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Let's get a lock for this thing

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1 drawing matted : graphite, ink, opaque white over graphite underdrawing ; 53.3 x 38.1 cm. | Editorial cartoon shows President John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev trying to close the lid on a nuclear war trunk as the monster inside is trying to get out.

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How Hiroshima changed war and the future of man

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Reuters Pictures

Newsweek published this story under the headline "LIVING WITH THE BOMB" on July 29, 1985. Newsweek is republishing the story.

Forty years ago this summer, the human race, by its own choice and its own invention, became an endangered species. The instrument of its peril was called the atomic bomb and was the creation of men-scientists, soldiers and politicians-who had inexact knowledge of its destructive power and of its implications for man's survival. A crude prototype was tested in the New Mexico desert on July 16, 1945; its secret ingredients included Scotch tape and Kleenex, along with a core of fissionable plutonium, but it was powerful enough to shake the earth, turn the night to noon and raise a mushroom cloud seven miles high. In a flash of cosmic light, mankind had entered the atomic age and has lived at risk ever since, hostage to the bomb and to ourselves. The stopped clocks of Hiroshima placed the beginning of that age a bit after 8:15 in the morning of August 6-the moment at which the first operational bomb exploded over the heart of what had been a bustling seaport and turned it into a city of the dead. Seen from a distance, the nuclear dawn had a certain Biblical beauty, like a vision out of Genesis; an 8-year-old schoolgirl named Kay Okubo stood in awe beside a stream in the countryside and watched the mushroom shape rise up from behind a mountain, 40 miles away. The view at first hand was a glimpse of the inferno, a city become a mass funeral pyre. A women went out searching for her husband and found only his teeth in a heap of ash. A man spent the days afterward helping cremate the victims; it was 30 years before he could wash the memory of the smell from his hands.

The story in the pages that follow is the collective memoir of six people caught up in the events of the nuclear summer of 1945. One was a scientist who helped build the bomb. One was the armaments officer who loaded it aboard the Enola Gay; his daughter, 40 years later, is working for its abolition. One was the navigator who steered it to Japan. Two were among its targets and saw it fall; they became members of a new caste called hibakuska, or bomb-affected persons, one still living in Hiroshima, the other in the United States. They were strangers whose lives intersected for a millisecond at a point called Zero, 1,980 feet above central Hiroshima, and were altered by what happened there, as the world was altered.

They were players in and witnesses to the larger drama, not its prime movers; the decisions to build and drop the bomb were taken by other, grander personages. Those decisions were debated then and have been questioned ever since, from that comfortable vantage point called historical revisionism. What the inquest has sometimes neglected was the inevitability of the bomb-the tides of discovery and war commanding its invention and, once invented, its use. "The book of nature is there for all to read," Isidor I. Rabi, the physicist and Nobel laureate, mused long afterward; if the scientists at Los Alamos had not found the secret, someone someday would have. Neither was it likely that America, having the means to end the bloodiest war in human history, would not employ it.

Yet the questions first raised 40 summers ago have continued to torment and divide us. Rabi, for one, was grateful for the bomb and its success; still, when Japan surrendered a week after Hiroshirnn, he could not bring himself to open the bottle of Johnny Walker Black he had laid away for a victory toast. As the shadow of the bomb has lengthened since, the doubts nnd second guesses have proliferated. "Nobody at Los Alamos would have drearded of 10,000 atomic weapons," another of its galaxy of Nobelists, Hans Bethe, guessed recently. But the world has 50,000 now, some a thousand times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, and Bethe found his own 7-year-old grandson tortured by waking nightmares of nuclear war.

Such nightmares have become part of the common lot of mankind; in a Louis Harris poll in 1983, two-thirds of America expected a nuclear war sometime in the next 20 years. The men who make the bomb in 1945 hoped that it would blackmail humankind into keeping the peace. That hope has been realized, tenuously. But a nagging unquiet lingers beneath the surface of a world dependent for its survival on a doctrine whose acronyrn is MAD, for "mutual assured destruction." The necessities of 1945 were mother to the invention of the bomb. We have not yet devised an answer to the necessities of 1985-a more reliable guarantee than terror against the end of the world.

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How the Hiroshima bombing changed war and the future of man

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Newsweek published this story under the headline "LIVING WITH THE BOMB" on July 29, 1985. Newsweek is republishing the story. Forty years ago this summer, the human race, by its own choice and its own invention, became an endangered species.

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Remembering Hiroshima

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After 70 years, the memory may be fading. Survivors are in their 80s, and many young Japanese can no longer give the dates when American atomic bombs incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But at every anniversary the debates resurface, as impassioned and complex as ever.

