on the ground"
70 years of tragedy
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
70 years ago, on August 6 and 9, 1945, the United States bombed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs. The total number of victims of the tragedy is over 450 thousand people, and the survivors still suffer from diseases caused by radiation exposure. According to the latest data, their number is 183,519 people.
Initially, the US had the idea of dropping 9 atomic bombs on rice fields or in the sea to achieve a psychological effect to support landing operations, planned for the Japanese Islands at the end of September 1945. But in the end, it was decided to use new weapons against densely populated cities.
Now the cities have been rebuilt, but their inhabitants still bear the burden of that terrible tragedy. The history of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the memories of survivors is in a TASS special project.
Bombing of Hiroshima © AP Photo/USAF
Ideal goal
It was not by chance that Hiroshima was chosen as the target for the first nuclear strike. This city met all the criteria to achieve the maximum number of casualties and destruction: a flat location surrounded by hills, low buildings and flammable wooden buildings.
The city was completely wiped off the face of the Earth. Surviving eyewitnesses recalled that they first saw a flash of bright light, followed by a wave that burned everything around. In the area of the epicenter of the explosion, everything instantly turned to ashes, and human silhouettes remained on the walls of the surviving houses. Immediately, according to various estimates, from 70 to 100 thousand people died. Tens of thousands more died from the consequences of the explosion, bringing the total number of victims as of August 6, 2014 to 292,325.
Immediately after the bombing, the city did not have enough water not only to put out the fires, but also for people who were dying of thirst. Therefore, even now the residents of Hiroshima are very careful about water. And during the memorial ceremony, a special ritual “Kensui” (Japanese - offering water) is performed - it reminds of the fires that engulfed the city and the victims who asked for water. It is believed that even after death, the souls of the dead need water to alleviate suffering.
The director of the Hiroshima Peace Museum with his dead father's watch and buckle © EPA/EVERETT KENNEDY BROWN
The clock hands have stopped
The hands of almost all the clocks in Hiroshima stopped at the moment of the explosion at 08:15 am. Some of them are collected at the Peace Museum as exhibits.
The museum was opened 60 years ago. Its building consists of two buildings designed by the outstanding Japanese architect Kenzo Tange. In one of them there is an exhibition about the atomic bombing, where visitors can see personal belongings of the victims, photographs, and various material evidence of what happened in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Audio and video materials are also shown there.
Not far from the museum is the Atomic Dome, the former building of the Exhibition Center of the Hiroshima Chamber of Commerce and Industry, built in 1915 by Czech architect Jan Letzel. This structure miraculously survived the atomic bombing, although it stood only 160 meters from the epicenter of the explosion, which is marked by a regular memorial plaque in an alley not far from the dome. All the people inside the building died, and its copper dome instantly melted, leaving a bare frame. After the end of World War II, the Japanese authorities decided to preserve the building as a sign of memory of the victims of the bombing of Hiroshima. Now it is one of the main attractions of the city, reminiscent of the tragic moments of its history.
Statue of Sadako Sasaki in Hiroshima Peace Park © Lisa Norwood/wikipedia.org
Paper cranes
Trees near the Atomic Dome are often decorated with colorful paper cranes. They have become an international symbol of peace. People from different countries They constantly bring homemade figurines of birds to Hiroshima as a sign of mourning for the terrible events of the past and in tribute to the memory of Sadako Sasaki, a girl who survived the atomic bombing in Hiroshima at the age of 2. At the age of 11, she was found to have signs of radiation sickness, and the girl’s health began to deteriorate sharply. One day she heard a legend that whoever folds a thousand paper cranes will definitely recover from any illness. She continued to fold the figures until her death on October 25, 1955. In 1958, a statue of Sadako holding a crane was installed in the Peace Park.
In 1949, a special law was passed, thanks to which large funds were provided for the restoration of Hiroshima. A Peace Park was built and a fund was established to store materials about the atomic bombing. Industry in the city was restored after the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 thanks to the production of weapons for the US Army.
Now Hiroshima is a modern city with a population of approximately 1.2 million people. It is the largest in the Chugoku region.
Zero mark of the atomic explosion in Nagasaki. Photo taken in December 1946 © AP Photo
Zero mark
Nagasaki became the second Japanese city, after Hiroshima, to be subject to American bombing in August 1945. The initial target of the B-29 bomber under the command of Major Charles Sweeney was the city of Kokura, located in the north of the island of Kyushu. By coincidence, on the morning of August 9, there was heavy cloudiness over Kokura, so Sweeney decided to turn the plane to the southwest and head to Nagasaki, which was considered as a backup option. Here the Americans were also beset by bad weather, but the plutonium bomb called “Fat Man” was eventually dropped. It was almost twice as powerful as the one used in Hiroshima, but inaccurate aiming and the local terrain somewhat reduced the damage from the explosion. Nevertheless, the consequences of the bombing were catastrophic: at the moment of the explosion, at 11.02 local time, 70 thousand residents of Nagasaki were killed, and the city was practically wiped off the face of the Earth.
In subsequent years, the list of disaster victims continued to grow with those who died from radiation sickness. This number increases every year, and the numbers are updated every year on August 9th. According to data announced in 2014, the number of victims of the Nagasaki bombing increased to 165,409 people.
Years later, an atomic bomb museum was opened in Nagasaki, as in Hiroshima. Last July, his collection was replenished with 26 new photographs, which were taken a year and four months after the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japanese cities. The images themselves were recently discovered. In particular, they depict the so-called zero mark - the place of the direct explosion. atomic bomb in Nagasaki. Captions on the back of the photographs indicate that the photographs were taken in December 1946 by American scientists who were visiting the city at the time to study the consequences of a terrible atomic attack. “The photographs are of particular value, as they clearly demonstrate the full scale of the destruction, and, at the same time, make it clear what work was done to restore the city practically from scratch,” the Nagasaki administration believes.
One of the photos shows a strange arrow-shaped monument installed in the middle of the field, the inscription on which reads: “Zero mark of the atomic explosion.” Local experts are at a loss as to who installed the almost 5-meter monument and where it is now. It is noteworthy that it is located exactly in the place where the official monument to the victims of the atomic bombing of 1945 now stands.
Hiroshima Peace Museum © AP Photo/Itsuo Inouye
Blind spots of history
The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been the subject of careful study by many historians, but 70 years after the tragedy, many blank spots remain in this story. There are some testimonies of individuals who believe that they were born "in the shirt" because, according to them, a few weeks before the atomic bombing, information appeared about a possible deadly attack on these Japanese cities. Thus, one of these people claims that he studied at a school for children of high-ranking military personnel. According to him, several weeks before the strike, all personnel educational institution and his students were evacuated from Hiroshima, which saved their lives.
