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Fantastic Overview of the history of the atomic bombs

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Fantastic Overview of the history of the atomic bombs

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Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - Causes, Impact & Lives Lost

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On August 6, 1945, during World War II (1939-45), an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima, immediately killing 80,000 people. Three days later, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people.

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Q SHIPS| Men risked their lives on the mystery Q ships

During the First World War Britain had a secret weapon - the decoy 'Q' boats. Inside Out investigates the ships and the brave seamen who sailed in them.
Britain's secret weapon during the First World War was built in the dockyards of Devonport and other South West ports.

The Q-ships were Britain's amazing answer to the German's potent new weapon - the submarine or U-boat.

These fighting vessels were a great trick of disguise and cunning - they were actually ordinary ships built as decoys.

Battle lines

During World War One Germany's fearsome new weapon was the submarine.

The German strategy was to starve Britain to defeat by sinking every ship it could.

880,000 tons of shipping went to the bottom of the seas in one month alone.

This was a fight to the death and the biggest casualty was the traditional rules of war which sank without trace

There was only one solution - to outwit the Germans with a clever plan - the Q-ships. More than 200 boats were disguised and sent into action against the U-boat menace.

Secret men of war

Many Q ships were sunk without trace

In the ports of the South West, ships of every shape and size were transformed - trawlers, steamers, schooners and cargo ships were all transformed secretly into men of war.

The ships were nicknamed Q-ships after the original 'Q' numbers given to the some of these special service decoy vessels.

The ships had guns under dummy lifeboats or hidden under fake funnels and awnings. Some of the ships used paint to hide their cache of weaponry.

The idea was to lure the U-boat into attacking these decoy ships which would unleash their hidden weaponry.

The men on these mystery ships showed courage beyond the call of duty. Until now their story is little known for theirs was a secret mission.

Courage under fire

The Q- Ships

1914 - 3 ships entered service

Forty four of the Q-ships were destroyed by the U-boats, some were sunk without trace.

However the Q-boats were able to destroy fifteen enemy boats, with many other submarines limping back to port for repairs.

But the Q-ships sustained their own losses as illustrated in the table below:

During the First World War there were 70 duels between Q-ships and U-boats. One of the fiercest fought involved a battle off the Devon coast involving the HMS Stock Force in 1918.

The boat was fatally hit and sunk in Bigbury Bay by a U-boat after luring the German vessel to the surface.

This ship was a small converted collier captained by Harold Auten who was awarded the VC for his courageous actions.

Remnants of war

In this famous mismatch of strength, the Q-boats were David compared with the Goliath-like power of the U-boats.

But the battling spirit of the men who fought in the Q-boats lives on.

These decoy ships played a valuable part in the Allies anti-U-boat campaign.

Today only one of the boats survives - the HMS President moored on the Thames.

It remains a testament to the unsung heroes who risked their lives under a veil of secrecy.

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Q SHIPS| Men risked their lives on the mystery Q ships During the First World War Britain had a secret weapon - the decoy 'Q' boats. Inside Out investigates the ships and the brave seamen who sailed in them. Britain's secret weapon during the First World War was built in the dockyards of Devonport and other South West ports.

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After the Interim Committee decided to drop the bomb, the Target Committee determined the locations to be hit, and President Truman issued the Potsdam Proclamation as Japan's final warning, the world soon learned the meaning of "complete and utter destruction." The first two atomic bombs ever used were dropped on Japan in early August, 1945.

For a detailed timeline of the bombings, please see Hiroshima and Nagasaki Bombing Timeline.

Hiroshima

On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. The bomb was known as "Little Boy", a uranium gun-type bomb that exploded with about thirteen kilotons of force. At the time of the bombing, Hiroshima was home to 280,000-290,000 civilians as well as 43,000 soldiers. Between 90,000 and 166,000 people are believed to have died from the bomb in the four-month period following the explosion. The U.S. Department of Energy has estimated that after five years there were perhaps 200,000 or more fatalities as a result of the bombing, while the city of Hiroshima has estimated that 237,000 people were killed directly or indirectly by the bomb's effects, including burns, radiation sickness, and cancer.

The bombing of Hiroshima, codenamed Operation Centerboard I, was approved by Curtis LeMay on August 4, 1945. The B-29 plane that carried Little Boy from Tinian Island in the western Pacific to Hiroshima was known as the Enola Gay, after pilot Paul Tibbets' mother. Along with Tibbets, copilot Robert Lewis, bombardier Tom Ferebee, navigator Theodore Van Kirk, and tail gunner Robert Caron were among the others on board the Enola Gay. Below are their eyewitness accounts of the first atomic bomb dropped on Japan.

Pilot Paul Tibbets: "We turned back to look at Hiroshima. The city was hidden by that awful cloud... boiling up, mushrooming, terrible and incredibly tall. No one spoke for a moment; then everyone was talking. I remember (copilot Robert) Lewis pounding my shoulder, saying 'Look at that! Look at that! Look at that!' (Bombardier) Tom Ferebee wondered about whether radioactivity would make us all sterile. Lewis said he could taste atomic fission. He said it tasted like lead."

Navigator Theodore Van Kirk recalls the shockwaves from the explosion: "(It was) very much as if you've ever sat on an ash can and had somebody hit it with a baseball bat... The plane bounced, it jumped and there was a noise like a piece of sheet metal snapping. Those of us who had flown quite a bit over Europe thought that it was anti-aircraft fire that had exploded very close to the plane." On viewing the atomic fireball: "I don't believe anyone ever expected to look at a sight quite like that. Where we had seen a clear city two minutes before, we could now no longer see the city. We could see smoke and fires creeping up the sides of the mountains."

Tail gunner Robert Caron: "The mushroom itself was a spectacular sight, a bubbling mass of purple-gray smoke and you could see it had a red core in it and everything was burning inside. As we got farther away, we could see the base of the mushroom and below we could see what looked like a few-hundred-foot layer of debris and smoke and what have you... I saw fires springing up in different places, like flames shooting up on a bed of coals."

Six miles below the crew of the Enola Gay, the people of Hiroshima were waking up and preparing for their daily routines. It was 8:16 A.M. Up to that point, the city had been largely spared by the rain of conventional air bombing that had ravaged many other Japanese cities. Rumors abounded as to why this was so, from the fact that many Hiroshima residents had emigrated to the U.S. to the supposed presence of President Truman's mother in the area. Still, many citizens, including schoolchildren, were recruited to prepare for future bombings by tearing down houses to create fire lanes, and it was at this task that many were laboring or preparing to labor on the morning of August 6. Just an hour before, air raid sirens had sounded as a single B-29, the weather plane for the Little Boy mission, approached Hiroshima. A radio broadcast announced the sighting of the Enola Gay soon after 8 A.M.

The city of Hiroshima was annihilated by the explosion. 70,000 of 76,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed, and 48,000 of those were entirely razed. Survivors recalled the indescribable and incredible experience of seeing that the city had ceased to exist.

A college history professor: "I climbed Hikiyama Hill and looked down. I saw that Hiroshima had disappeared... I was shocked by the sight... What I felt then and still feel now I just can't explain with words. Of course I saw many dreadful scenes after that-but that experience, looking down and finding nothing left of Hiroshima-was so shocking that I simply can't express what I felt... Hiroshima didn't exist-that was mainly what I saw-Hiroshima just didn't exist."

Medical doctor Michihiko Hachiya: "Nothing remained except a few buildings of reinforced concrete... For acres and acres the city was like a desert except for scattered piles of brick and roof tile. I had to revise my meaning of the word destruction or choose some other word to describe what I saw. Devastation may be a better word, but really, I know of no word or words to describe the view."

Writer Yoko Ota: "I reached a bridge and saw that the Hiroshima Castle had been completely leveled to the ground, and my heart shook like a great wave... the grief of stepping over the corpses of history pressed upon my heart."

