The Anniversary of Two Atomic Bombs

"Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima and destroyed its usefulness to the enemy.” So began the official White House press release on the dropping of the first atomic bomb (August 6, 1945) -- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/truman/psources/ps_pressrelease.html. A Hiroshima survivor recalls the event -- http://www.voanews.com/english/AmericanLife/2005-08-05-voa38.cfm. Royal Air Force Group Captain Leonard Cheshire witnessed the dropping of the bomb on Nagasaki three days later (August 9, 1945). In a taped interview he explains the event --
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/9/newsid_3580000/3580143.stm

For background use the Subject option of History Resource Center: U.S. http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/e-resources/hrc.html. Try Hiroshima in the query box. Be sure to also visit and search About.com http://www.about.com/

For a wealth of information on Hirsohima go to http://www.lclark.edu/~history/HIROSHIMA/directory.html. For material and information on Nagasaki go to http://www1.city.nagasaki.nagasaki.jp/na-bomb/museum/museume01.html. For pertinent Web sites search History Matters http://historymatters.gmu.edu/browse/wwwhistory/.

These two events are covered by books catalogued under many subject headings (learn how to use Library of Congress Subject Headings at http://www.lib.duke.edu/libguide/fi_books_sh.htm#brb). Headings include:

Hiroshima-shi (Japan)--History--Bombardment, 1945
Nagasaki-shi (Japan)--History--Bombardment, 1945
Atomic Bomb victims--Japan
Atomic bomb--Moral and ethical aspects
Atomic bomb--Japan--Psychological aspects
Radioactive decontamination--Japan
Nuclear warfare in art
Art and nuclear warfare--Japan
Enola Gay (Bomber)
Atomic bomb--History--United States


And, of course, the body of scholarly journal literature is enormous. A subject search of America: History and Life http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/e-resources/am_history_life.html for pieces about both or either of the bombed cities finds 72 citations (articles, reviews, and dissertations). A subject search in AHL for Truman and the bomb finds 51 citations.

To find contemporary photographs visit AccuNet/Ap Multimedia Archive http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/e-resources/photo.html and for contemporary and period photographs try Google "image search" http://www.google.com/imghp?hl=en&tab=wi&q=. And, of course there are many hardcopy sources for images, try the keyword catalog searches:

Hiroshima.su. and pictorial.su.
Nagasaki.su. and pictorial.su.
Manhattan Project.su. and pictorial.su.

Explore President Truman's public papers at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/. Find newspaper coverage, among other places, by searching the archival index to the New York Times, produced by the NYT (we have the paper on microfilm) http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/nytimes/advancedsearch.html.