WRITTEN DOCUMENTS
Leo Szilard's petition to President Truman
Annotation: Leo Szilard was one of the first physicists to identify the military application of atomic power...As the atomic tests reached their successful conclusion, however, Szilard raised serious concerns about the practical use of such weapons against civilian targets.
Henry Stimson's letter to President Truman
Annotation: Just two weeks after the successful test of the first atomic device in the New Mexico desert, Secretary of War Henry Stimson delivered versions of the statement to be issued in the event that the U.S. elected to use the weapon against Japan...It emphasizes the legitimacy of using the new technology of atomic weaponry against Japan by stressing the fact of Japanese aggression: "The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East."
Leaflet dropped over Japan
Annotation: Hours after the Hiroshima bombing, American bombers again took to the skies over Japan. This time their payloads contained not bombs but leaflets: printed warnings in Japanese cautioning those on the ground of the fearful new weapon the U.S. had deployed...It closed by urging readers to demand a quick and peaceful end to hostilities lest the U.S. employ “this bomb and all our other superior weapons to promptly and forcefully end the war.”
PHOTOGRAPHS
Bombing aftermath
Annotation: The photographs display the devastation of the bombings.
VIDEO
President Truman informs the nation of the bombing of Hiroshima
Annotation: Truman informs the nation that an atomic weapon has been detonated in Japan.
