For those of you who are old enough to remember WWII, Truman had a very agonizing decision to make. The cost in lives, both, American and Japanese, would have been much greater, had we undertaken an invasion of Japan by conventional means. All the intelligence we had indicated that the Japanese would have resisted the invasion stubbornly, by any means at their disposal. Having experienced their kamikazee pilots crashing into our battleships, we already knew that they had no fear and would fight to the last man. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the only way to convince tha Japanese that all further resistance was futile, and brought an abrupt end to a very long war. SOL ZELLER

Sol:

I was born 10 years AFTER WW II ended; but I want to say that you have this issue ABSOLUTELY correct.

The Kamikaze were willing to die for their cause, and if Japan had been invaded; the fighting would have been urban warfare fighting house to house.

Before the bomb (little boy) if memory serves was dropped on Hiroshima; it was believed there was not enough fisionable Uranium to make a bomb.

Hiroshima was bombed, and they had to drop the bomb (fat man) over Nagasaki to demonstrate to the world that the U.S. has more than one bomb.

The two bombs used different sets of technology.

"little Boy" was built in a cylinder with two non critical masses of uranium in each end, then an explosion slamming the two masses together to cause a critical mass and start the fision process. (splitting the atoms)

"Fat Man" has one non critical mass then was surrounded by explosive that compacted the element into a smaller and smaller space until Critical mass eas reached and begin the process of fision (splitting the atoms.)

ANL - 2B