"Once you invest two billion dollars in a firecracker, you have to light it."

The crowds of victims, their bodies burned red and black, seemed to him like a parade of ghosts from another world. Most of the injured. . . died in agony, and the living screamed at passers-by to kill them quickly. 

"Curtain Rises on War's Last Act as MacArthur Takes Over Japan: Atomic Agony," Newsweek (3 Sept. 1945): 19-28.

In an important overview quoted by far too few scholars to this day, David S. Bertolotti writes in his Culture and Technology

"Atomic Bomb Packs Punch Equivalent to 2000 B-29s" screamed the headlines of the Ann Arbor News (III, No. 187, August 6, 1945, p. 1).  The Associated Press reported: "Atomic Bomb U.S. Pulverizes Japan with Bomb Greater than 20,000 Tons of TNT," (Detroit News, August 6, 1945, p. 1). "Tokyo May be Next Target for Explosives." (Ann Arbor News, p. 5) "Power of Sun Harnessed to Make New Bomb." (Chicago Tribune, August 7, 1945, p. 1) Such headlined stories appeared in virtually every American daily news-paper on either August 6 or August 7,1945.

Quotation from David S. Bertolotti, Culture and Technology -- for a PDF of the chapter from which the above quoted note is taken, simply send an email to  babich@fordham.edu