Before someone else says the obvious I mean to the general public of the allies, I’m sure it raised a few eyebrows in Japan.
I’m currently reading a book about the planned invasion of Japan if the atom bombs had not brought the war to a sudden conclusion and I was wondering how much the general public in America, the UK etc knew before their use? Was it an unexpected bolt from the blue or were there general rumours of a war-winning superweapon in circulation beforehand?
I imagine the general feeling was relief the whole thing was over.
I don’t know about the general public but I can tell you that my grandfather was on Tinian (the Pacific island from which the Enola Gay took off on its way to Hiroshima) and he didn’t know about it. He knew something big was going on because the plane arrived on the island and there was a lot of secrecy and he wasn’t allowed to go near it. He and everyone else on the island was told what was going on shortly after the Enloa Gay took off for Japan.
The secrecy behind the atom bomb was some of the best in history. There were rumors, of course, but the general public knew absolutely nothing about it until the bomb was dropped.
There was an awareness among anyone who knew basic science that an atomic bomb was possible - there were stories in science fiction pulps and comic books about atom bombs. But it was a surprise to the general public to find out that an actual atomic bomb had been built.
Overall the secrecy was pretty impressive considering that (according to Wikipedia), “more than 130,000” people worked on the project. I am sure the majority of them had no idea what they were helping to produce.
The headline, as I remember it ran, “Atom Bomb Hits Japan” and that was the first inkling I, or anybody I knew, had regarding it. That headline meant nothing to me, so had to read the story, which was far from explaining it. In my HS physics course, we had studied atoms, molecules, etc, bt the concept of a bomb was a total surprise.
Must of been a surprise to Truman and the Joint Chiefs that it actually worked.
They had put a lot of effort into plans for a Japanese invasion. Troops in Germany were scheduled for deployment to Japan. Huge amounts of Supplies were stockpiled etc. Everything was set and ready. They even had projected casualty estimates.
Army Surplus stores spent the next 40 years selling off all the military gear manufactured for WWII. A lot of it new and still in the box.
It had been tested in Nevada (I think) so I assume the Army brass knew it would probably work, assuming they could get it near the target.
My father, who was in Germany at the time and getting ready to ship out to Japan didn’t know anything about it, nor did my mother who was in college living in Berkeley, California. It was a very well kept secret. If the press knew about it in advance, and I’m sure some of them did, they weren’t printing any news stories about it at the time.
As horrible a weapon as it was, it saved tens of thousands of American soldier’s lives… at least that’s what my father believes.
Well, from what I understand there wasn’t much doubt the bombs would work, but I do wonder if they really expected Japan to surrender because of them. There was certainly a sizable faction that didn’t want to. The fact of the matter is that the A-bombs were basically used as terror weapons-- they would have been of little military utility against the Japanese who were entrenched and dispersed across the countryside. The invasion of Japan would have been a miserable asymmetric campaign and even dropping dozens of A-bombs probably wouldn’t have made things considerably easier for the Americans. Hence the continued build-up.
Here’s the text of Truman’s speech announcing the dropping of the Bomb. He talks, in the most general way, about the effort involved in harnessing the power of the atom, but his first paragraph delivers the intended message: the U.S. made a big, big bomb and used it on Japan.
My guess is that’s about all people came away with.
Remember that bombing isn’t only for use against military targets, but also for industrial targets. Without industry and logistics, you can’t support your military.
But the Japanese would have had the problem of being unable to concentrate their forces. If the Japanese had been forced to spread out their forces to make them less vulnerable to atomic attacks, then the Americans would have been able to defeat them by conventional means.
In fact, if Japan hadn’t surrendered after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings the Americans weren’t going to use the next bomb against a city. The plan was to drop the next bomb on the main invasion beach a few hours before the American troops started landing.
Part of the trick of the atomic bombs was diplomatic: We dropped the only two bombs we had a few days apart, in order to back up our bluff that we had plenty of the things, and could continue using them with impunity. If we in fact had as many as we were letting on, we probably would have used them on more cities. The only reason we were planning on using bomb #3 on the invasion beach was that we didn’t actually expect it to be ready until we were at the point of invasion, and if the Japanese knew that, they might have kept fighting.
Actually it was tested in New Mexico. It’s called the Trinity site. Some 20 miles southeastish of San Antonio.
This past April Ms Hook and a friend visited the site. It’s open to the public two days out of the year, the first Saturday in April and October. There’s not a lot to see but it was kind of cool.
After the test explosion the military put out a press bullitin saying that an ammo dump had accidently went off. As far as I know everyone pretty much bought that, mostly, I suppose, because there wasn’t any reason at the time to doubt it.
My father was just finishing up in Europe, he was a tanker with Patton’s army, and they were getting ready for the invasion of Japan. All in all I’m just as happy they dropped them and got it over with.
I was eleven at the time the bomb was dropped, and I still can shut my eyes and see that headline about dropping the bomb.
Even at that age, I kept up quite well with the war. My folks listened to the news broadcasts, to which I also usually listened, and I did (really) read the newspaper. At least in our little baliwick, (Alton, Illinois), there had not been a whisper that something like this was going to happen.
I have several old WWII veteran friends that to this day think Truman was the greatest president that ever lived because he dropped that sucker.
Only 1 design was tested - the implosion version (Fat man). The first bomb dropped was not tested because the design was simpler and they were confident it would work , that was the gun design, Little Boy.