Those who were close to the epicenter of the explosion were simply vaporized by the intensity of the heat. One man left only a dark shadow on the steps of a bank as he sat. The mother of Miyoko Osugi, a 13-year-old schoolgirl working on the fire lanes, never found her body, but she did find her geta sandal. The area covered by Miyoko's foot remained light, while the rest of it was darkened by the blast.

Many others in Hiroshima, farther from the Little Boy epicenter, survived the initial explosion but were severely wounded, including injuries from and burns across much of their body. Among these people, panic and chaos were rampant as they struggled to find food and water, medical assistance, friends and relatives and to flee the firestorms that engulfed many residential areas.

Having no point of reference for the bomb's absolute devastation, some survivors believed themselves to have been transported to a hellish version of the afterlife. The worlds of the living and the dead seemed to converge.

A Protestant minister: "The feeling I had was that everyone was dead. The whole city was destroyed... I thought this was the end of Hiroshima-of Japan-of humankind... This was God's judgment on man."

A six-year-old boy: "Near the bridge there were a whole lot of dead people... Sometimes there were ones who came to us asking for a drink of water. They were bleeding from their faces and from their mouths and they had glass sticking in their bodies. And the bridge itself was burning furiously... The details and the scenes were just like Hell."

A sociologist: "My immediate thought was that this was like the hell I had always read about... I had never seen anything which resembled it before, but I thought that should there be a hell, this was it-the Buddhist hell, where we were thought that people who could not attain salvation always went... And I imagined that all of these people I was seeing were in the hell I had read about."

A boy in fifth grade: "I had the feeling that all the human beings on the face of the earth had been killed off, and only the five of us (his family) were left behind in an uncanny world of the dead."

A grocer: "The appearance of people was... well, they all had skin blackened by burns... They had no hair because their hair was burned, and at a glance you couldn't tell whether you were looking at them from in front or in back... Many of them died along the road-I can still picture them in my mind-like walking ghosts... They didn't look like people of this world."

Many people traveled to central places such as hospitals, parks, and riverbeds in an attempt to find relief from their pain and misery. However, these locations soon became scenes of agony and despair as many injured and dying people arrived and were unable to receive proper care.

A sixth-grade girl: "Bloated corpses were drifting in those seven formerly beautiful rivers; smashing cruelly into bits the childish pleasure of the little girl, the peculiar odor of burning human flesh rose everywhere in the Delta City, which had changed to a waste of scorched earth."

A fourteen-year-old boy: "Night came and I could hear many voices crying and groaning with pain and begging for water. Someone cried, 'Damn it! War tortures so many people who are innocent!' Another said, 'I hurt! Give me water!' This person was so burned that we couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman. The sky was red with flames. It was burning as if scorching heaven."

For more testimonials from survivors, visit Voices from Japan.

Nagasaki

Three days after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9 - a 21-kiloton plutonium device known as "Fat Man." On the day of the bombing, an estimated 263,000 were in Nagasaki, including 240,000 Japanese residents, 9,000 Japanese soldiers, and 400 prisoners of war. Prior to August 9, Nagasaki had been the target of small scale bombing by the United States. Though the damage from these bombings was relatively small, it created considerable concern in Nagasaki and many people were evacuated to rural areas for safety, thus reducing the population in the city at the time of the nuclear attack. It is estimated that between 40,000 and 75,000 people died immediately following the atomic explosion, while another 60,000 people suffered severe injuries. Total deaths by the end of 1945 may have reached 80,000.

The decision to use the second bomb was made on August 7, 1945 on Guam. Its use was calculated to indicate that the United States had an endless supply of the new weapon for use against Japan and that the United States would continue to drop atomic bombs on Japan until the country surrendered unconditionally.

The city of Nagasaki, however, was not the primary target for the second atomic bomb. Instead, officials had selected the city of Kokura, where Japan had one of its largest munitions plants.

The B-29 "Bockscar", piloted Major Charles Sweeney, was assigned to deliver the "Fat Man" to the city of Kokura on the morning of August 9, 1945. Accompanying Sweeney on the mission were copilots Charles Donald Albury and Fred J. Olivi, weaponeer Frederick Ashworth, and bombadier Kermit Beahan. At 3:49am, "Bockscar" and five other B-29s departed the island of Tinian and headed towards Kokura.

When the plane arrived over the city nearly seven hours later, thick clouds and drifting smoke from fires started by a major firebombing raid on nearby Yawata the previous day covered most of the area over Kokura, obscuring the aiming point. Pilot Charles Sweeney made three bomb runs over the next fifty minutes, but bombardier Beahan was unable to drop the bomb because he could not see the target visually. By the time of the third bomb run, Japanese antiaircraft fire was getting close, and Second Lieutenant Jacob Beser, who was monitoring Japanese communications, reported activity on the Japanese fighter direction radio bands.

Running low on fuel, the crew aboard Bockscar decided to head for the secondary target, Nagasaki. When the B-29 arrived over the city twenty minutes later, the downtown area was also covered by dense clouds. Frederick Ashworth, the plane's weaponeer proposed bombing Nagasaki using radar. At that moment, a small opening in the clouds at the end of the three-minute bomb run permitted bombardier Kermit Beahan to identify target features.

At 10:58 AM local time, Bockscar visually dropped Fat Man. It exploded 43 seconds later with a blast yield equivalent to 21 kilotons of TNT at an altitude of 1,650 feet, about 1.5 miles northwest of the intended aiming point.

The radius of total destruction from the atomic blast was about one mile, followed by fires across the northern portion of the city to two miles south of where the bomb had been dropped. In contrast to many modern aspects of Hiroshima, almost all of the buildings in Nagasaki were of old-fashioned Japanese construction, consisting of wood or wood-frame buildings with wood walls and tile roofs. Many of the smaller industries and business establishments were also situated in buildings of wood or other materials not designed to withstand explosions. As a result, the atomic explosion over Nagasaki leveled nearly every structure in the blast radius.

The failure to drop Fat Man at the precise bomb aim point caused the atomic blast to be confined to the Urakami Valley. As a consequence, a major portion of the city was protected from the explosion. The Fat Man was dropped over the city's industrial valley midway between the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works in the south and the Mitsubishi-Urakami Ordnance Works in the north. The resulting explosion had a blast yield equivalent to 21 kilotons of TNT, roughly the same as the Trinity blast. Nearly half of the city was completely destroyed.

Bockscar's copilot Fred J. Olivi published a detailed account of the effects of the atomic explosion over Nagasaki. Here are some of his reactions:

Olivi: "Suddenly, the light of a thousand suns illuminated the cockpit. Even with my dark welder's goggles, I winced and shut my eyes for a couple of seconds. I guessed we were about seven miles from "ground zero" and headed directly away from the target, yet the light blinded me for an instant. I had never experienced such an intense bluish light, maybe three or four times brighter than the sun shining above us."

"I've never seen anything like it! Biggest explosion I've ever seen...This plume of smoke I'm seeing is hard to explain. A great white mass of flame is seething within the white mushroom shaped cloud. It has a pinkish, salmon color. The base is black and is breaking a little way down from the mushroom."

"The Mushroom cloud was coming right at us. I immediately looked up and could see that he was right, the cloud was getting close to Bockscar. We had been told not to fly through the atomic cloud because it was extremely dangerous to the crew and aircraft. Knowing this, Sweeney put Bockscar into a steep dive to the right, away from the cloud, throttles wide open. For a few moments we could not tell if we were out-running the ominous cloud or if it was gaining on us, but gradually we pulled away from the dangerous radioactive cloud before it engulfed us, much to everyone's relief."

Tatsuichiro Akizuki: "All the buildings I could see were on fire... Electricity poles were wrapped in flame like so many pieces of kindling... It seemed as if the earth itself emitted fire and smoke, flames that writhed up and erupted from underground. The sky was dark, the ground was scarlet, and in between hung clouds of yellowish smoke. Three kinds of color-black, yellow, and scarlet-loomed ominously over the people, who ran about like so many ants seeking to escape... It seemed like the end of the world."

For more testimonials from survivors, visit Voices from Japan.