There is no disputing the awesome brutality of the two bombs that killed more than 200,000 in the two cities in August 1945, most of them civilians and many in unspeakable agony. Nor is there any question that the bombs opened an era in which the very survival of the human race became hostage to geopolitical disputes. The questions that remain, and can never be resolved, are whether the bombings were necessary or moral.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki have become shrines to peace and a pacifism proclaiming that nuclear weapons are an absolute evil. Tens of thousands of people joined Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the United States ambassador to Japan, Caroline Kennedy, in Hiroshima on Thursday to mark the anniversary of the moment when a bomb nicknamed Little Boy exploded over the city.

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People released paper lanterns on Thursday during commemorations marking the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Credit Kazuhiro Nogi/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

The commemorations, with their annual calls for nuclear disarmament, can seem placid and unambiguous. But the narrative and the politics under that surface are turbulent still. The Pacific war, Japan's culpability and the bombings animate Mr. Abe's politics. He has alarmed pacifist Japanese with his drive to lift some postwar restrictions on Japan's military, and he has antagonized victims of Japan's wartime militarism, most notably Koreans and Chinese, by paying tribute to the war dead memorialized at the Yasukuni Shrine, a group that includes convicted war criminals.

In the United States, the dominant narrative is that the A-bombs were necessary to bring Japan to its knees without an invasion that would have had far greater casualties, both American and Japanese. There is also the argument that the bombs were needed to curb Soviet ambitions after World War II. Neither argument can ever be proved.

Beyond all these debates lies the haunting truth that in the 70 years since the mushroom clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United States remains the only state to have used the weapon. Harry Truman, the president who ordered the attacks, never doubted the decision - to him the atom bomb was "merely another powerful weapon in the arsenal of righteousness." But those who created it never saw it quite that way. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who played a central role in developing the A-bomb, famously quoted from Hindu scripture after the first test: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

This is not an easy legacy to shoulder. That was clear in the anguished debates over the decision to display the refurbished Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, for the 50 th anniversary of the bombing.

The debates and questioning will continue, and they should. The world has not been the same since those bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and - as the efforts to curb Iran's nuclear programs demonstrate - the threat of the doomsday weapon is very much with us.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: The Fireball That Forever Changed the World. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Opinion | Remembering Hiroshima, and How It Changed the World

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After 70 years, the memory may be fading. Survivors are in their 80s, and many young Japanese can no longer give the dates when American atomic bombs incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But at every anniversary the debates resurface, as impassioned and complex as ever.

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Why there's no modern guide to surviving a nuclear war

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The risk of thermonuclear war has rarely been greater. But despite the growing threat, the general public are less prepared than they ever have been to cope with an attack. With Trump in the White house, Putin in the Kremlin, North Korea testing ballistic missiles and the perilous state of military security, nuclear war is a real possibility.

It would kill millions (perhaps billions) of people, leave many more seriously injured, coat the planet in radioactive fallout and destroy the ecosystem. The Doomsday clock, which measures how close we are to apocalypse, has been moved from five to three minutes to midnight. Time is short - but the UK is not ready.

The reason the UK is so poorly prepared can be traced back to fairly recent times. In May 1980, the government created a series of public information films, radio broadcasts and the booklet Protect and Survive, which has now been reissued by The Imperial War museum. (The museum has said this is not in response to the current political situation, but as part of the first major exhibition on the anti-war movement.)

IWM

Protect and Survive was widely mocked for its advice, which included painting windows with white emulsion to reflect the heat flash from a nuclear explosion, storing water in toilet cisterns, and guidance on how to bury and label the dead. In response, the BBC showed a bleak film called Threads which showed how useless the advice would have been for most city dwellers. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament produced a version called Protest and Survive.

The failure of Protect and Survive is the reason the UK doesn't have public information on how to prepare for a nuclear war today.

My research reveals that the Home Office repeatedly attempted to resurrect Protect and Survive throughout the 1980s. It was hoped that a new and improved public information campaign would include the use of deep nuclear shelters, make provision for vulnerable people, and promote collective planning for a nuclear attack. The Home Office even employed an advertising agency which surreptitiously attended CND meetings to keep an eye on the opposition.

The planned new version of Protect and Survive would also cover advice on preparing for a chemical or biological attack. The Home Office's failed aim was to produce a fresh public information package, including as many as 20 new television films to be produced by 1987.

IWM

But there are three reasons why it never happened. First, other government departments, particularly the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence, did not want the population to be reminded that Britain was the base for a new range of US nuclear weapons. In 1982, the Home Defence committee considered that fear of embarrassing the US military would be a good reason not to issue new guidance on protection against nuclear attack. It stated in a secret memo:

In the light of experience at Greenham Common, the United States might be concerned about the further focusing of public attention on their UK installations.

