The bomb that changed everything: Truth about Hiroshima's 'Little Boy'

On August 6, 1945, the world changed forever. An entire city wiped out from the face of the earth. At around 8.45 am, a blinding beam of light appeared in the sky, along with a deafening sound of an explosion. It marked the arrival of the nuclear age.

The little boy

They called it 'the little boy', a US B-29 bomber also known as the ‘Elona Gay’, dropped a 10 feet long and 4,400 kg bomb from a height of 31,000 feet. The bomb detonated in the air at 1,900 feet above Hiroshima. It released 15,000 tons of TNT; in an instant, 80,000 people were incinerated, some just leaving behind only their shadows. The US dropped another plutonium bomb at Nagasaki on August 9, which it claims was an attempt to finish the war swiftly.

Why Hiroshima? This was not just about ending the war

The United States have iterated again and again that the bomb was necessary to end the bloody invasion of Japan. August 6, 2025, will be the 80th anniversary of the dreadful incident of Hiroshima. Historians have long debated the rationale of the attack.

"I had urged (the bomb not be used) because Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was not necessary,” said Ralph Bard, Under Secretary of the Navy, in a memo dated June 27, 1945.

Japan was already weak; it had already lost the bloodiest clash of the Pacific War, the Battle of Okinawa. The US have captured the Philippines, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. American forces were within striking distance of mainland Japan. Japan's navy and air force were virtually destroyed. The US had complete control of the sky. Japan had absorbed firebombs in 60 different cities, and Tokyo only had a death toll of 100,000. Japan's economy was crumbling, and there was a widespread shortage of food, fuel and raw materials. It was exploring a peace deal and wanted to preserve its Empire. It reached out to the USSR to mediate a peace deal even though the USSR had not declared war on Japan. The Soviet Union was about to enter the war; it officially declared war against Japan on August 8, 1945.

Scholars and historians have debated the logic behind using the devastating weapon. Many, like Herbert Feis, have defended the use of the bomb. While others, like American Historian Martin Sherwin, said that the bombing had complex political motivations. Gar Alperovitz, a revisionist American historian and political economist who later challenged Herbert Feis in his book, Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam (1965), claiming that the US used the atomic bomb to gain geopolitical leverage over the USSR. The bomb was not necessary; it was a way to display US military might to the USSR, which was an ideological rival of the West, and send a message to Joseph Stalin, even if they were fighting against a common enemy, Nazi Germany.

"The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender… dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary," said General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander in 1963, recalling his memories. He served as the U.S. President in 1953, succeeding Harry S. Truman.

“We knew we were beaten. We had no arms left with which to fight. The peace party was carrying on a very bitter struggle within the government to end the war,” said Prince Konoe Fumimaro, former Japanese Prime Minister, in post-war interrogation.

Nonetheless, President Truman went on with his plan. His rationale was that a ground invasion of Japan would be a bloody affair. Japanese leaders were not ready for unconditional surrender as demanded by the Potsdam Declaration of the Allied forces and promptlydenied the ultimatum of July 26.

“The question is not whether Truman had to use the bomb to end the war quickly, but whether he believed that was the only way or the best way, given the wider context,” wrote J. Samuel Walker, a more balanced historian. Eighty years later, the debate still carries on, whether Hiroshima was the needed price for peace or the beginning of the Cold War.