Never Forget: The Bombing Of Hiroshima, 64 Years Ago Today
6.8.09
I developed a lifelong opposition to war at the age of ten, when “The World At War” was broadcast by ITV, and today’s anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima has brought those feelings back. To mark this most distressing of anniversaries, I’m posting a commentary from the Boston Globe’s “Big Picture,” plus a few photographs.
From the Boston Globe: August 6th marks 64 years since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan by the United States at the end of World War II. Targeted for military reasons and for its terrain (flat for easier assessment of the aftermath), Hiroshima was home to approximately 250,000 people at the time of the bombing. The US B-29 Superfortress bomber “Enola Gay” took off from Tinian Island very early on the morning of August 6th, carrying a single 4,000 kg (8,900 lb) uranium bomb codenamed “Little Boy.” At 8:15 am, “Little Boy” was dropped from 9,400 m (31,000 ft) above the city, freefalling for 57 seconds while a complicated series of fuse triggers looked for a target height of 600 m (2,000 ft) above the ground. At the moment of detonation, a small explosive initiated a super-critical mass in 64 kg (141 lbs) of uranium. Of that 64 kg, only 0.7 kg (1.5 lbs) underwent fission, and of that mass, only 600 milligrams was converted into energy — an explosive energy that seared everything within a few miles, flattened the city below with a massive shockwave, set off a raging firestorm and bathed every living thing in deadly radiation. Nearly 70,000 people are believed to have been killed immediately, with possibly another 70,000 survivors dying of injuries and radiation exposure by 1950. Today, Hiroshima houses a Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum near ground zero, promoting a hope to end the existence of all nuclear weapons.
A view of Hiroshima and outlying hills, seen in the autumn of 1945, from the ruins of the Red Cross building, less than one mile from the hypocenter (US National Archives).
The Hiroshima Fire Department’s main fire station, destroyed by the blast and fire of the atomic bomb, 1,200 m (4,000 ft) from ground zero (US National Archives).
A “shadow” of a hand valve wheel on the painted wall of a gas storage tank after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Radiant heat instantly burned paint where the heat rays were not obstructed, 1,920 m (6,300 ft) from ground zero (US National Archives).
Death on a horrendous scale. This photograph and others, taken by an unknown Japanese photographer, were found in 1945 among rolls of undeveloped film in a cave outside Hiroshima by US serviceman Robert L. Capp, who was attached to the occupation forces.
Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed, and also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, published in March 2009.
)
5 Responses
umm maryam says...
thank you for remembering this. not enough people do. until this day i cannot believe that people buy the story that america had to bomb japan to stop the war. how twisted and sick.
isnt it ironic that the nation that bombed hiroshima has put itself as the moral authority of the world and calls others terrorists, calls itself fighting terrorism.
...on November 27th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Hi Umm Maryam,
Thanks for the comments. Great to hear from you.
...on November 27th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
jim cleavenger says...
Maryann…you need to get your facts re-checked. You might wish to read Wikipedia’s full account of this global WWII from beginning to end .. how Japan created their mess and in the end was warned by the allies but refused to surrender… read about the relentless attacks on innocents and the unwillingness of war-mongers who refused to surrender. The US resisted this war as long as they could … how many lives would have been lost if those bombs had not been dropped?? I suppose the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was just a day in Sunday School? They attacked us, remember? Those military and civilians were people too .. they had loved ones. Further, you have it wrong about the US. It’s people want peace; we help the world survive; always have;.. and yet our civilians were massacred on 09/11..more than 6 thousand..babies and children, too! You must be listening to more propaganda you know nothing about. Stick to what you know … apparently, it isn’t the US.
...on March 16th, 2011 at 6:12 am
Josh says...
I agree wholeheartedly with Jim, go look up operation downfall, The other alternative besides the atomic bomb was an invasion that would have probably wiped out most of the Japanese people in Japan and hundreds of thousands if not millions of American lives. And another thing, the firebombings of other cities were sometimes worse than what happened in Hiroshima. Get your facts strait, some people believe what is written here.
...on May 8th, 2011 at 6:58 pm
Anthony says...
Dear Jim,
…wikipedia is your best resource? please at least read a history book before making this claim. I am not saying I disagree with you at all, but honestly. If you want to hold your own here, you need to build an argument around a better source than wikipedia. Every professor and teacher I have ever had would constantly state how it is not a reliable source. I had a friend that worked for ChaCha, and he got fired for using wikipedia to answer questions because it was not a reliable enough source for them! If ChaCha will not use wikipedia to answer meaningless questions people text to them, I do not think it is appropriate to use it to formulate an argument about WWII.
Like I said, Jim, I do not necessarily disagree with you, but unless you are in middle school wikipedia is a ridiculous source to use to make your claim. Get off Marymam’s case and go read a real encyclopedia.
And another thing, yes I get that the nuclear bombs dropped on these two cities helped to end the war and probably saved America hundreds of thousands of dollars and American lives, but the casualties caused by these bombs were mostly civilian. Now, you can blame the Japanese government and military personnel all you want, but the civilians were innocent. I completely agree that if America had not dropped the bombs, it would have put our own country at risk and that this was an overall good thing to do, but whenever innocent people die, it is a tragedy. That makes these two events very great tragedies.
...on December 14th, 2011 at 6:53 pm