasaki 40,000 deaths
14 August Japan surrenders

4. What did the bombs look like?
‘Little Boy’ Uranium, Hiroshima
‘Fat Man’, Plutonium, Nagasaki

5. How powerful were they?
‘Fat Boy’ blast equivalent to 20,000 tons of explosives detonated at once
Strong winds from blast destroyed all buildings within a 1.5 mile radius
Heat generated incinerated everything in its path

6. What was the impact?

7.  Your task
Read Source 1 (an eye-witness account) and list the different effects the bomb had on people and things in the city of Hiroshima.
Eye-witness account

8. Which of these images tells us more about the effects of the atomic bomb?

9. Drawing by Sawami Katagiri

10. Photograph taken days after the Hiroshima bomb was dropped in August 1945