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Remembering Hiroshima....Unhappy Anniversary...... |
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This week marks the 65th anniversary of the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and it's not an anniversary to celebrate.
From the historical record, it's becoming increasingly clear that these atomic bombs—which killed more than 200,000 people immediately—were unnecessary.
At 8:15 am on a clear morning on Saturday August 6, 1945, 65 years ago, US Colonel Paul Tibbets, piloting the B-29 aircraft, Enola Gay, dropped a nuclear bomb called 'Little Boy' over the central part of Hiroshima in Japan.
It exploded about 2,000 feet above the city with a blast equivalent to 13 kilotons of TNT. The bomb, unarmed during takeoff to minimize risks, was armed during the flight by US Navy Captain William Parsons. With a 60-kilogram core of uranium-235, it performed as expected.
Approximately 80,000 civilians were killed on impact.
Hiroshima's population had reached a peak of over 380,000 earlier in World War II. However, before the bombing, it had decreased because of an evacuation, to around 255,000. When the air cleared, a giant scar on the land was all that was left. It was still burning and covered by a heavy cloud of smoke that could be seen for miles.
About an hour before the bombing, Japanese radars detected the approach of American aircraft. An alert had apparently been sounded and radio broadcasting stopped in a number of cities. The planes approached at a high altitude and at around 8 am, a radar operator realized that the number of aircraft was small.
Assuming this couldn't be much of a threat, the alert was removed. The Japanese thought it was just a reconnaissance mission.
They could not have been further from the truth.
Nagasaki was destroyed by another atomic bomb dropped by the US military three days later, on August 9. In all, approximately 120,000 people were killed outright. The attack had, in every single detail, been carried out exactly as planned.
The bombs, secretly developed by the United States with assistance from the United Kingdom and Canada under the codename 'Manhattan Project', were the second and third atomic devices to be detonated. They remain the only ones ever used as weapons, rather than for the purpose of testing. The first detonation, called 'Trinity', was conducted in a desert in New Mexico on July 16, 1945.
The decision to drop the bombs was made by US President Harry S Truman, and followed over three years of direct involvement of the US in World War II.
At the time of its bombing, Hiroshima was a city of considerable significance. It was a communications centre, storage point, and assembly area. It was chosen as a target because it had not suffered damage from previous raids. The US believed this would create an ideal environment to measure the harm caused by an atomic bomb.
The first city in history subjected to nuclear warfare, Hiroshima was founded in 1589, on the coast of the Seto Inland sea. It soon became a major urban centre. During the First Sino-Japanese war, it emerged as a major supply base for the Japanese military and continued to be one during World War II.
It was the primary target of the first US nuclear attack mission and a major factor leading to the surrender of the Japanese government six days after the attacks.
In fact, one of the primary reasons given for the use of the bomb was it would force Japan to surrender unconditionally. The country went on to present its formal document of surrender to the Allied powers on August 15.
By the end of 1945, 60,000 more people had died due to radiation poisoning, bringing the total killed in Hiroshima in that year to 140,000. Since then, thousands more have died of radiation-related causes. According to figures released on August 6, 2004, the death toll was 237,062. To date, there are around 270,000 hibakusha -- a term that literally means 'bomb affected people' -- still living in Japan.
After the attack, Hiroshima was rebuilt. New buildings arose. In 1949, it was proclaimed a City of Peace by the Japanese parliament. The closest surviving building to the location of the detonation was designated the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. In 1994, Hiroshima hosted the Asian Games. Four years later, the Hiroshima Peace Institute was established.
The face of the city has, for all practical purposes, changed completely. What lies beneath, however, continues to shape the modern consciousness of Japan and her people around the world.
Some Unhappy Conclusions...
The old school of thought is that the bombs saved hundreds of thousands of lives by forestalling a bloody invasion of the island. But another approach as suggested by many was had the United States detonated a demonstration bomb on an unpopulated island to prove to Japan how lethal these weapons were, it was possible that the Japanese government would have surrendered.
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