The bombing of the Japanese city of Kobe was all part of the strategic campaign that was waged by the United States of America against civilian and military targets. A few months later, during the war, the city was bombed for the second time because it was the sixth-largest area of Japan, with a population of over one million people.
This photo is unique and rare and shows the city of Kobe from a bird’s view. The raid that took place on the 16th and 17th of March 1945 was one of the harshest ones in that war, making only the bombing of Hiroshima more tragic and devastating.
The Bikini Atoll Program
In this photo, we see the nuclear testing at the Bikini Atoll program, which was a series of 23 nuclear devices detonated by the United States between the years 1946 to 1958. Seems a bit scary that it was detonated so close to neighboring islands, but these weapons were tested on the reef itself and in the air.
This all started in July of 1946 with Operation Crossroads, a nuclear weapon test. The island of Bikini Atoll, which is one of the 23 islands that consisted of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean, was uninhabitable because of all the radiation.
The Gadget
The device seen in this photo is called Trinity. It was the widget used for nuclear testing that was nicknamed The Gadget. This device was considered the first ever Atomic Bomb made to be tested at the Trinity Site in New Mexico on July 16th, 1945, near Alamogordo. It was also the first bomb to be detonated in the Manhattan Project. J. Robert Oppenheimer came up with the code name “Trinity,” which was taken from a line of John Donne's Poetry.
The structure of The Gadget was used again, and it replicated the design of the Fat Man, which was the bomb used during the last days of the Second World War.
Nagasaki, 1945
This photo is of the before and after of the Japanese city of Nagasaki. It was bombed on August 9, 1945. A plutonium bomb was detonated over the city, killing over 39,000 to 80,000 people that day. These photos only show rare proof of what had happened.
The bombing of Nagasaki was the beginning of the end of the Second World War. Six days after the horrific event, the Japanese army surrendered, and on September 2nd, 1945, the Instrument of Surrender was signed. Studies claim that there was no other way to bring the war to an end, and if atomic weapons were not used, the war would have resulted in many more casualties on both sides.
The Prohibition
This photo shows alcohol being poured from out a window during a prohibition. Any business owner will go through all kinds of trouble to make sure that their business thrives, and after police had found out about the illegal business going on inside an apartment, naturally, they had to dispose of the booze.
Prohibition was embraced by the American government in 1919, and it managed to hold on until 1933. During this time, alcohol became banned, which led to criminal offenses performed by those who traded it. The prohibition was proved to be ultimately unsuccessful in the long run because many people draw parallels between contemporary recreational illegal substances and alcohol.