Aftermath

On August 14, Japan surrendered. Journalist George Weller was the "first into Nagasaki" and described the mysterious "atomic illness" (the onset of radiation sickness) that was killing patients who outwardly appeared to have escaped the bomb's impact. Controversial at the time and for years later, Weller's articles were not allowed to be released until 2006.

Controversy

The debate over the bomb - whether there should have been a test demonstration, whether the Nagasaki bomb was necessary, and more - continues to this day.

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Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - 1945 - Nuclear Museum

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The first atomic bomb, Little Boy, was dropped on Japan on August 6, 1945.

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Hydrogen Bomb vs. Atomic Bomb: What’s The Difference?

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The Hiroshima atomic bomb killed 70,000 humans instantly with a following 70,000 injured; it was the highest death toll ever in history caused by a single weapon.

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Moral Debate: Was it right ot drop the bombs

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Moral Debate: Was it right ot drop the bombs

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The bomb was dropped to force a quick Japanese surrender. American commanders said it would save money and the lives of American servicemen and Japanese soldiers and civilians too. They said that to continue the war for weeks or months with conventional bombing and a US land invasion could have caused millions of Japanese deaths.

Retribution against the Japanese

President Truman justified his decision by pointing to the unprovoked Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour and the murder of American prisoners. A few days after the bombing he wrote: "When you have to deal with a beast you have to treat him as a beast."

Demonstration of power

The development of the bomb cost billions of dollars, and American leaders wanted to justify the expense. They wanted to demonstrate to the Japanese that they faced overwhelmingly superior forces. They also wanted their new rivals, the Soviet Union, to see their powerful new weapon in action.

Was it a just decision?

In 1945, the idea of just war was firmly established in international law. In a just war, only combatants may be specifically targeted. Harm caused to civilians must be proportional to military ends and any harm caused must be necessary for the achievement of military goals. However, some argue that all citizens contribute to the war effort and can be a legitimate target in some cases.

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The bomb was dropped to force a quick Japanese surrender. American commanders said it would save money and the lives of American servicemen and Japanese soldiers and civilians too. They said that to continue the war for weeks or months with conventional bombing and a US land invasion could have caused millions of Japanese deaths.

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U.S. President Donald Trump is scheduled to meet with South Korean President Moon Jae-in during the Group of 20 summit, where they are likely to discuss stalled nuclear negotiations with North Korea.

Experts said the meeting on the sidelines of the two-day gathering that begins Friday in Buenos Aires is unlikely to resolve the differences between Washington and Pyongyang over the North's nuclear weapons program.

The impasse began when North Korea abruptly canceled a planned meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in early November.

During his meeting with Trump, Moon is expected to push for a second summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, according to South Korean news media reports.

Pressure and dialogue
Washington has been pursuing a dual policy of employing both pressure and dialogue simultaneously, as its differences with Pyongyang have been growing, while Seoul has been prioritizing improving ties with Pyongyang.

"I doubt the meeting between President Trump and President Moon at the G-20 meeting will break the stalemate in U.S.-North Korea talks," said Gary Samore, the White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction during the Obama administration.

"Washington and Pyongyang remain very far apart on the scope and pace of denuclearization and sanctions relief, and neither side seems prepared to make major concessions at this time," he said.

Bruce Klingner, a former CIA division chief for the Koreas who is now a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, also believes the deadlock will not end, because "Pyongyang refuses to engage" in high-level talks with Washington and is reluctant to give up its nuclear weapons program.

"The stalemate is due, as was the case of every previous failed attempt at diplomacy with North Korea, to the regime's unwillingness to abandon its nuclear arsenal," Klingner said.

Christopher Hill, a chief negotiator with North Korea during the George W. Bush administration, agrees.

"I think the major challenge is North Korea has not expressed any interest in denuclearization," he said.
Can Seoul move Pyongyang?
Hill suggested Trump should tell Moon that North Korea needs to take concrete steps toward denuclearization.

However, Dennis Wilder, the National Security Council's former senior director for East Asian affairs during the George W. Bush administration, questioned whether Seoul has the leverage to push Pyongyang toward that end.

"The only way that it will break the deadlock is if you believe somehow the South Koreans could convince the North Koreans to do the right thing," Wilder said. "I'm not sure that they have that power."

Some experts warn that Washington and Pyongyang could lose the momentum for dialogue if the current standoff persists.

Klinger said the upcoming summit could "underscore the growing divergence between Washington and Seoul over how to achieve North Korean denuclearization."
US still hopeful
Despite the stalemate, the U.S. insists that it remains hopeful that talks will resume.

Pompeo told reporters Wednesday that he was "very hopeful" that the U.S. will have "senior-level meetings before too long."

During Tuesday's press briefing, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said, "We are in frequent contact with North Korean officials. That's not changed. We have our special representative, Stephen Biegun, who is leading those conversations."

North Korea accused the U.S. this week of using human rights issues - and a U.N. resolution condemning the country's human rights violations - as a tool to pressure Pyongyang.

According to North Korea's state-run newspaper Rodong Sinmun, "The reason that the Americans are so obsessed with this absurdity is that they want to sully the image of our republic in order to justify their racket for sanctions and pressure, and to extract our concessions in their negotiations with us."

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голос америки

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Trump, South Korea's Moon to Meet at G-20 with North Korea Talks Stalled

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U.S. President Donald Trump is scheduled to meet with South Korean President Moon Jae-in during the Group of 20 summit, where they are likely to discuss stalled nuclear negotiations with North Korea. Experts said the meeting on the sidelines of the two-day gathering that begins Friday in Buenos Aires is unlikely to resolve the differences between Washington and Pyongyang over the North's nuclear weapons program.

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With Magazines+, you get fresh, high-interest content delivered all year long-in print, online, or both. Every single story, video, and activity is designed to hook your students and keep them engaged. And because Magazines+ complements your curriculum, it's easy to implement during any part of the school day!

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Scholastic Classroom & News Magazines | Subscribe Now!

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Scholastic Magazines+ cover the latest topics to enhance instruction in math, science, reading, social studies, and more! Subscribe Today!

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With Magazines+, you get fresh, high-interest content delivered all year long-in print, online, or both. Every single story, video, and activity is designed to hook your students and keep them engaged. And because Magazines+ complements your curriculum, it's easy to implement during any part of the school day!

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Scholastic Classroom & News Magazines | Subscribe Now!

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Scholastic Magazines+ cover the latest topics to enhance instruction in math, science, reading, social studies, and more! Subscribe Today!

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AtomicBombMuseum.org - The Pursuit of Peace

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The postwar Japanese experience has been a counterpoint struggle between the persistent advocacy of a peaceful world, as evident in huge public rallies and in the many levels of personal involvement in peace studies and promotion, on the one hand, and the reckless increase in…

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Major population groupings

1. Persons present in Hiroshima or Nagasaki at bombing time. Of the regular resident population, many children and older persons had been previously evacuated, while certain outsiders were working in the cities on their specific bombing days. Overall, the estimated "physically present" population of Hiroshima on August 6 was 340,000-350,000. Nagasaki's estimated "physically present" population on August 9 was 90,000-120,000.

2. Early entrants into both cities following the bombings, mainly soldiers, firefighters, medical workers, and other helping personnel.

3. Persons who suffered radiation injuries in the areas surrounding the two bombed cities.

Almost all persons in the above groupings, young or old, also fell into one of the following groups: (1) broken families; (2) A-bomb orphans; (3) orphaned elderly.

Hiroshima

Of the city's 298 medical doctors, 270 (90%) became A-bomb victims. Casualty rates among pharmacists, nurses, and other medical professionals ranged between 80% and 93%. Eighteen emergency hospitals and 32 first-aid clinics were destroyed, and most of the workers needed to restore these health facilities were killed or injured. Nearby army medical facilities were also mostly destroyed.

In sum, approximately 90% of all medical personnel were dead or disabled, and remaining medical facilities were thrown into great disrepair and confusion.
All citizens faced desperate conditions; the young and old, all the more so.

