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.
First Into Nagasaki
On August 3, 1945 "New York Times" had carried the front page headline "BOMBERS FIRE GREAT NAGASAKI SHIPYARDS" and a page one story beginning "Nagasaki, one of the three major shipbuilding centers of Japan and ninth port of the empire, was left aflame yesterday, its dockyards smashed and its harbor littered with sunken ships by over 250 planes of General George C. Kenney's Far East Air Force." The article continues with a full description of the air battle over Nagasaki, and the destruction of oil tanks, ships, warehouses and railyard. The raid of August 2, 1945 included Mitchell and Liberator bombers as well as Thunderbolt and Mustang fighter planes. Weller's assertion published in 1967 is not consistent with this prominent, lengthy and detailed "New York Times" coverage, nor with his own assertion published in 2006 at the end of the very first dispatch datelined Nagasaki (September 6, 1945 2300 hours) that the city had had "one earlier serious raid."