The Significance of Hiroshima “Use of the bomb had besmirched America's reputation…”

-Richard Norton Smith

            The dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima began a new era.  It was essentially the end of the line for Japan’s imagined immunity, it was a power far greater than any weapon seen to that date, and it was the end of World War II.  In doing the above, it established the United States as the nation with the biggest stick and made the Soviet Union want to take that stick away.  This would be otherwise known as the beginning of the Cold War.

            Hiroshima unleashed a new threat to humankind.  Using the power of the atom, something so small that it cannot be seen to annihilate whole cities and eventually continents, warfare evolved into an ordeal where the whole world was at stake at once instead of a region.  Any nuclear war now has the potential to destroy the entire human race, as we know it.

            On the positive side, the secrets revealed with the atom were used to create a new and relatively clean energy source.  As Einstein had pressured FDR in his letter
(located in the Primary sources section), the development of nuclear powered energy plants has vastly improved life (if electricity is considered an improvement; some might argue that) for people around the world and within the United States.