Nagasaki

In the 2-km zone of total destruction around ground zero in Nagasaki's Urakami valley, the city's chief medical facilities were destroyed. These included Nagasaki Medical University and its related hospital, the Urakami branch of Mitsubishi Hospital, Urakami First Hospital, and some other smaller health care institutions.

Of the 70 or so doctors in private practice in the city, twenty were dead and twenty more seriously wounded; only 30 were available to help the mass of A-bomb victims.

As a major port city, Nagasaki was surrounded by various naval installations. Medical personnel from several naval hospitals (Isahaya, Sasebo, Omura, and other places) came with support personnel to give assistance, making the overall situation somewhat better than in Hiroshima.

Even so, food, clothing, medicine, and other relief supplies in Nagasaki were, as in Hiroshima, extremely scarce. Moreover, heavy rains hit both cities in September, making the struggle to survive desperately difficult and miserable.

Local ability to mobilize health care personnel and restore medical facilities was severely hampered by the overall loss of non-military economic wealth (65 billion yen nationwide). Of this total, Hiroshima (884 million yen) and Nagasaki (380 million yen) together suffered over 2% of the national total.

Political restraints on recovery

On top of the enormous physical, medical, and social damages imposed on Japan by the two atomic bombings, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Occupation (SCAP) imposed another onerous handicap: censorship. Formally termed the Press Code, officially issued by the Occupation GHQ on September 19, 1945, it prohibited the publication of all reports and studies of A-bomb damages, including medical and scientific studies of all injuries and losses suffered by A-bomb victims in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, whether in newspapers, magazines, scholarly journals, books, or other public means. Thus the A-bombed citizens struggled with ignorance of the many medical and social aspects of the decimated lives.

There were minor exceptions. The Hiroshima-based magazine, Chugoku Bunka, devoted its initial issue (March 10, 1946) to A-bomb damages. A Manhattan Project team published its report, The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on June 29, 1946. And the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey Team completed its report, The Effects of the Air Attack on the Cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the following day. These official documents, however, were printed in English and, in any case, did not touch deeply on the sufferings of the two A-bombed cities.

Most importantly, serious research on the extent and gravity of A-bomb damages and injuries could not be publicly printed and distributed by any Japanese persons or organizations, thus handicapping the surviving medical personnel trying to heal and assuage the thousands of A-bomb victims. The most revealing item, perhaps, is that the Japanese characters for "atomic bomb" ( genshi bakudan, or the short form, genbaku) could not even be used in public print. This applied to all forms: newspapers, magazines, books, public bulletins, and of course, movies.

Cameramen of the Japanese movie firm Nippon Eiga-sha were arrested by American MPs in Nagasaki on October 17, 1945, and two days later the photographing of A-bomb scenes was prohibited. A formal prohibition was issued by GHQ on December 12. It would be almost seven years later until, after the Occupation ended, the weekly magazine Asahi Gurafu ( Asahi Graph) filled an entire issue with heretofore unpublicized photographs of A-bomb damages and victims-the first A-bomb-related photos to be published in the postwar era.

One of the most moving instances of resistance to the Press Code was a small volume of tanka (a Japanese verse form of 31 syllables), penned by a hibakusha poet named Shinoe Shoda in Hiroshima. Titled Sange, it decried the cruelty of the bomb. As publication of all A-bomb-related materials was strictly banned, she took her manuscript to Tadao Nakamura, a clerk in the printing shop of a Hiroshima prison, who mimeographed 150 copies in December 1947. Shoda distributed copies to other hibakusha, all at her own expense and, of course, without SCAP permission. A hand-written copy of Sange was later donated to the Hiroshima Peace Cultural Foundation.

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Persons present in Hiroshima or Nagasaki at bombing time. Of the regular resident population, many children and older persons had been previously evacuated, while certain outsiders were working in the cities on their specific bombing days. Overall, the estimated "physically present" population of Hiroshima on August 6 was 340,000-350,000.

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Newsela | Opinion: Obama's visit to Hiroshima highlights the positive

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Obama keeps the peace with historic visit

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Michiko Tsukamoto, who was just 10 years old when an atomic bomb was dropped over her hometown of Hiroshima in 1945, on Tuesday urged countries that have not signed a landmark nuclear weapons ban treaty to do so quickly.

"Last year the nuclear ban treaty was made. I felt years and years of (the) hibakusha's work bore fruit and we are one step closer to achieving our dream of a nuclear-free world," she said at a U.N. headquarters event.

The treaty, which was adopted in July last year by 122 countries, will come into force after 50 countries sign and ratify it. So far 69 countries have signed it and 19 ratified it.

"I hope for a world where everyone thinks that having nuclear weapons is a shame," she said. "We do not have much time and I hope that every country joins this treaty and creates a world without nuclear weapons."

The average age of the survivors, known in Japanese as hibakusha, is now said to be 82. As they face health problems while their numbers dwindle, it is increasingly difficult for them to speak out at domestic and international events.

The 84-year-old Tsukamoto, who has been designated by the Foreign Ministry as a special communicator for a nuclear-free world, is part of a Japanese nongovernmental organization's project that has taken her and others like her around the world to promote nuclear arms abolition.

Tsukamoto spoke out at an event held on the fringes of talks on disarmament and international security by a U.N. committee .

"I think there is nobody like the hibakushas who can tell the story," Austria's ambassador in Geneva, Elisabeth Tichy-Fisslberger, said. "We all know that this tragedy has been instrumental in bringing about the treaty."

Austria has been at the forefront of pushing for the nuclear weapons ban treaty and Tichy-Fisslberger announced that Vienna is volunteering to host the first conference of the parties to the treaty once it enters into force.

Mexico's deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Juan Sandoval Mendiolea, also stressed how important it is to hear about the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons.

"There cannot be another face more clear, and more sincere, and more legitimate to oppose nuclear weapons than the hibakusha," he said.

Like Austria, Mexico has also been an active proponent of the treaty and hosted a major conference in 2014.

"The U.N. plays a big role for world peace, I think we should work together and fight together against the pressure from nuclear-armed states," said Tsukamoto. "Humans and nuclear weapons cannot live together!"

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A-bomb survivor, supporters call on nations to join nuke ban pact | The Japan Times

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Michiko Tsukamoto, who was just 10 years old when an atomic bomb was dropped over her hometown of Hiroshima in 1945, on Tuesday urged countries that have not signed a landmark nuclear weapons ban treaty to do so quickly. "Last year the nuclear ban treaty was made.

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Reactions of crew members that dropped the bombs

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Reactions of crew members that dropped the bombs

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On August 6, 1945, the B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. Twelve men were on that flight. Some chose to keep a low profile and others spoke out about their place in history. Almost all had something to say after the war.

The 509th Composite Group was formed by the U.S. Army Air Force to deliver and deploy the first atomic bombs during World War II. The group was segregated from the rest of the military and trained in secret. Even those in the group only knew as much as they needed to know in order to perform their duties. The group deployed to Tinian in 1945 with 15 B-29 bombers, flight crews, ground crews, and other personnel, a total of about 1770 men. The mission to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan (special mission 13) involved seven planes, but the one we remember was the Enola Gay.

Air Force captain Theodore "Dutch" Van Kirk did not know the destructive force of the nuclear bomb before Hiroshima. He was 24 years old at that time, a veteran of 58 missions in North Africa. Paul Tibbets told him this mission would shorten or end the war, but Van Kirk had heard that line before. Hiroshima made him a believer. Van Kirk felt the bombing of Hiroshima was worth the price in that it ended the war before the invasion of Japan, which promised to be devastating to both sides.

I honestly believe the use of the atomic bomb saved lives in the long run. There were a lot of lives saved. Most of the lives saved were Japanese.

In 2005, Van Kirk came as close as he ever got to regret.

I pray no man will have to witness that sight again. Such a terrible waste, such a loss of life. We unleashed the first atomic bomb, and I hope there will never be another. I pray that we have learned a lesson for all time. But I'm not sure that we have.