There are also completely conspiracy theories according to which, on the threshold of the end of World War II, Japanese scientists, with the help of colleagues from Germany, approached the creation of an atomic bomb. Weapons of terrible destructive power allegedly could appear in imperial army, whose command was going to fight to the end and constantly hurried the nuclear scientists. The media claim that records have recently been found containing calculations and descriptions of equipment for enriching uranium for subsequent use in creating a Japanese atomic bomb. The scientists received the order to complete the program on August 14, 1945, and apparently were ready to carry it out, but did not have time. American atomic bombing of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, entry into the war Soviet Union did not leave Japan any chance to continue hostilities.
No more war
Survivors of the bombings in Japan are referred to by the special word "hibakusha" ("person who suffered from the bombing").
In the first years after the tragedy, many hibakusha hid the fact that they survived the bombing and received a high dose of radiation because they were afraid of discrimination. Then they were not given financial assistance and were denied treatment. It took 12 years before the Japanese government passed a law making treatment for bomb victims free of charge.
Some of the hibakusha have dedicated their lives to educational work to ensure that the terrible tragedy does not happen again.
“About 30 years ago, I happened to see a friend of mine on TV, he was among the participants in the march to ban nuclear weapons. This prompted me to join this movement. Since then, remembering my experience, I explain that atomic weapons are This is an inhumane weapon. It is completely indiscriminate, unlike conventional weapons. I have dedicated my life to explaining the need for a ban atomic weapons those who know nothing about the atomic bombings, especially young people,” wrote hibakusha Michimasa Hirata on one of the sites dedicated to preserving the memory of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Many Hiroshima residents whose families were affected to varying degrees by the atomic bomb are trying to help others learn more about what happened on August 6, 1945 and to convey the message of the dangers of nuclear weapons and war. Near the Peace Park and the Atomic Dome memorial you can meet people who are ready to talk about the tragic events.
“August 6, 1945 is a special day for me, it’s my second birthday. When the atomic bomb was dropped on us, I was only 9 years old. I was in my house about two kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion in Hiroshima. A sudden brilliant flash hit over my head. She fundamentally changed Hiroshima... This scene, which then developed, defies description. This is a living hell on earth," Michimasa Hirata shares his memories.
Bombing of Hiroshima © EPA/A PEACE MEMORIAL MUSEUM
"The city was enveloped in huge fire whirlwinds"
“70 years ago, I was three years old. On August 6, my father was at work 1 km from the place where the atomic bomb was dropped,” said one of the hibakusha, Hiroshi Shimizu. “At the moment of the explosion, he was thrown back by a huge shock wave. He immediately felt that numerous shards of glass were pierced into his face, and his body began to bleed. The building where he was working instantly burst into flames. Everyone who could ran out to a nearby pond. My father spent about three hours there. At that time, the city was enveloped in huge fiery vortices.
He was only able to find us the next day. Two months later he died. By that time, his stomach had completely turned black. Within a radius of one kilometer from the explosion, the radiation level was 7 sieverts. This dose can destroy cells of internal organs.
At the time of the explosion, my mother and I were at home about 1.6 km from the epicenter. Since we were inside, we were able to avoid a lot of radiation. However, the house was destroyed by the shock wave. Mother managed to break through the roof and get out into the street with me. After that, we evacuated to the south, away from the epicenter. As a result, we managed to avoid the real hell that was going on there, because there was nothing left within a radius of 2 km.
For 10 years after the bombing, my mother and I suffered from various illnesses caused by the dose of radiation we received. We had stomach problems, nosebleeds all the time, and our general immune system was also very poor. All this happened in 12 years, and after that for a long time I didn't have any health problems. However, after 40 years, illnesses began to haunt me one after another, the functioning of my kidneys and heart sharply deteriorated, my spine began to hurt, signs of diabetes and problems with cataracts appeared.
Only later did it become clear that it was not just the dose of radiation that we received during the explosion. We continued to live and eat vegetables grown on contaminated soil, drink water from contaminated rivers and eat contaminated seafood."
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon (left) and hibakusha Sumiteru Taniguchi in front of photographs of people affected by the bombing. Top photo shows Taniguchi himself © EPA/KIMIMASA MAYAMA
"Kill me!"
A photograph of one of the most famous figures of the hibakusha movement, Sumiteru Taniguchi, taken in January 1946 by an American war photographer, spread throughout the world. The photo, dubbed "red back," shows severe burns on Taniguchi's back.
“In 1945, I was 16 years old,” he says. “On August 9, I was delivering mail on a bicycle and was about 1.8 km from the epicenter of the bombing. At the moment of the explosion, I saw a flash, and the blast wave threw me off my bicycle. The heat was burning everything is in its path. At first I had the impression that a bomb had exploded next to me. The ground under my feet was shaking, as if there had been a strong earthquake. After I came to my senses, I looked at my hands - I was literally hanging from them. skin. However, at that moment I didn’t even feel pain.”
“I don’t know how, but I managed to get to the ammunition factory, which was located in an underground tunnel. There I met a woman, and she helped me cut off pieces of skin on my hands and bandage them somehow. I remember how after that they immediately announced evacuation, but I could not go on my own. Other people helped me. They carried me to the top of the hill, where they laid me under a tree. After that, I fell asleep for a while. I woke up from machine-gun fire from American planes. From the fires it was as bright as day , so the pilots could easily monitor the movements of people. I lay under a tree for three days. During this time, everyone who was next to me died. I myself thought that I would die, I could not even call for help. But I was lucky - "On the third day, people came and rescued me. Blood was oozing from the burns on my back, and the pain was growing rapidly. In this condition, I was sent to the hospital," Taniguchi recalls.
Only in 1947 was the Japanese able to sit down, and in 1949 he was discharged from the hospital. He underwent 10 operations, and treatment continued until 1960.
“In the first years after the bombing, I couldn’t even move. The pain was unbearable. I often shouted: “Kill me!” The doctors did everything so that I could live. I remember how they repeated every day that I was alive. During the treatment, I learned for myself everything that radiation is capable of, all the terrible consequences of its impact,” Taniguchi said.
Children after the bombing of Nagasaki © AP Photo/United Nations, Yosuke Yamahata
"Then there was silence..."
