8:15 AM, August 6, 1945
Two things happened when the B-29 bomber, "Enola Gay", dropped the most destructive weapon ever used in warfare over Hiroshima, Japan, at 8:15 in the morning of August 6, 1945. It brought about the end of World War II, and it introduced the nuclear age. Released at 31,600 feet altitude, 43 seconds later it detonated at 1800 feet over the city, creating a huge fireball with the temperature of the sun, turning the city and about 80,000 people into ashes and seriously wounding another 80,000, many who soon died from effects of the blast. This certainly was a dramatic moment in American history, perhaps the most dramatic in human history. Although dropping the bomb created a tragic loss of lives, it was dropped to accelerate the end of the war and to save the estimated loss of more than a million lives on both sides, had an invasion of Japan been necessary to bring about the end of the war.
Most of the nations of the world and every continent were embroiled in World War II, which started when Adolph Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. After six years of warfare and the death of more than 30 million people, another 34 million wounded, over 10 million displaced persons, a cost to the world's nations of $1,154,000,000,000 for weapons of war, destruction of $230,000,000,000 in property, not including the cost of rebuilding, and immeasurable human suffering, world War II came to an end.
At the end of World War II, allied leaders realized that the world was still seriously divided between two political ideologies, freedom and communism. Through the use of intimidation, subversion and military force, the Soviet Union set about spreading communism to other parts of the world. The United States emerged from the war as the most powerful nation in history, and being the only possessor of nuclear weapons was seen as invincible. It became leader of allied nations who formed treaties and adopted the mission to preserve freedom by containing the spread of communism.
But the United States was not long the only nation with nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union exploded a nuclear bomb in the late 1940's. Great Britain, France and China soon had nuclear weapons also. Preserving freedom without triggering a nuclear war became a very dangerous business as nuclear weapons proliferated through nearly five decades of 'Cold War". The device which had been conceived to bring an end to World War II, and which had brought joy and hope to so many on August 6, 1945, became an object of great fear that threatened to end life on our planet.