Second, new psychological studies had appeared which suggested that people might not be willing to follow any government advice in the event of a nuclear war. A Home Office report, "Population response to war", written in 1982, decided that the social and economic burden on the UK might be such that the country would never recover.

PA

Faced with social collapse on such a massive scale, it was predicted that the population would simply not follow official advice. People would try and escape rather than staying at home and hoarding food, in line with government guidelines. It was also predicted that the majority of the population would suffer from clinical depression after a nuclear attack and be mentally unable to follow instructions.

Finally, there was deep and vocal opposition to civil defence in the United Kingdom. The advertising agency commissioned by the Home Office considered the general public to be apathetic and fatalistic with regard to their prospects for survival. Some local authorities declared themselves "nuclear free zones" and refused to consider civil defence measures. Even though a proportion of the population would have welcomed some form of advice, the critics made it difficult to produce any information that would not be immediately rejected in the media.

Ignorance is bliss

In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell and the pressing need to create a civil defence campaign disappeared along with the Cold War. Apart from some generic information on national emergencies, it is currently almost impossible to find out what we should do in the event of a nuclear attack. In some ways, this is what the government intended even before Protect and Survive, which was originally supposed to be released only if the prospect of a nuclear war looked likely.

Indeed there are good reasons for keeping us unaware. Releasing guidance may cause anxiety and even make other countries suspicious that our preparations are a sign that we intend to strike first.

Peter Kennard

On the other hand, if the government does intend to issue information at the last minute then it is taking a huge risk as to whether it can get the advice out in time. If an accidental launch, or an unexpected first strike, occurs then there may be no time. Maybe now is the right time to buy that reprinted copy of Protect and Survive - just in case.
Protect and Survive is published to coincide with IWM's major new exhibition People Power: Fighting for Peace

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Why there's no modern guide to surviving a nuclear war

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The risk of thermonuclear war has rarely been greater. But despite the growing threat, the general public are less prepared than they ever have been to cope with an attack. With Trump in the White house, Putin in the Kremlin, North Korea testing ballistic missiles and the perilous state of military security, nuclear war is a real possibility.

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The Cuban Missile Crisis

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The history of the Cuban Missile Crisis - Matthew A. Jordan

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Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons

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The Growing Dangers of the Nuclear Arms Race

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Can we prevent nuclear war?

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Can we prevent nuclear war? | Dr. Ira Helfand | TEDxVail

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The insanity of Nuclear Deterrence

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The insanity of nuclear deterrence | Robert Green | TEDxChristchurch

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I've studied nuclear war for 35 years - you should be worried

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I've studied nuclear war for 35 years -- you should be worried. | Brian Toon | TEDxMileHigh

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THE WHITE HOUSE

Washington, D.C.

IMMEDIATE RELEASE -August 6, 1945

STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of T.N.T. It had more than two thousand times the blast power of the British "Grand Slam" which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare.

The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many fold. And the end is not yet. With this bomb we have now added a new and revolutionary increase in destruction to supplement the growing power of our armed forces. In their present form these bombs are now in production and even more powerful forms are in development.

It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.

Before 1939, it was the accepted belief of scientists that it was theoretically possible to release atomic energy. But no one knew any practical method of doing it. By 1942, however, we knew that the Germans were working feverishly to find a way to add atomic energy to the other engines of war with which they hoped to enslave the world. But they failed. We may be grateful to Providence that the Germans got the V-1's and the V-2's late and in limited quantities and even more grateful that they did not get the atomic bomb at all.

The battle of the laboratories held fateful risks for us as well as the battles of the air, land, and sea, and we have now won the battle of the laboratories as we have won the other battles.

Beginning in 1940, before Pearl Harbor, scientific knowledge useful in war was pooled between the United States and Great Britain, and many priceless helps to our victories have come from that arrangement. Under that general policy the research on the atomic bomb was begun. With American and British scientists working together we entered the race of discovery against the Germans.

The United States had available the large number of scientists of distinction in the many needed areas of knowledge. It had the tremendous industrial and financial resources necessary for the project and they could be devoted to it without undue impairment of other vital war work. In the United States the laboratory work and the production plants, on which a substantial start had already been made, would be out of reach of enemy bombing, while at that time Britain was exposed to constant air attack and was still threatened with the possibility of invasion. For these reasons Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt agreed that it was wise to carry on the project here. We now have two great plants and many lesser works devoted to the production of atomic power. Employment during peak construction numbered 125,000 and over 65,000 individuals are even now engaged in operating the plants. Many have worked there for two and a half years. Few know what they have been producing. They see great quantities of material going in and they see nothing coming out of those plants, for the physical size of the explosive charge is exceedingly small. We have spent two billion dollars on the greatest scientific gamble in history-and won.