“When the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, I was six years old and living with my family in a traditional Japanese house,” recalls Yasuaki Yamashita. “Usually in the summer, when it was hot, I would run to the mountains with my friends to catch dragonflies and cicadas. But that day I was playing at home. Mom was cooking dinner next to me, as usual. Suddenly, at exactly 11.02, we were blinded by a light, as if 1000 lightning flashed simultaneously. Mom pushed me to the ground and covered me with herself. We heard the roar of a strong wind and the rustle of the fragments of the house flying towards us. Then there was silence..."
“Our house was 2.5 km from the epicenter. My sister, she was in the next room, was badly cut by flying glass shards. One of my friends went to play in the mountains that ill-fated day, and a heat wave from a bomb explosion hit him. "He suffered severe burns and died a few days later. My father was sent to help clear the rubble in the center of Nagasaki. At that time we did not yet know about the dangers of radiation, which caused his death," he writes.
The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively) are the only two examples in the history of mankind of the combat use of nuclear weapons. Implemented by the US Armed Forces at the final stage of World War II in order to accelerate the surrender of Japan within the Pacific theater of World War II.
On the morning of August 6, 1945, the American B-29 Enola Gay bomber, named after the mother (Enola Gay Haggard) of the crew commander, Colonel Paul Tibbets, dropped the Little Boy atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. 13 to 18 kilotons of TNT. Three days later, on August 9, 1945, the "Fat Man" atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki by pilot Charles Sweeney, commander of the B-29 "Bockscar" bomber. The total number of deaths ranged from 90 to 166 thousand people in Hiroshima and from 60 to 80 thousand people in Nagasaki.
The shock of the US atomic bombings had a profound effect on Japanese Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki and Japanese Foreign Minister Togo Shigenori, who were inclined to believe that the Japanese government should end the war.
On August 15, 1945, Japan announced its surrender. The act of surrender, formally ending World War II, was signed on September 2, 1945.
The role of the atomic bombings in Japan's surrender and the ethical justification of the bombings themselves are still hotly debated.
Prerequisites
In September 1944, at a meeting between US President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Hyde Park, an agreement was concluded that included the possibility of using atomic weapons against Japan.
By the summer of 1945, the United States of America, with the support of Great Britain and Canada, completed the Manhattan Project preparatory work to create the first operational models of nuclear weapons.
After three and a half years of direct US involvement in World War II, about 200 thousand Americans were killed, about half of them in the war against Japan. In April-June 1945, during the operation to capture the Japanese island of Okinawa, more than 12 thousand American soldiers died, 39 thousand were wounded (Japanese losses ranged from 93 to 110 thousand soldiers and over 100 thousand civilians). It was expected that an invasion of Japan itself would result in losses many times greater than those in Okinawan.
Model of the Little boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima
May 1945: selection of targets
During its second meeting at Los Alamos (May 10-11, 1945), the Target Selection Committee recommended Kyoto (a major industrial center), Hiroshima (an army storage center and military port), and Yokohama (a military center) as targets for the use of atomic weapons. industry), Kokura (the largest military arsenal) and Niigata (a military port and mechanical engineering center). The committee rejected the idea of using these weapons against a purely military target, since there was a chance of missing small area, not surrounded by a large urban area.
When choosing a goal, great importance was attached to psychological factors, such as:
achieving maximum psychological effect against Japan,
the first use of a weapon must be significant enough for its importance to be recognized internationally. The Committee pointed out that the choice of Kyoto was supported by the fact that its population had more high level education and was thus better able to appreciate the value of weapons. Hiroshima was of such a size and location that, taking into account the focusing effect of the surrounding hills, the force of the explosion could be increased.
US Secretary of War Henry Stimson removed Kyoto from the list due to the city's cultural significance. According to Professor Edwin O. Reischauer, Stimson "knew and appreciated Kyoto from his honeymoon there decades ago."
Hiroshima and Nagasaki on a map of Japan
On July 16, the world's first successful test of an atomic weapon was carried out at a test site in New Mexico. The power of the explosion was about 21 kilotons of TNT.
On July 24, during the Potsdam Conference, US President Harry Truman informed Stalin that the United States had a new weapon of unprecedented destructive power. Truman did not specify that he was referring specifically to atomic weapons. According to Truman's memoirs, Stalin showed little interest, saying only that he was glad and hoped that the United States could use it effectively against the Japanese. Churchill, who carefully observed Stalin's reaction, remained of the opinion that Stalin did not understand the true meaning of Truman's words and did not pay attention to him. At the same time, according to Zhukov’s memoirs, Stalin understood everything perfectly, but did not show it and, in a conversation with Molotov after the meeting, noted that “We will need to talk with Kurchatov about speeding up our work.” After the declassification of the American intelligence services' operation "Venona", it became known that Soviet agents had long been reporting on the development of nuclear weapons. According to some reports, agent Theodore Hall even announced the planned date of the first nuclear test a few days before the Potsdam Conference. This may explain why Stalin took Truman's message calmly. Hall had been working for Soviet intelligence since 1944.
On July 25, Truman approved an order, beginning August 3, to bomb one of the following targets: Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata, or Nagasaki, as soon as weather permits, and the following cities in the future as bombs become available.
On July 26, the governments of the United States, Great Britain, and China signed the Potsdam Declaration, which set out the demand for Japan's unconditional surrender. The atomic bomb was not mentioned in the declaration.
The next day, Japanese newspapers reported that the declaration, the text of which was broadcast on the radio and scattered in leaflets from airplanes, had been rejected. The Japanese government did not express any desire to accept the ultimatum. On July 28, Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki said at a press conference that the Potsdam Declaration was nothing more than the old arguments of the Cairo Declaration in a new wrapper, and demanded that the government ignore it.
Emperor Hirohito, who was waiting for a Soviet response to the evasive diplomatic moves of the Japanese, did not change the government's decision. On July 31, in a conversation with Koichi Kido, he made it clear that imperial power must be protected at all costs.
Preparing for the bombing
During May-June 1945, the American 509th Mixed Aviation Group arrived on Tinian Island. The group's base area on the island was several miles from other units and was carefully guarded.
On July 28, the Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, George Marshall, signed an order to combat use nuclear weapons. This order, drafted by the head of the Manhattan Project, Major General Leslie Groves, ordered a nuclear strike “on any day after the third of August as soon as possible.” weather" On July 29, the commander of US strategic aviation, General Carl Spaatz, arrived on Tinian, delivering Marshall's order to the island.
On July 28 and August 2, components of the Fat Man atomic bomb were brought to Tinian by plane.
