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(13) Things I learned from “The Bomb, Season 1” podcast series

1) The atomic bomb derives its power from a nuclear chain reaction, which is when one nuclear reaction triggers another and another, etc. A nuclear reaction happens when two nuclei (the plural form of nucleus, the center of an atom) collide.

2) Leo Szilard was the scientist who conceived and patented the nuclear chain reaction. He was Hungarian Jew. He lived in Germany before fleeing during the rise of Nazism for the USA, where he spent the rest of his life.

3) Leo Szilard and Albert Einstein were good friends and research colleagues.

4) The Manhattan Project was the United States’s committee/initiative (with British support) that created the atomic bomb.

5) The U.S. government had two secret towns for bomb manufacturing: Los Alamos, NM and Oak Ridge, TN.

6) In the early morning of December 7, 1941 before the Attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese planes were detected flying towards Pearl Harbor, but U.S. radar readers assured that they were U.S. planes...

7) War hadn’t even been declared by Japan on the United States at the time of the Pearl Harbor bombing. The Japanese didn’t declare war until later that day. Because of this, the attack was later deemed a war crime.

8) There seems to have been strong sentiments of pride and stubbornness among Japanese leaders during this era. Even after the Allies had won Europe, Japan refused to surrender. After the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan still did not surrender. Even after the bombing of Nagasaki, there was still for years a resistance to surrendering. In the days after the bombing of Nagasaki, the Japanese emperor eventually did declare that the “war was over,” but never used the word “surrender.”

9) Politics > science and ethics… 150 American and British scientists signed a petition to not use the bomb on Japanese civilians. Instead, they suggested, a public demonstration could be staged as a sort of threat. Leo Szilard also wrote and attempted to send a petition to the Harry Truman, the U.S. president at the time, pleading him to not use the atomic weapon. Leslie Groves, the director of the Manhattan Project, however, kept the petition as soon as he received it in order to prevent it from rising to any higher level. Ultimately, high-up military leaders got their way when the bomb was dropped.

10) The Gadget, Little Boy, and Fat Man: These were the nicknames of three atomic bombs. There were detonated in the New Mexico desert as a test in July 1945, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, respectively.

11)  60-80 thousand people in Hiroshima died instantly upon the dropping of the first bomb. In the end, 90-145 thousand people died.

12) Hibakusha: The Japanese word for an atomic bomb survivor.

13) Kokura is a city in Japan that was initially the second bomb target, but because the city was covered in cloud and smoke on the morning of August 9, the U.S. raid changed course to Nagasaki.