After the war, Van Kirk got a masters degree in chemical engineering and worked for DuPont until his retirement. Van Kirk passed away in 2014.

Thomas Ferebee pushed the button that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. He slept in the plane both before and after he did his part. After the war, Ferebee stayed with the Air Force, serving in the Strategic Air Command and in Vietnam. He retired as a full Colonel.

Colonel Ferebee, who retired from the Air Force in 1970, always argued that the Hiroshima bomb was necessary. "I'm convinced that the bombing saved many lives by ending the war," he told Newsweek magazine in 1970.

That doesn't mean he had no opinion on the further use of such weapons.

"Now we should look back and remember what just one bomb did, or two bombs," he told The Charlotte Observer in 1995, the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. "Then I think we should realize that this can't happen again."

Colonel Ferebee died in Florida in 2000, at the age of 81.

Army Air Force radar specialist Jacob Beser was the only man who served on both the Enola Gay in the Hiroshima bombing mission and the Bock's Car three days later when its crew bombed Nagasaki. He couldn't look at the detonation of the bombs because he was charged with monitoring for outside signals that could have detonated the bomb early and monitoring for signals of the proper detonation. This is addition for keeping an eye on radar for any enemy planes.

In this 1985 interview for the Washington Post, Beser was asked if he would do it again.

Given the same circumstances in the same kind of context, the answer is yes. However, you have to admit that the circumstances don't exist now. They probably never will again. I have no regrets, no remorse about it. As far as our country was concerned, we were three years downstream in a war, going on four. The world had been at war, really, from the '30s in China, continuously, and millions and millions of people had been killed. Add to that the deliberate killing that went on in Europe, [and] it's kind of ludicrous to say well, geez, look at all those people that were instantly murdered. In November of 1945 there was an invasion of Japan planned. Three million men were gonna be thrown against Japan. There were about three million Japanese digging in for the defense of their homeland, and there was a casualty potential of over a million people. That's what was avoided. If you take the highest figures of casualties of both cities, say, 300,000 combined casualties in Hiroshima [and] Nagasaki, versus a million, I'm sorry to say, it's a good tradeoff. It's a very cold way to look at it, but it's the only way to look at it. Now looking into tomorrow, that's something else again. I don't have any pat answers for that.

After the war, Beser was an engineer at Sandia Laboratories where nuclear research continued and at Westinghouse where he worked on classified projects for the military. He retired in 1985. In 1988, Beser wrote a book called Hiroshima and Nagasaki Revisited. He died of cancer in 1992 at age 71.

There isn't a lot of biographical information available on radar operator Joe Stiborik, except for some of his reminiscences of the mission.

Joe Stiborik remembered the crew sitting in stunned silence on the return flight. The only words he recollected hearing were Lewis's "My God, what have we done." He explained, "I was dumbfounded. Remember, nobody had ever seen what an A-bomb could do before. Here was a whole damn town nearly as big as Dallas, one minute all in good shape and the next minute disappeared and covered with fires and smoke...There was almost no talk I can remember on our trip back to the base. It was just too much to express in words, I guess. We were all in a kind of state of shock. I think the foremost thing in all our minds was that this thing was going to bring an end to the war and we tried to look at it that way."

Stiborik died of a heart attack in 1984 at age 69.

Morris Jeppson was only 23 years old when he was assigned to accompany the atomic bomb on the Enola Gay. It was his duty to arm the bomb and make sure it would work. Jeppson had the power to abort the mission if it didn't. It was his first and last mission of the war. Jeppson had worked in developing the mechanics of the bomb, and after the war he continued on the nuclear path. He studied physics at Berkeley and worked in the radiation laboratory there. Then he worked on developing hydrogen thermonuclear weapons at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. Jeppson went on to invent and market hi-tech machinery for medical and industrial uses.

In 1995, Jeppson looked back at the Hiroshima mission.

Until the 509th reunion that year Jeppson hadn't given the mission much thought. "Those bomb plugs were just kicking around in a drawer" for years, he says. Still, he maintains that dropping the bomb on Hiroshima was a necessary means to help end the war. He points to wartime concerns that Germany was developing nuclear bomb technology. "If that had happened, the world would be an entirely different place (today)," he says.

Jeppson passed away in 2010.

Richard Nelson was the youngest of the Enola Gay crew. He was 20 years old in August of 1945. He relayed the news of the atomic bomb to his superiors in code, who forwarded it to President Truman: "Results excellent." After the war, Nelson got a degree in business administration and made a career as a salesman. Fifty years later, he had no regrets about his part in the mission.

"War is a terrible thing," he told The Riverside Press-Enterprise on the 50th anniversary of the bombing. "It takes and it destroys. Anyone feels sorry for people who are killed. We are all human beings. But I don't feel sorry I participated in it. If I had known the results of the mission beforehand, I would have flown it anyway."

Nelson died from emphysema in 2003 at age 77.

Enola Gay tail gunner Bob Caron wrote a book about the mission called Fire of a Thousand Suns. Despite his description of the bomb's effects, he never regretted being part of the mission.

In an interview with the Rocky Mountain News published two weeks before he died, Mr. Caron said he had no regrets about his role in the World War II bombing. "No remorse, no bad dreams," he said. "We accomplished our mission."

Caron died of pneumonia in 1995. He was 75 years old.

Wyatt Duzenbury kept tabs on the Enola Gay's engines and other systems while others tended the bomb and the mission itself. He considered it an honor to be chosen for the secret bombing mission that was to shorten the war. After 1945, he stayed with the Air Force. In his retirement, he looked back at the mission.

...he told the Lansing State Journal in 1985, "We were told to go, cranked up, dropped it, and came home." He told the newspaper that he didn't feel guilty about his mission, but did "not feel good about the 100,000 people who died." In an earlier interview, he said, "Personally, I feel that if we hadn't dropped that bomb, and the other crew hadn't dropped its bomb on Nagasaki, it would have cost thousand of US soldiers' lives establishing a beach head for the invasion of Japan."

Duzenbury died in 1992 at age 71.

Robert Shumard assisted flight engineer Wyatt Duzenbury in keeping the Enola Gay running. In a 1960 interview, Shumard said he didn't feel honored to do what they did, but he felt honored to be selected for the mission. And given the circumstances, he would do it again.

"Nobody actually wants to cause the destruction we caused," he said. "But it was through a necessity rather than a wanton type of destruction. It was something that had to be done. As much as a man has gangrene in his leg, and they have to cut it off. It's something that has to be done. It was a cancer in the world situation that had to be removed, that's all."

Naval gunnery officer William "Deke" Parsons was pulled from sea duty to work on the Manhattan Project in 1943. He helped turn the nuclear bomb into a weapon of war, from development to assembly to delivery. He armed the first atomic bomb while the Enola Gay was airborne. After the war, Parsons continued in nuclear weapons development, rising to the rank of Rear Admiral. He oversaw the Operation Crossroads nuclear testing project and also served on the Atomic Energy Commission. Parsons witnessed seven of the first eight nuclear explosions. There are no quotes available from Parsons as he was still serving in the Navy when he died of a sudden heart attack in 1953. He was 52 years old.

Air Force flier Robert Lewis was a pilot first and foremost. He was upset that commander Paul Tibbets had named his plane the Enola Gay. But he was also dedicated to the mission, and earned Tibbets' respect despite the animosity between the two. Lewis wrote a diary of the mission in a notebook during the flight to Hiroshima, against orders. He later sold it for $37,000. It was resold in 2002 for almost ten times that much. He is often quoted:

"As the bomb fell over Hiroshima and exploded, we saw an entire city disappear. I wrote in my log the words: 'My God, what have we done?'"

Some sources say that quote was a revision after the fact. Later in life, Lewis defended the mission.

Over the past half century, some of the crew have returned to the city to take part in the annual commemoration celebrations. Lewis never did. For him "it was just a job of work. I helped make the world a safer place. Nobody has dared launch an atomic bomb since then. That is how I want to be remembered. The man who helped to do that."

