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.
American military technology during World War II
On August 6 and 9, 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki instantly killing 120,000 people. Roughly 100,000 more people died of radiation poisoning in the following years. Six days after the dropping of the bomb on Nagasaki, the Japanese surrendered. The Manhattan Project was the leading collaborative scientific effort and the most secretive of the time. At first, several different labs had scientists working on smaller parts of the atom bomb, but they had no idea as to the magnitude of the project. Later, the project was moved to Los Alamos, New Mexico, led by renowned physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer.