At the beginning of the war the US was in a neutral state but slowly started to move its way more to the Allies side of the war. The US never entered the war at the beginning, but did trade weapons and ships to Allies mainly to Britain. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor which was a major naval base during the war the Japanese sunk 5 battleships and damaged 3, damaged 3 cruisers, sunk 2 destroyers and damaged 1, and destroyed 188 planes and damaged 155. Because of what the Japanese did the US officially went into the war fighting on the side of the Allies. The US mainly fought against the Germans and the Japanese in Europe and in the Pacific.
In the Pacific the US was mainly fighting by themselves against the Japanese. The US used a strategy called Island Hopping to get closer to Japan so that they could start to bomb them. The US took over Midway, Guadalcanal, the Philippines, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa as they made their way closer to Japan. When the US finally got to Iwo Jima and Okinawa they were then close enough to start bombing the main island of Japan. When the US finally realized that Japan was not going to surrender the US decided to use the atomic bomb.
At 8:15 on the morning of August 6, 1945, the United States Air Forces dropped the atomic bomb "Little Boy" on the city of Hiroshima. The plane that dropped the bomb was called The Enola Gay. Then three days later the US dropped "Fat Man" bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. After the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima only one-third of the city was left standing. The blast was so powerful that some of the clay tiles that were on top of roofs were melted together. Their were also shadows that were imprinted onto the ground from were people and buildings were before the bomb went off. Both off the cities were uninhabitable after the bombs were dropped on the cities.
Before the bomb was dropped Nagasaki was a major shipbuilding city and a large military port. But at first Nagasaki was not the target for the second atomic bomb it was Kokura. Nagasaki was not going to be bombed because it had already been bomb five times by fire bombings in a twelve month span. Some scientists said not to drop it there because the damage of the bomb would be hard to assess.
Hiroshima was an industrial city that had military significance. Hiroshima was the first city that was bombed by the US. It was bombed by "Little Boy". It caused massive damage because of the bomb and a lot of people were killed because of it.
