Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum
The atomic bomb was developed by scientists working under the Manhattan Project. The project was granted funding on December 6, 1941, with American leaders aiming for a new invention that would serve as a wartime weapon. The decision to drop an atomic bomb on Japan had been made by 1943, and a shortlist of candidate target cities was in place in 1945. At the time, it was argued that an atomic bombing would bring about a more rapid end to the war. Hiroshima, the first target, was selected to show the power of America's new weapon. The second bombing, of Nagasaki, was intended to demonstrate that the USA had a large arsenal. At 11:02 A.M. local time on August 9, 1945, the atomic bomb, nicknamed Fat Man as its code name by Robert Serber in the United States (after Sydney Greenstreet's character in "The Maltese Falcon") was dropped on Nagasaki, forever changing the city's landscape. A mushroom cloud rose to an altitude of 45,000 feet above the city.
History of the anti-nuclear movement
On August 6, 1945, towards the end of World War II, the Little Boy device was detonated over the Japanese military city of Hiroshima. Exploding with a yield equivalent to 12,500 tonnes of TNT, the blast and thermal wave of the bomb destroyed nearly 50,000 buildings (including the headquarters of the 2nd General Army and Fifth Division) and killed approximately 75,000 people, among them 20,000 Japanese soldiers and 20,000 Korean slave laborers. Detonation of the Fat Man device exploded over the Japanese industrial city of Nagasaki three days later after Hiroshima, destroying 60% of the city and killing approximately 35,000 people, among them 23,200-28,200 Japanese munitions workers, 2,000 Korean slave laborers, and 150 Japanese soldiers. The two bombings remains the only events where nuclear weapons have been used in combat. Subsequently, the world's nuclear weapons stockpiles grew.