Lewis died of a heart attack at age 65 in 1983.

Lieutenant Colonel Paul Tibbets was chosen to head the bomb delivery mission in September of 1944, and he selected the rest of the crew. At that time, the Manhattan Project was preparing to drop a bomb on Europe as well as Asia. After the mission, Tibbets remained in the Air Force until 1966, achieving the rank of Brigadier General. He worked as an aviation executive until his retirement in 1970.

In a 2002 interview with Studs Terkel, Tibbets said he never had second thoughts about the mission:

Number one, I got into the air corps to defend the United States to the best of my ability. That's what I believe in and that's what I work for. Number two, I'd had so much experience with airplanes... I'd had jobs where there was no particular direction about how you do it and then of course I put this thing together with my own thoughts on how it should be because when I got the directive I was to be self-supporting at all times. On the way to the target I was thinking: I can't think of any mistakes I've made. Maybe I did make a mistake: maybe I was too damned assured. At 29 years of age I was so shot in the ass with confidence I didn't think there was anything I couldn't do. Of course, that applied to airplanes and people. So, no, I had no problem with it. I knew we did the right thing because when I knew we'd be doing that I thought, yes, we're going to kill a lot of people, but by God we're going to save a lot of lives. We won't have to invade [Japan].

Tibbets died in 2007 at age 92. He had requested cremation and no physical memorial, because it would become a pilgrimage site for nuclear protesters.
This post originally appeared in 2010.

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The Crew of the Enola Gay on Dropping the Atomic Bomb

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In this Aug. 6, 1945, file photo, survivors of the first atomic bomb ever used in warfare are seen as they await emergency medical treatment in Hiroshima, Japan. (AP Photo, File)

This post was originally written last year to mark the 70th anniversary of the U.S. nuclear attack on Hiroshima. It has been updated in conjunction with President Obama's visit to the shrine on Friday.

Seven decades ago, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. It almost instantly leveled most of the city and killed as many as 140,000 people. Three days later, on Aug. 9, another American bomber dropped a nuclear device on the city of Nagasaki, killing 40,000 to 80,000 people.

The devastation was followed by World War II's swift conclusion. It's seared into the collective global memory -- no other time in history has a nuclear weapon been used in war. The simple fact of the atomic bomb's awesome power went on to shape a half-century of Cold War geopolitics.

The justification for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings remains the source of perennial historical study and debate. As the world marks the events' 70th anniversary this week, the legacy of what was first unleashed above Hiroshima now looms over newer conversations about disarmament and the nuclear programs of emerging powers.

But what of the victims? Swaths of Hiroshima disappeared in a blistering flash, yet there were survivors. Here are some of the eyewitness testimonies of what took place on that terrible day in August 1945. (They have been gleaned from a number of oral history projects, all of which are easily accessible online.)

Yasuhiko Taketa was on his way to middle school, like many of the "hibakusha," or survivors of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki who live to this day. At a train station, according to a speech he later delivered, he saw a "dazzling flash of light, brighter than even the sun," and then "an earsplitting roar" followed by a seismic explosion that shattered glass everywhere.

"My forehead felt hot, and I unconsciously touched it with my hand," narrates Taketa. "When I looked at the sky over Hiroshima, I saw a tiny, glittering, white object, about the size of a grain of rice, tinged with yellow, and red, which soon grew into a monstrous fireball. It was travelling in my direction, and I felt as though it was going to envelop me."

Akiko Takakura, a 20-year-old at the time, was near the hypocenter, or "ground zero" of the bomb. This was how she described the apocalyptic moment:

What I felt at that moment was that Hiroshima was entirely covered with only three colors. I remember red, black and brown, but, but, nothing else. Many people on the street were killed almost instantly. The fingertips of those dead bodies caught fire and the fire gradually spread over their entire bodies from their fingers. A light gray liquid dripped down their hands, scorching their fingers.

Those who found shelter after the explosion entered a strange, hideous world, where everyone's hair was literally fried and human shadows were etched onto stone.

"I felt the city of Hiroshima had disappeared all of a sudden," said Akihiro Takahashi, a 14-year-old at the time in line for school, whose testimony was recorded by researchers in the late 1980s. "Then I looked at myself and found my clothes had turned into rags due to the heat. I was probably burned at the back of the head, on my back, on both arms and both legs. My skin was peeling and hanging like this."

Michiko Hachiya was then the director of a hospital in Hiroshima. He recorded the dazed, stumbling confusion of those still alive in the aftermath of the explosion. It was published in English in 1955.

"There were the shadowy forms of people, some of whom looked like walking ghosts. Others moved as though in pain, like scarecrows, their arms held out from their bodies with forearms and hands dangling," Hachiya wrote. "These people puzzled me until I suddenly realized that they had been burned and were holding their arms out to prevent the painful friction of raw surfaces rubbing together."

So many had, in an instant, lost those dearest to them. Eiko Taoka, then 21-years-old, was carrying her 1-year-old infant son in her arms aboard a streetcar. He didn't survive the day. "I think fragments of glass had pierced his head," she recounts. "His face was a mess because of the blood flowing from his head. But he looked at my face and smiled. His smile has remained glued in my memory."

Miyo Watanabe, then a volunteer at a steel factory, endured the initial blast by lying on her stomach. When she came to, she walked through a desolation.

Watanabe remembers this chilling scene:

...a woman lying dead at a house by the river bank, her neck stuck through with a piece of glass blown by the blast. The glass must have cut the artery. Blood was scattered around her. She had been suckling her baby. The baby was still absorbed in sucking the breast.

And she describes the horrific sights in makeshift hospital wards, where all the living victims ached with a desperate thirst:

They were delirious, begging for water. Those whose backs were burned lay on their stomachs, and those whose front was burned lay on their back. They could not even move to change their position. Their wounds and burns were covered with countless flies laying eggs there. Those eggs hatched into maggots, and these crawled all over their bodies causing them infernal agony.

Burn injuries were ubiquitous, recounts Hiroshi Sawachika, then a 28-year-old army doctor.

"The smell was quite strong," he said. "It's a sad reality that the smell human beings produce when they are burned is the same as that of the dried squid when it is grilled."

Sawachika tended to hundreds of patients that day, with limited knowledge of what to do. The exposure to radiation suffered by countless survivors would have a range of ill effects in the decades to come.

"I learned that the nuclear weapons which gnaw the minds and bodies of human beings should never be used," he concludes. "Even the slightest idea using nuclear arms should be completely exterminated."

Archive footage from the plane that dropped 'Little Boy' on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and the aftermath of that detonation.

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What it was like to survive the atomic bombing of Hiroshima

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This post was originally written last year to mark the 70th anniversary of the U.S. nuclear attack on Hiroshima. It has been updated in conjunction with President Obama's visit to the shrine on Friday. Seven decades ago, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

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Newsela | Great Cities: How Hiroshima rose from the ashes of nuclear destruction

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On the morning of August 6, 1945, the world's first deployed atomic bomb was dropped by a U.S. aircraft over the Japanese city Hiroshima. A desperate but devastating attempt to bring the relentless Second World War to a close, the act destroyed 90% of the city. Sixty-four kilograms (141 pounds) of uranium-235 were loaded into the " Little Boy" bomb, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 66,000 individuals, and injuring a further 69,000.

Just three days later, following refusal to relinquish, Nagasaki suffered a similar fate, this time to 6.2 kilograms (13.7 pounds) of plutonium-239. Named "Fat Man," the bomb was the second and final time that nuclear weapons were used during warfare. Although estimated figures of casualties vary widely for both events, in part due to discrepancies over the pre-bombing city populations, it is thought that the second bombing racked up a smaller yet still significant death toll of 39,000, alongside 25,000 injuries.

Blasting through windows, reducing buildings to piles of rubble and ash, exposing thousands to deadly radiation, triggering fires and general destruction, it's hard to truly imagine the consequences of these war-ending bombings. But to mark the 70th anniversary of the Hiroshima event and prevent it from fading from our minds, Kuang Keng Kuek Ser and colleagues at Public Radio International have developed an interactive application that allows you to visualize the destruction Little Boy would cause today.
Public Radio International
Using data from several reports, the application creates an estimate of the damage and fatalities that would result if the Hiroshima atomic bomb hit a modern day city. For example, if detonated above London, U.K., damage would ensue within a 12-mile radius of ground zero. For those 0.5 miles around the target spot, highlighted by the dark red bullseye, an estimated 90% of people would die as a result of fire and destructive blast pressures. Up to a mile around ground zero, all buildings and other city features would be destroyed.

Taking this one step further, Stevens Institute of Technology nuclear historian Alex Wellerstein has come up with a similar idea, but his simulator " NukeMap " allows you to select different bombs and provides a more detailed explanation of the estimated effects on today's cities.

[H/T: Washington Post]

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These Simulations Let You Visualize What It Would Look Like If The The Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Hit Your City

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These Simulations Let You Visualize What It Would Look Like If The The Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Hit Your City

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Document that stopped the testing of nuclear weapons underwater, outer space and in the atmosphere

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Newsela | Primary Sources: Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963

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Kids learn about the history of the Atomic Bomb during World War II. Dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki of Japan to end WW2.

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Newsela | Primary Sources: Einstein Urges FDR to Build Nuclear Weapons in WWII

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Einstein asks FDR to create nuclear weapons

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Newsela | Kerry's visit to Hiroshima bomb site could pave the way for Obama's trip

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Studies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors influence worldwide radiation standards, even 70 years later

smithsonianmag.com

When the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in 1945, the powerful explosions and destruction that followed were expected. But no one could say exactly what the long-term health effects would be for the people who survived.

"Radiation biology was still in its infancy," writes Gabriel Popkin for Inside Science, "and no one had ever studied the effects of an exposure even remotely on the scale of that delivered by atomic weapons."

In the decades since, the survivors have become one of the longest-studied groups in health research. Studies with 94,000 survivors through an American-Japanese partnership called the Radiation Effects Research Foundation , RERF, indicate that the risk of most cancers doubles with a doubling of radiation exposure. The one exception is leukemia, for which a doubling of the radiation dose can quadruple risk. Based on this relationship, regulators assume that even minute doses of radiation can increase cancer risk and set guidelines accordingly to limit workers' exposure in nuclear energy facilities, uranium mines and other workplaces.

"These radiation standards are accepted worldwide," George Kerr, a consultant and health physicist, formerly of the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory told Paul Voosen for The New York Times . "They're kind of the Rosetta Stone."

Yet recently, scientists have started to question whether this caution is needed. "The atomic bomb happened in one crack, people were exposed, and then that was it," Gayle Woloschak, a biologist at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, in Chicago, Illinois told Popkin. "What would happen if you're living close to a dump site, or something like that? You're talking about a chronic everyday low-dose-rate exposure."

Estimating the dose of radiation each bomb survivor received is difficult because the dose varied depending on how close they were to the hypocenters - the point of explosion. But RERF has recorded 853 cases of cancerous tumors that the researchers attribute to the bombs and 17,448 tumors from other causes such as smoking, diet and genetic factors. The survivors received an average dose of 210 millisieverts of radiation, according to The New York Times. In comparison, writes Popkin, a head CT scan delivers a dose of about 2 millisieverts and flying across the U.S. delivers a dose of about 40 microsieverts - one fiftieth that amount.

Epidemiological studies of nuclear energy workers and studies with mice, rats and other animals now suggest that low doses of radiation over time may not have a harmful effect, writes Popkin. Yet people fear radiation - an invisible, frightening force that can kill. That fact, coupled with low doses, may explain why the health effects of radiation at Fukushima have been minimal thus far: A favorable wind direction and sheer fear of radiation kept most people from receiving higher doses.

The atomic bombs' immediate effects devastated both cities and killed between 150,000 and 246,000 people . But the psychological toll of radiation may be one of the most enduring parts of the bombs' legacy.

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The Health Effects of the Atom Bomb Are Still Being Studied

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smithsonianmag.com When the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in 1945, the powerful explosions and destruction that followed were expected. But no one could say exactly what the long-term health effects would be for the people who survived.

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Scholastic Teaching Tools | Resources for Teachers

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Between 1941 and 1945, scientists at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, led by Robert Oppenheimer, worked on the Manhattan Project to make an atomic bomb. On 16 July 1945, the atomic bomb was successfully tested at Alamogordo, in New Mexico.

The decision whether to drop it - almost as difficult as making the bomb - was taken by US President Harry S Truman. One reason Truman is said to have dropped the atomic bomb was to bring the war against Japan to a quick end. He said it was dropped to save American soldiers' lives. Some historians suspect Truman did not want to give the a chance to get involved in the Far East. Others feel that he was forced into a show of strength because of the threat to America posed by the USSR.

On 6 August 1945 the first atomic bomb, codenamed 'Little Boy', was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.

On 14 August 1945, the Japanese surrendered.

The creation and use of the atomic bomb was truly a turning point in warfare. The atomic bomb changed international relations. The superpowers of the USA and the USSR did not dare to start a war where both sides had nuclear weapons.

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A summary of the bombing of Hiroshima - The bombing of Hiroshima - KS3 History Revision - BBC Bitesize

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Between 1941 and 1945, scientists at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, led by Robert Oppenheimer, worked on the Manhattan Project to make an atomic bomb. On 16 July 1945, the atomic bomb was successfully tested at Alamogordo, in New Mexico. The decision whether to drop it - almost as difficult as making the bomb - was taken by US President Harry S Truman.

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THE FIRST ATOMIC BOMBS: "Little Boy"and "Fat Man"

There were actually two new bombs, one using uranium, the other plutonium, with different triggering devices for each. The main research and production sites were Los Alamos, New Mexico; Hanford, Washington; and Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The entire project operated under top secrecy, mobilizing top scientists and engineers, and at unprecedented high costs.

The Hiroshima bomb

Nicknamed "Little Boy"(for President Franklin Roosevelt), the bomb's size was 3 meters in length by 0.7 meter in diameter, using uranium 235 as its critical material. Inside a shortened smooth-bore 76.2 mm (3 in.) naval gun, a subcritical projectile of U-235 was fired at a subcritical target of U-235. At the moment of impact, a supercritical mass was formed, triggering a nuclear chain reaction, or atomic explosion. The gun barrel and heavy casing gave it a weight of over four metric tons (8,900 lbs). The subcritical material was an alloy called Oralloy, a code named derived from the secret laboratory at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where it was fabricated.

For use in the gun device, the fissile materials had to be made into geometric shapes capable of withstanding the violence of being shot down the gun's tube, then stoipped abruptly at the target, and held together long enough to detonate.

The Nagasaki bomb

Nicknamed "Fat Man" (for England's Prime Minister Winston Churchill), this bomb had a core of plutonium 239, was 3.5 meters in length by 1.5 meters in diameter, and it weighed 4.5 tons. Its plutonium core was surrounded by 64 explosive charges arranged in an inner and outer shell. The explosive charges were fabricated in geometrical shapes in a configuration similar to a soccer ball-an extremely difficult and demanding procedure. When the two shells were detonated, the shockwave slammed into a tamper surrounding the plutonium nucleus, causing a rapid increase in density that compressed the slightly sub-critical plutonium core, rapidly increasing its density, making it supercritical, thus exploding in a nuclear chain reaction.

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There were actually two new bombs, one using uranium, the other plutonium, with different triggering devices for each. The main research and production sites were Los Alamos, New Mexico; Hanford, Washington; and Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The entire project operated under top secrecy, mobilizing top scientists and engineers, and at unprecedented high costs.

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Newsela | The Hiroshima bombing: What you need to know about the nuclear attack

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The effects brought about by the Hiroshima bombing

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Kids learn about nuclear energy and fission in the science of physics including E=mc2, power plants, uses of nuclear power, and fusion.

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History for kids - Free history network for kids

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Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Atomic Bomb

Background

Before the war, many scientists had been investigating the possibility of generating energy and even weapons from the atom, the building block of the universe and everything that surrounds us.

The famous scientist Albert Einstein represented these leading thinkers by writing to the American president Franklin Roosevelt in August 1939.

He told him about their ideas and the danger of the Nazis in Germany developing such a bomb for military use.

Roosevelt responded by setting up a group of experts to develop the idea in the United States.

The idea only really got going after the Japanese bombed the American Naval Base at Pearl Harbour in December 1941.

Other countries also saw the appeal in having a very powerful weapon that would prevent their soldiers being killed in large numbers, as well as being able to stop enemies from making possible attacks on them.

These countries included Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. However, none of them were able to make the bomb before the Americans.

Between 1941 and 1945, the scientist, Robert Oppenheimer, led a group of experts on the Manhattan Project with the aim of making the world's first atomic bomb.

Many of the people on Oppenheimer's team were scientists who had escaped Nazi Germany.

They all worked at a special research site at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

The decision to use the bomb

Throughout the war, Allied forces heavily bombed Japan killing hundreds of thousands of people. But the Japanese survived these attacks and were still very strong.

They refused to surrender and so President Harry Truman thought about a possible invasion of the country.

The Japanese army was huge and the President knew that he would lose hundreds of thousands of men, if he embarked on such a plan.

So, in July 1945, Truman offered the Japanese the chance to surrender.

He knew that the bomb had now been completed and effectively tested in the New Mexico desert and was ready for use.

The Japanese wanted to negotiate the conditions of surrender and refused to give in to the demands of the Allies.

Hiroshima

The Americans targeted Hiroshima because it had not yet been hit by their air raids.

This meant that it would be a better testing ground to examine the effects of the atomic bomb over a particular area. Hiroshima also had an important military base.

On the morning of the 6th of August 1945, Paul Tibbets flew an American B29 bomber plane, called 'Enola Gay', over the Japanese city of Hiroshima and dropped the bomb named 'Little Boy' at 08:16 am local time.

The explosion was devastating and instantly wiped out the entire city. 140,000 people were killed at the time of the explosion and by the end of 1945.

The intense heat of the blast led to fires throughout the city which continued for three days, making survival more difficult for those who were not killed in the initial explosion.

Nagasaki

On the 9th of August, Charles Sweeney piloted a second mission on another B29 called Bockscar with the 'Fat Man' bomb, as it was known.

The main target of the bomb was in fact another Japanese city, Kokura. Due to cloud and smoke over Kokura, visibility was poor and Japanese fighter planes were drawing near.

So the pilot decided to target the city of Nagasaki as an alternative.

Nagasaki was picked due to the fact that it was an important port.

The bomb was dropped.

It was not as devastating as the Hiroshima bomb, but thousands of people died with the total reaching around 70,000 by the end of the year.

Several days later, on the 14th of August 1945, Japan gave its unconditional surrender to the Allies.

At noon the next day, Emperor Hirohito told the Japanese people of the decision.

Consequences

The atomic bomb changed the world forever after the end of the war.

As well as the high number of people who lost their lives, those who survived the blast suffered from terrible illness.

Several years after the war, the Americans and Soviets had created even more powerful hydrogen bombs which could now be fired at long-range targets all over the world, using missiles.

These new bombs made ordinary people fearful that one day there might be an all out war causing mass destruction.

Many people fought against nuclear weapons and still do. But they were unable to stop leaders developing more and more weapons.

Despite the fears, the two main powers after the war, America and the Soviet Union, never used the weapons even though there were many close calls.

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Hiroshima and Nagasaki - History for kids

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Atomic Bomb Background Before the war, many scientists had been investigating the possibility of generating energy and even weapons from the atom, the building block of the universe and everything that surrounds us. The famous scientist Albert Einstein represented these leading thinkers by writing to the American president Franklin Roosevelt in August 1939.

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The unspeakable second's explosive sequence

0.0 second: Temperature at burst point reaches several million degrees F within one-millionth of a second following detonation. All bomb material becomes ionized gas & gamma rays.

0.1 second: Bomb explodes and fireball forms. In addition to heat and blast force, radiation was 3% of total energy, of which gamma rays & neutrons damaged living organisms, soil and ground structures.

0.15 second: Shock wave expands rapidly, heating air to luminous condition. Fireball visible for following 10 seconds.

0.2 second: Thermal energy, especially infrared wave-lengths, causes most of thermal burns to humans.

1.0 second: Fireball reaches maximum diameter of 200-300 meters.

Blast (50% of energy) is now complete. Overpressure at hypocenter (or "ground zero," directly below the burst point) in Hiroshima reaches an estimated 4.5-6.7 tons per square meter, and moves through the air and across the ground at the approximate speed of sound. Maximum pressure at Nagasaki's hypocenter may have been as high as 10 tons per square meter.

Recent research has found that in the initial "non-instant" (0.0 sec.) a powerful neutron burst struck a mile-wide area directly below burst point before the bomb casing exploded. This pre-explosion burst was caused by the initial impact of the uranium bullet with the core of uranium 235. This finding resolved a long-perplexing question of a young man near ground zero who died (Sept. 3) with symptoms of severe internal bleeding but no surface burns.

Suddenly there was a brilliant flash, like a photographer's magnesium flash. Then came a blast with a deafening bang, and I felt as though I had been kicked in the guts....The world was all black.- F.J.Johnson. Australian prisoner of war, Nagasaki.

Physical Devastation

The Hiroshima bomb was exploded over the city center, which was crowded with large public buildings and countless wood-frame residences and shops. Beneath the huge column of smoke that arose from the explosion, tens of thousands were already dead or dying. As fires raced out of control, destruction of wooden structures and reinforced concrete buildings alike was virtually complete within 2 km (1.2 mi.) of ground zero.

In Nagasaki, the more powerful bomb destroyed an estimated 12,000 buildings by blast and burning. Virtually nothing was left standing of the valley's homes, schools and factories. Worshippers in shrines, temples, and churches perished as they prayed.

In both cities, fires generated by the explosions' intense heat, and fed by broken gas and electrical lines, raged out of control. Fire stations and equipment had been destroyed, fire fighters were dead or injured, and water pipes were ruptured.

Many corpses were found at places where there was some water-rivers, old wells, fire-safety cisterns, ponds, and the like. People who did not die instantly had, it appears, exerted themselves to the limit just to find some water.- Marina Transport Rescue Team member, Hiroshima.

Hiroshima's gigantic firestorm leveled 13 square kilometers (5 sq. mi.), destroying some 92% of the city's structures. Nagasaki's firestorm, hemmed in by the valley, consumed some 22.7% of the entire city's structures. The bodies of many people who were close to ground zero in the two cities were shattered by blast or burned beyond recognition in the firestorms.

Houses and trees were leveled as far as the eye could see, and fires began breaking out in the ruins. At the roadside I saw the corpse of a man who had been leading a horse cart, still on his feet, with his hair standing on end like wire.... The river was filled with the dead and half-dead; burned children were screaming, 'Mommy! Mommy!' and mothers searched for their children, calling their names in faltering voices.- Ms. Hide Kurokawa, Nagasaki

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0.0 second: Temperature at burst point reaches several million degrees F within one-millionth of a second following detonation. All bomb material becomes ionized gas & gamma rays. 0.1 second: Bomb explodes and fireball forms. In addition to heat and blast force, radiation was 3% of total energy, of which gamma rays & neutrons damaged living organisms, soil and ground structures.

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New York Times Newspaper Headline - 1st bomb

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New York Times Newspaper Headline - 1st bomb

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First Atomic Bomb Dropped on Japan; Missile Is Equal to 20,000 Tons of TNT; Truman Warns Foe of a ‘Rain of Ruin’

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Report by Britain: ‘By God’s Mercy’ We Beat Nazis to Bomb, Churchill Says: Roosevelt Aid Cited: Raiders Wrecked Norse Laboratory in Race for Key to Victory