But the greatest marvel is not the size of the enterprise, its secrecy, nor its cost, but the achievement of scientific brains in putting together infinitely complex pieces of knowledge held by many men in different fields of science into a workable plan. And hardly less marvelous has been the capacity of industry to design, and of labor to operate, the machines and methods to do things never done before so that the brain child of many minds came forth in physical shape and performed as it was supposed to do. Both science and industry worked under the direction of the United States Army, which achieved a unique success in managing so diverse a problem in the advancement of knowledge in an amazingly short time. It is doubtful if such another combination could be got together in the world. What has been done is the greatest achievement of organized science in history. It was done under high pressure and without failure.

We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city. We shall destroy their docks, their factories, and their communications. Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan's power to make war.

It was to spare the Japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum of July 26 was issued at Potsdam. Their leaders promptly rejected that ultimatum. If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth. Behind this air attack will follow sea and land forces in such numbers and power as they have not yet seen and with the fighting skill of which they are already well aware.

The Secretary of War, who has kept in personal touch with all phases of the project, will immediately make public a statement giving further details.

His statement will give facts concerning the sites at Oak Ridge near Knoxville, Tennessee, and at Richland near Pasco, Washington, and an installation near Santa Fe, New Mexico. Although the workers at the sites have been making materials to be used in producing the greatest destructive forces in history they have not themselves been in danger beyond that of many other occupations, for the utmost care has been taken of their safety.

The fact that we can release atomic energy ushers in a new era in man's understanding of nature's forces. Atomic energy may in the future supplement the power that now comes from coal, oil, and falling water, but at present it cannot be produced on a basis to compete with them commercially. Before that comes there must be a long period of intensive research.

It has never been the habit of the scientists of this country or the policy of this Government to withhold from the world scientific knowledge. Normally, therefore, everything about the work with atomic energy would be made public.

But under present circumstances it is not intended to divulge the technical processes of production or all the military applications, pending further examination of possible methods of protecting us and the rest of the world from the danger of sudden destruction.

I shall recommend that the Congress of the United States consider promptly the establishment of an appropriate commission to control the production and use of atomic power within the United States. I shall give further consideration and make further recommendations to the Congress as to how atomic power can become a powerful and forceful influence towards the maintenance of world peace.

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THE WHITE HOUSEWashington, D.C.IMMEDIATE RELEASE -August 6, 1945STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATESSixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of T.N.T.

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Treaty on Non-Proliferation

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The NPT is a landmark international treaty whose objective is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology, to promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament and general and complete disarmament. The Treaty represents the only binding commitment in a multilateral treaty to the goal of disarmament by the nuclear-weapon States. Opened for signature in 1968, the Treaty entered into force in 1970. On 11 May 1995, the Treaty was extended indefinitely. A total of 191 States have joined the Treaty, including the five nuclear-weapon States. More countries have ratified the NPT than any other arms limitation and disarmament agreement, a testament to the Treaty's significance.

The Treaty is regarded as the cornerstone of the global nuclear non-proliferation regime and an essential foundation for the pursuit of nuclear disarmament. It was designed to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, to further the goals of nuclear disarmament and general and complete disarmament, and to promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy

To further the goal of non-proliferation and as a confidence-building measure between States parties, the Treaty establishes a safeguards system under the responsibility of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Safeguards are used to verify compliance with the Treaty through inspections conducted by the IAEA. The Treaty promotes cooperation in the field of peaceful nuclear technology and equal access to this technology for all States parties, while safeguards prevent the diversion of fissile material for weapons use.

General Assembly Resolutions

The provisions of the Treaty, particularly article VIII, paragraph 3, envisage a review of the operation of the Treaty every five years, a provision which was reaffirmed by the States parties at the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference.
The 2015 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, ended without the adoption of a consensus substantive outcome. After a successful 2010 Review Conference at which States parties agreed to a final document which included conclusions and recommendations for follow-on actions, including the implementation of the 1995 Resolution on the Middle East, the 2015 outcome constitutes a setback for the strengthened review process instituted to ensure accountability with respect to activities under the three pillars of the Treaty as part of the package in support of the indefinite extension of the Treaty in 1995. The preparatory process for the 2020 Review Conference is currently underway.

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On 11 May 1995, in accordance with article X, paragraph 2, the Review and Extension Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons decided that the Treaty should continue in force indefinitely (see Decision 3).

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Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT)

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The NPT is a landmark international treaty whose objective is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology, to promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament and general and complete disarmament.