Hiroshima during World War II
Hiroshima was located on a flat area, slightly above sea level at the mouth of the Ota River, on 6 islands connected by 81 bridges. The city's population before the war was over 340 thousand people, making Hiroshima the seventh largest city in Japan. The city was the headquarters of the Fifth Division and the Second Main Army of Field Marshal Shunroku Hata, who commanded the defense of all of Southern Japan. Hiroshima was an important supply base for the Japanese army.
In Hiroshima (as well as in Nagasaki), most of the buildings were one- and two-story wooden buildings with tiled roofs. Factories were located on the outskirts of the city. Outdated firefighting equipment and insufficient personnel training created high danger fire even in peacetime.
Hiroshima's population peaked at 380,000 during the war, but before the bombing the population gradually declined due to systematic evacuations ordered by the Japanese government. At the time of the attack the population was about 245 thousand people.
Bombardment
The primary target of the first American nuclear bombing was Hiroshima (the alternate targets were Kokura and Nagasaki). Although Truman's orders called for atomic bombing to begin on August 3, cloud cover over the target prevented this until August 6.
On August 6 at 1:45 a.m., an American B-29 bomber under the command of the commander of the 509th Combined Aviation Regiment, Colonel Paul Tibbetts, carrying the Baby atomic bomb on board, took off from the island of Tinian, which was about 6 hours flight from Hiroshima. Tibbetts' plane (Enola Gay) was flying as part of a formation that included six other planes: a reserve plane (Top Secret), two controllers and three reconnaissance aircraft (Jebit III, Full House and Street Flash). The commanders of reconnaissance aircraft sent to Nagasaki and Kokura reported significant cloudiness over these cities. The pilot of the third reconnaissance aircraft, Major Iserli, found that the sky over Hiroshima was clear and sent the signal “Bomb the first target.”
Around seven o'clock in the morning, the Japanese early warning radar network detected the approach of several American aircraft heading towards southern Japan. An air raid warning was announced and radio broadcasts were stopped in many cities, including Hiroshima. At approximately 08:00, the radar operator in Hiroshima determined that the number of incoming aircraft was very small - perhaps no more than three - and the air raid alert was canceled. In order to save fuel and aircraft, the Japanese did not intercept small groups of American bombers. The standard radio message was that it would be wise to head to bomb shelters if the B-29s were actually spotted, and that it was not a raid but just some form of reconnaissance that was expected.
At 08:15 local time, the B-29, being at an altitude of over 9 km, dropped an atomic bomb on the center of Hiroshima.
The first public report of the event came from Washington, sixteen hours after the atomic attack on the Japanese city.
The shadow of a man who was sitting on the steps of the stairs in front of the bank at the time of the explosion, 250 meters from the epicenter
Explosion effect
Those closest to the epicenter of the explosion died instantly, their bodies turned to coal. Birds flying past burned up in the air, and dry, flammable materials such as paper ignited up to 2 km from the epicenter. The light radiation burned the dark pattern of clothing into the skin and left silhouettes of human bodies on the walls. People outside their houses described a blinding flash of light, which was simultaneously accompanied by a wave of stifling heat. The blast wave followed almost immediately for everyone near the epicenter, often knocking them off their feet. Occupants of the buildings generally avoided exposure to the light radiation from the explosion, but not the blast wave - glass shards hit most rooms, and all but the strongest buildings collapsed. One teenager was thrown from his house across the street by the blast wave, while the house collapsed behind him. Within a few minutes, 90% of people who were 800 meters or less from the epicenter died.
The blast wave shattered glass at a distance of up to 19 km. For those in the buildings, the typical first reaction was the thought of a direct hit from an aerial bomb.
Numerous small fires that broke out simultaneously in the city soon combined into one large fire tornado, creating strong wind(speed 50-60 km/h) directed towards the epicenter. The firestorm captured over 11 km² of the city, killing everyone who did not manage to get out within the first few minutes after the explosion.
According to the recollections of Akiko Takakura, one of the few survivors who were at a distance of 300 m from the epicenter at the time of the explosion,
Three colors characterize for me the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima: black, red and brown. Black because the explosion cut off the sunlight and plunged the world into darkness. Red was the color of blood flowing from wounded and broken people. It was also the color of the fires that burned everything in the city. Brown was the color of burnt skin falling off the body, exposed to the light radiation from the explosion.
A few days after the explosion, doctors began to notice the first symptoms of radiation among the survivors. Soon, the number of deaths among the survivors began to rise again, as patients who had seemed to be recovering began to suffer from this strange new disease. Deaths from radiation sickness peaked 3-4 weeks after the explosion and began to decline only 7-8 weeks later. Japanese doctors considered vomiting and diarrhea characteristic of radiation sickness to be symptoms of dysentery. Long-term health effects associated with exposure, such as an increased risk of cancer, haunted survivors for the rest of their lives, as did the psychological shock of the blast.
The first person in the world whose cause of death was officially listed as a disease caused by the consequences of a nuclear explosion (radiation poisoning) was actress Midori Naka, who survived the Hiroshima explosion but died on August 24, 1945. Journalist Robert Jung believes that it was Midori’s disease and its popularity among ordinary people allowed people to find out the truth about the emerging “new disease”. Until Midori's death, no one attached any importance to the mysterious deaths of people who survived the explosion and died under circumstances unknown to science at that time. Jung believes that Midori's death was the impetus for accelerating research in nuclear physics and medicine, which soon managed to save the lives of many people from radiation exposure.
Japanese awareness of the consequences of the attack
A Tokyo operator from the Japan Broadcasting Corporation noticed that the Hiroshima station had stopped broadcasting. He tried to re-establish the broadcast using another telephone line, but this also failed. About twenty minutes later, the Tokyo railway telegraph control center realized that the main telegraph line had stopped working just north of Hiroshima. From a stop 16 km from Hiroshima, unofficial and confused reports came about a terrible explosion. All these messages were forwarded to the headquarters of the Japanese General Staff.
Military bases repeatedly tried to call the Hiroshima Command and Control Center. The complete silence from there was baffling General base, because it knew that there was no major enemy raid in Hiroshima and there was no significant stockpile of explosives. A young officer from headquarters was instructed to immediately fly to Hiroshima, land, assess the damage and return to Tokyo with reliable information. The headquarters generally believed that nothing serious happened there, and the messages were explained by rumors.
An officer from headquarters went to the airport, from where he flew to the southwest. After a three-hour flight, while still 160 km from Hiroshima, he and his pilot noticed a large cloud of smoke from the bomb. It was a bright day and the ruins of Hiroshima were burning. Their plane soon reached the city, around which they circled, not believing their eyes. All that was left of the city was a zone of complete destruction, still burning and covered thick cloud smoke. They landed south of the city, and the officer, reporting the incident to Tokyo, immediately began organizing rescue measures.
The Japanese's first real understanding of what actually caused the disaster came from a public announcement from Washington, sixteen hours after the atomic attack on Hiroshima.
Hiroshima after the atomic explosion
Losses and destruction
The number of deaths from the direct impact of the explosion ranged from 70 to 80 thousand people. By the end of 1945, due to radioactive contamination and other post-effects of the explosion, the total number of deaths ranged from 90 to 166 thousand people. After 5 years, the total death toll, including deaths from cancer and other long-term effects of the explosion, could reach or even exceed 200 thousand people.
According to official Japanese data, as of March 31, 2013, there were 201,779 “hibakusha” alive - people who suffered from the effects of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This number includes children born to women exposed to radiation from the explosions (mostly living in Japan at the time of the calculation). Of these, 1%, according to the Japanese government, had serious cancer caused by radiation exposure after the bombings. The number of deaths as of August 31, 2013 is about 450 thousand: 286,818 in Hiroshima and 162,083 in Nagasaki.
Nuclear pollution
The concept of “radioactive contamination” did not yet exist in those years, and therefore this issue was not even raised then. People continued to live and rebuild destroyed buildings in the same place where they were before. Even the high mortality rate of the population in subsequent years, as well as diseases and genetic abnormalities in children born after the bombings, were not initially associated with exposure to radiation. Evacuation of the population from contaminated areas was not carried out, since no one knew about the very presence of radioactive contamination.
It is quite difficult to give an accurate assessment of the extent of this contamination due to lack of information, however, since the first atomic bombs were technically relatively low-power and imperfect (the Baby bomb, for example, contained 64 kg of uranium, of which only about 700 g reacted division), the level of contamination of the area could not be significant, although it posed a serious danger to the population. For comparison: at the time of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, there were several tons of fission products and transuranium elements in the reactor core - various radioactive isotopes that accumulated during the operation of the reactor.
Comparative preservation of some buildings
Some reinforced concrete buildings in Hiroshima were very stable (due to the risk of earthquakes) and their frames did not collapse, despite being quite close to the center of destruction in the city (the epicenter of the explosion). So it survived brick building Hiroshima Chamber of Industry (now commonly known as the "Genbaku Dome", or "Atomic Dome"), designed and built by Czech architect Jan Letzel, which was only 160 meters from the epicenter of the explosion (with the bomb detonating 600 meters above the surface ). The ruins became the most famous artifact of the Hiroshima atomic explosion and were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996, despite objections from the US and Chinese governments.
On August 6, after receiving news of the successful atomic bombing of Hiroshima, US President Truman announced that
We are now ready to destroy, even faster and more completely than before, all Japanese land-based production facilities in any city. We will destroy their docks, their factories and their communications. Let there be no misunderstanding - we will completely destroy Japan's ability to wage war.
It was with the aim of preventing the destruction of Japan that the ultimatum of July 26 was issued in Potsdam. Their leadership immediately rejected his terms. If they do not accept our terms now, let them expect a rain of destruction from the air, the likes of which have never been seen on this planet.
After receiving news of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the Japanese government met to discuss its response. Beginning in June, the Emperor advocated peace negotiations, but the Minister of Defense and Army and Navy leaders believed that Japan should wait to see whether attempts at peace negotiations through the Soviet Union would produce results better than unconditional surrender. The military leadership also believed that if they could hold out until the invasion of the Japanese islands, it would be possible to inflict such casualties on the Allied forces that Japan could win peace terms other than unconditional surrender.
On August 9, the USSR declared war on Japan and Soviet troops launched an invasion of Manchuria. Hopes for USSR mediation in the negotiations collapsed. The Japanese army's senior leadership began preparing to declare martial law in order to prevent any attempts at peace negotiations.
The second atomic bombing (Kokury) was scheduled for 11 August, but was moved up 2 days to avoid a five-day period of bad weather forecast to begin on 10 August.
Nagasaki during World War II
Nagasaki in 1945 was located in two valleys, along which two rivers flowed. A mountain range separated the city's districts.
The development was chaotic: from total area 12 residential areas were built up in a city of 90 km².
During World War II, the city, which was a large sea port, I bought special meaning also as an industrial center in which steel production and the Mitsubishi shipyard, and the Mitsubishi-Urakami torpedo production were concentrated. Guns, ships and other military equipment were manufactured in the city.
Nagasaki was not subjected to large-scale bombing before the explosion of the atomic bomb, but on August 1, 1945, several high-explosive bombs were dropped on the city, damaging shipyards and docks in the southwestern part of the city. Bombs also hit the Mitsubishi steel and gun factories. The result of the raid on August 1 was the partial evacuation of the population, especially schoolchildren. However, at the time of the bombing the city's population was still about 200 thousand people.
Nagasaki before and after the atomic explosion
Bombardment
The main target of the second American nuclear bombing was Kokura, the secondary target was Nagasaki.
At 2:47 a.m. on August 9, an American B-29 bomber under the command of Major Charles Sweeney, carrying the Fat Man atomic bomb, took off from Tinian Island.
Unlike the first bombing, the second was fraught with numerous technical problems. Even before takeoff, a problem with the fuel pump in one of the spare fuel tanks was discovered. Despite this, the crew decided to carry out the flight as planned.
At approximately 7:50 a.m., an air raid alert was issued in Nagasaki, which was canceled at 8:30 a.m.
At 8:10, after reaching the rendezvous point with the other B-29s participating in the mission, one of them was discovered missing. For 40 minutes, Sweeney's B-29 circled around the rendezvous point, but did not wait for the missing aircraft to appear. At the same time, reconnaissance aircraft reported that cloudiness over Kokura and Nagasaki, although present, still made it possible to carry out bombing under visual control.
At 8:50 a.m., a B-29 carrying the atomic bomb headed for Kokura, where it arrived at 9:20 a.m. By this time, however, there was already 70% cloud cover over the city, which did not allow visual bombing. After three unsuccessful approaches to the target, at 10:32 the B-29 headed for Nagasaki. At this point, due to a problem with the fuel pump, there was only enough fuel for one pass over Nagasaki.
At 10:53, two B-29s came within sight of the air defense, the Japanese mistook them for reconnaissance missions and did not declare a new alarm.
At 10:56, the B-29 arrived at Nagasaki, which, as it turned out, was also obscured by clouds. Sweeney reluctantly approved a much less accurate radar approach. At the last moment, however, bombardier-gunner Captain Kermit Behan (English) noticed the silhouette of the city stadium in the gap between the clouds, focusing on which he dropped an atomic bomb.
The explosion occurred at 11:02 local time at an altitude of about 500 meters. The power of the explosion was about 21 kilotons.
Explosion effect
Japanese boy, top part whose body was not closed during the explosion
The hastily aimed bomb exploded almost halfway between the two main targets in Nagasaki, the Mitsubishi steel and gun works in the south and the Mitsubishi-Urakami torpedo factory in the north. If the bomb had been dropped further south, between business and residential areas, the damage would have been much greater.
In general, although the power of the atomic explosion in Nagasaki was greater than in Hiroshima, the destructive effect of the explosion was less. This was facilitated by a combination of factors - the presence of hills in Nagasaki, as well as the fact that the epicenter of the explosion was located over an industrial area - all this helped protect some areas of the city from the consequences of the explosion.
From the memoirs of Sumiteru Taniguchi, who was 16 years old at the time of the explosion:
I was knocked to the ground (off the bike) and the ground shook for a while. I clung to it so as not to be carried away by the blast wave. When I looked up, the house I had just passed was destroyed... I also saw a child being carried away by the blast wave. Large stones flew in the air, one hit me and then flew up into the sky again...
When everything seemed to have calmed down, I tried to get up and found that the skin on my left arm, from my shoulder to my fingertips, was hanging like tattered rags.
Losses and destruction
The atomic explosion over Nagasaki affected an area of approximately 110 km², of which 22 were water surfaces and 84 were only partially inhabited.
According to a report from Nagasaki Prefecture, "people and animals died almost instantly" at a distance of up to 1 km from the epicenter. Almost all houses within a 2 km radius were destroyed, and dry, flammable materials such as paper ignited up to 3 km from the epicenter. Of the 52,000 buildings in Nagasaki, 14,000 were destroyed and another 5,400 were seriously damaged. Only 12% of buildings remained undamaged. Although no firestorm occurred in the city, numerous local fires were observed.
The number of deaths by the end of 1945 ranged from 60 to 80 thousand people. After 5 years, the total death toll, including deaths from cancer and other long-term effects of the explosion, could reach or even exceed 140 thousand people.
Plans for subsequent atomic bombings of Japan
The US government expected another atomic bomb to be ready for use in mid-August, and three more in September and October. On August 10, Leslie Groves, the military director of the Manhattan Project, sent a memorandum to George Marshall, the US Army Chief of Staff, in which he wrote that "the next bomb... should be ready for use after August 17-18." That same day, Marshall signed a memorandum with the comment that "it should not be used against Japan until the express approval of the President has been obtained." At the same time, the US Department of Defense has already begun discussing the advisability of postponing the use of bombs until the start of Operation Downfall, the expected invasion of the Japanese Islands.
The problem we now face is whether, assuming the Japanese do not capitulate, we should continue to drop bombs as they are produced, or stockpile them and then drop them all in a short period of time. Not all in one day, but in a fairly short time. This also relates to the question of what goals we are pursuing. In other words, shouldn't we be concentrating on the targets that will most help the invasion, rather than on industry, morale, psychology, etc.? To a greater extent, tactical goals, and not any others.
Japanese surrender and subsequent occupation
Until August 9, the war cabinet continued to insist on 4 conditions of surrender. On August 9, news arrived of the Soviet Union's declaration of war late in the evening of August 8 and the atomic bombing of Nagasaki at 11 p.m. At a meeting of the “Big Six”, held on the night of August 10, the votes on the issue of capitulation were equally divided (3 “for”, 3 “against”), after which the emperor intervened in the discussion, speaking in favor of capitulation. On August 10, 1945, Japan submitted a proposal for surrender to the Allies, the only condition of which was that the Emperor remain the nominal head of state.
Since the terms of the surrender allowed for the continuation of imperial power in Japan, Hirohito recorded his surrender statement on August 14, which was distributed by the Japanese media the next day, despite an attempted military coup by opponents of the surrender.
In his announcement, Hirohito mentioned the atomic bombings:
... in addition, the enemy has at his disposal a new terrible weapon that can take many innocent lives and cause immeasurable material damage. If we continue to fight, it will not only lead to the collapse and destruction of the Japanese nation, but also to the complete disappearance of human civilization.
In such a situation, how can we save millions of our subjects or justify ourselves to the sacred spirit of our ancestors? For this reason, we ordered the terms of the joint declaration of our opponents to be accepted.
Within a year after the end of the bombing, a contingent of American troops numbering 40,000 people was stationed in Hiroshima, and 27,000 in Nagasaki.
Commission for the Study of the Consequences of Atomic Explosions
In the spring of 1948, to study the long-term effects of radiation on survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Truman ordered the creation of the Commission to Study the Effects of Atomic Explosions at the National Academy of Sciences of the United States. The bombing casualties included many non-war casualties, including prisoners of war, forced conscripts of Koreans and Chinese, students from British Malaya, and approximately 3,200 US citizens of Japanese descent.
In 1975, the Commission was dissolved and its functions were transferred to the newly created Radiation Effects Research Foundation.
Discussion about the advisability of atomic bombings
The role of atomic bombings in the surrender of Japan and their ethical justification are still the subject of scientific and public debate. In a 2005 review of the historiography on the issue, American historian Samuel Walker wrote that “the debate about the wisdom of bombing will certainly continue.” Walker also noted that "the fundamental question that has been debated for over 40 years is whether these atomic bombings were necessary to achieve victory in the war in Pacific Ocean on terms acceptable to the United States."
Proponents of the bombing usually argue that it was the reason for Japan's surrender, and therefore prevented significant casualties on both sides (both the US and Japan) in the planned invasion of Japan; that the rapid conclusion of the war saved many lives in other Asian countries (primarily China); that Japan was fighting a total war in which the distinction between military and civilians was erased; and that the Japanese leadership refused to capitulate, and the bombing helped shift the balance of opinion within the government towards peace. Opponents of the bombing argue that it was simply an addition to an already ongoing conventional bombing campaign and thus had no military necessity, that it was fundamentally immoral, a war crime, or a manifestation of state terrorism (despite the fact that in 1945 no there were international agreements or treaties that directly or indirectly prohibited the use of nuclear weapons as a means of warfare).
A number of researchers express the opinion that the main purpose of the atomic bombings was to influence the USSR before its entry into the war with Japan in the Far East and to demonstrate the atomic power of the United States.
Impact on culture
In the 1950s, the story of a Japanese girl from Hiroshima, Sadako Sasaki, who died in 1955 from the effects of radiation (leukemia), became widely known. While already in the hospital, Sadako learned about a legend according to which a person who folds a thousand paper cranes can make a wish that will certainly come true. Wanting to recover, Sadako began to fold cranes from any pieces of paper that fell into her hands. According to the book Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Canadian children's writer Eleanor Coher, Sadako managed to fold only 644 cranes before she died in October 1955. Her friends finished the rest of the figures. According to the book Sadako's 4,675 Days of Life, Sadako folded a thousand cranes and continued folding more, but later died. Several books have been written based on her story.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Photochronology after the explosion: the horror that the United States tried to hide.
August 6 is not an empty phrase for Japan, it is the moment of one of the greatest horrors ever committed in the war.
On this day the bombing of Hiroshima took place. After 3 days, the same barbaric act will be repeated, knowing the consequences for Nagasaki.
This nuclear barbarity, worthy of one's worst nightmare, partially eclipsed the Jewish Holocaust carried out by the Nazis, but the act put then-President Harry Truman on the same list of genocide.
As he ordered the firing of 2 atomic bombs on the civilian population of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, resulting in the direct deaths of 300,000 people, thousands more died weeks later, and thousands of survivors were physically and psychologically marked by the side effects of the bomb.
As soon as President Truman learned of the damage, he said, “This is the greatest event in history.”
In 1946, the US government banned the dissemination of any testimony about this massacre, and millions of photographs were destroyed, and pressure in the US forced the defeated Japanese government to create a decree stating that talking about "this fact" was an attempt to disturb the public peace, and was therefore prohibited.
Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Of course, on the part of the American government, the use of nuclear weapons was an action to accelerate the surrender of Japan; descendants will discuss how justified such an act was for many centuries.
On August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay bomber took off from a base in the Mariana Islands. The crew consisted of twelve people. The crew's training was lengthy; it consisted of eight training flights and two combat sorties. Additionally, a rehearsal for dropping a bomb on an urban settlement was organized. The rehearsal took place on July 31, 1945, a training ground was used as a settlement, and a bomber dropped a mock-up of the supposed bomb.
On August 6, 1945, a combat flight was carried out; there was a bomb on board the bomber. The power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was 14 kilotons of TNT. Having completed the assigned task, the aircraft crew left the affected area and arrived at the base. The results of the medical examination of all crew members are still kept secret.
After completing this task, another bomber took off again. The crew of the Bockscar bomber included thirteen people. Their task was to drop a bomb on the city of Kokura. The departure from the base occurred at 2:47 and at 9:20 the crew reached their destination. Arriving at the scene, the aircraft crew discovered heavy clouds and after several approaches, the command gave instructions to change the destination to the city of Nagasaki. The crew reached their destination at 10:56, but there, too, cloudiness was discovered, which prevented the operation. Unfortunately, the goal had to be achieved, and cloud cover did not save the city this time. The power of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki was 21 kilotons of TNT.
In what year Hiroshima and Nagasaki were subjected to a nuclear attack is precisely indicated in all sources: August 6, 1945 - Hiroshima and August 9, 1945 - Nagasaki.
The Hiroshima explosion killed 166 thousand people, the Nagasaki explosion killed 80 thousand people.
Nagasaki after a nuclear explosion Over time, some document and photo came to light, but what happened, compared to the images of German concentration camps that were strategically distributed by the American government, was nothing more than a fact of what happened in the war and was partially justified.
Thousands of victims had photos without their faces. Here are some of those photos:
All clocks stopped at 8:15, the time of the attack.
The heat and explosion threw out the so-called “nuclear shadow”, here you can see the pillars of the bridge.
Here you can see the silhouette of two people who were sprayed instantly.
200 meters from the explosion, on the stairs of the bench, there is the shadow of the man who opened the doors. 2,000 degrees burned him in his stride.
Human suffering
The bomb exploded almost 600 meters above the center of Hiroshima, killing 70,000 people instantly from the 6,000 degrees Celsius, the rest died from the shock wave, which left buildings standing and destroyed trees within a 120 km radius.
A few minutes later, the atomic mushroom reaches a height of 13 kilometers, causing acid rain that kills thousands of people who escaped the initial explosion. 80% of the city disappeared.
There have been thousands of cases of sudden burning and very severe burns more than 10 km from the explosion area.
The results were devastating, but after several days, doctors continued to treat survivors as if the wounds were simple burns, and many of them indicated that people continued to die mysteriously. They had never seen anything like it.
Doctors even administered vitamins, but the flesh rotted upon contact with the needle. White blood cells were destroyed.
Most survivors within a 2 km radius were blind, and thousands suffered from cataracts due to radiation.
Burden of Survivors
"Hibakusha" is what the Japanese called the survivors. There were about 360,000 of them, but most of them were disfigured, with cancer and genetic deterioration.
These people were also victims of their own countrymen, who believed that radiation was contagious and avoided them at all costs.
Many secretly hid these consequences even years later. Whereas, if the company where they worked found out that they were “Hibakushi”, they would be fired.
There were marks on the skin from clothing, even the color and fabric that people were wearing at the time of the explosion.
The story of one photographer
On August 10, a Japanese army photographer named Yosuke Yamahata arrived in Nagasaki with the task of documenting the effects of the “new weapon” and spent hours walking through the wreckage, photographing the horror. These are his photographs and he wrote in his diary:
“A hot wind began to blow,” he explained many years later. “There were small fires everywhere, Nagasaki was completely destroyed... we encountered human bodies and animals that lay in our path...”
“It was truly hell on earth. Those who could barely withstand the intense radiation - their eyes burned, their skin “burned” and was ulcerated, they wandered, leaning on sticks, waiting for help. Not a single cloud eclipsed the sun on this August day, shining mercilessly.
Coincidentally, exactly 20 years later, also on August 6, Yamahata suddenly fell ill and was diagnosed with duodenal cancer from the consequences of this walk where he took photographs. The photographer is buried in Tokyo.
Like curiosity: the letter that Albert Einstein sent former president Roosevelt, where he expected the possibility of using uranium as a weapon of significant power and explained the steps to achieve it.
Bombs that were used for the attack
Baby Bomb is the code name for a uranium bomb. It was developed as part of the Manhattan Project. Among all the developments, the Baby Bomb was the first successfully implemented weapon, the result of which had enormous consequences.
The Manhattan Project is an American program to develop nuclear weapons. The project's activities began in 1943, based on research in 1939. Several countries took part in the project: the United States of America, Great Britain, Germany and Canada. Countries did not participate officially, but through scientists who participated in the development. As a result of developments, three bombs were created:
- Plutonium, under code name"Little thing." This bomb was detonated during nuclear testing; the explosion was carried out at a special test site.
- Uranium bomb, code name "Baby". The bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
- Plutonium bomb, code name "Fat Man". A bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.
The project operated under the leadership of two people, nuclear physicist Julius Robert Oppenheimer represented the scientific council, and General Leslie Richard Groves acted from the military leadership.
How it all began
The history of the project began with a letter, as it is commonly believed that the author of the letter was Albert Einstein. In fact, four people participated in writing this appeal. Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, Edward Teller and Albert Einstein.
In 1939, Leo Szilard learned that scientists in Nazi Germany had achieved stunning results on the chain reaction in uranium. Szilard realized how powerful their army would become if these studies were put into practice. Szilard also realized the minimality of his authority in political circles, so he decided to involve Albert Einstein in the problem. Einstein shared Szilard's concerns and composed an appeal to the American president. The appeal was written in German; Szilard, together with the other physicists, translated the letter and added his comments. Now they are faced with the issue of transmitting this letter to the President of America. At first they wanted to convey the letter through the aviator Charles Lindenberg, but he officially issued a statement of sympathy for the German government. Szilard was faced with the problem of finding like-minded people who had contacts with the President of America, and this is how Alexander Sachs was found. It was this person who handed over the letter, albeit two months late. However, the president’s reaction was lightning fast; a council was convened as soon as possible and the Uranium Committee was organized. It was this body that began the first studies of the problem.
Here is an excerpt from this letter:
Recent work by Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard, whose manuscript version caught my attention, leads me to believe that elemental uranium may become new and important source energy in the near future […] opened the possibility of implementing a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium, due to which a lot of energy will be generated […] thanks to which it is possible to create bombs..
Hiroshima now
The restoration of the city began in 1949; most of the funds from the state budget were allocated for the development of the city. The restoration period lasted until 1960. Little Hiroshima became a huge city; today Hiroshima consists of eight districts, with a population of more than a million people.
Hiroshima before and after 
The epicenter of the explosion was one hundred and sixty meters from the exhibition center; after its restoration of the city, it was included in the UNESCO list. Today, the exhibition center is the Hiroshima Peace Memorial.
Hiroshima Exhibition Center The building partially collapsed, but survived. Everyone in the building died. To preserve the memorial, work was carried out to strengthen the dome. This is the most famous monument to the consequences of a nuclear explosion. The inclusion of this building in the list of values of the world community caused heated debate; two countries, America and China, opposed it. Opposite the Peace Memorial is the Memorial Park. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park covers an area of more than twelve hectares and is considered the epicenter of the nuclear bomb explosion. The park contains a monument to Sadako Sasaki and the Flame of Peace monument. The flame of peace has been burning since 1964 and, according to the Japanese government, will burn until all nuclear weapons in the world are destroyed.
The tragedy of Hiroshima has not only consequences, but also legends.
The Legend of the Cranes
Every tragedy needs a face, even two. One face will be a symbol of survivors, the other a symbol of hatred. As for the first person, it was the little girl Sadako Sasaki. She was two years old when America dropped the nuclear bomb. Sadako survived the bombing, but ten years later she was diagnosed with leukemia. The reason was radiation exposure. Being in hospital ward, Sadako heard a legend that cranes give life and healing. In order to get the life she needed so much, Sadako needed to make a thousand paper cranes. Every minute the girl made paper cranes, every piece of paper that fell into her hands took on a beautiful shape. The girl died without reaching the required thousand. According to various sources, she made six hundred cranes, and the rest were made by other patients. In memory of the girl, on the anniversary of the tragedy, Japanese children make paper cranes and release them into the sky. In addition to Hiroshima, a monument to Sadako Sasaki was erected in the American city of Seattle.
Nagasaki now
The bomb dropped on Nagasaki claimed many lives and almost wiped the city off the face of the earth. However, since the explosion occurred in an industrial zone, this is the western part of the city, buildings in another area were less damaged. Money from the state budget was allocated for restoration. The restoration period lasted until 1960. The current population is about half a million people.
Nagasaki Photos The bombing of the city began on August 1, 1945. For this reason, part of the population of Nagasaki was evacuated and was not exposed to nuclear damage. On the day of the nuclear bombing, the air raid warning sounded, the signal was given at 7:50 and ended at 8:30. After the air raid ended, part of the population remained in shelters. An American B-29 bomber entering Nagasaki airspace was mistaken for a reconnaissance aircraft and the air raid alarm was not sounded. No one guessed the purpose of the American bomber. The explosion in Nagasaki occurred at 11:02 in the airspace, the bomb did not reach the ground. Despite this, the result of the explosion claimed thousands of lives. The city of Nagasaki has several memorial sites for victims of the nuclear explosion:
Gate of Sanno Jinja Shrine. They represent a column and part of the upper floor, all that survived the bombing.
Nagasaki Peace Park Nagasaki Peace Park. Memorial complex built in memory of the victims of the disaster. On the territory of the complex there is a Statue of Peace and a fountain symbolizing contaminated water. Before the bombing, no one in the world had studied the consequences of a nuclear wave of such a scale, no one knew how long they remain in water harmful substances. Only years later did people who drank the water discover that they had radiation sickness.
Atomic Bomb Museum Atomic Bomb Museum. The museum was opened in 1996; on the territory of the museum there are things and photographs of victims of the nuclear bombing.
Column of Urakami. This place is the epicenter of the explosion; there is a park area around the preserved column.
The victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are remembered annually with a minute of silence. Those who dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki never apologized. On the contrary, the pilots adhere to the state position, explaining their actions by military necessity. What is noteworthy is that the United States of America today no official apology was made. Also, a tribunal to investigate the mass destruction of civilians was not created. Since the tragedy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, only one president has paid an official visit to Japan.
... We have done the devil's work for him.
One of the creators of the American atomic bomb, Robert Oppenheimer
On August 9, 1945, human history began new era. It was on this day that the Little Boy nuclear bomb with a yield of 13 to 20 kilotons was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later, American aircraft launched a second atomic strike on Japanese territory - the Fat Man bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.
As a result of two nuclear bombings, from 150 to 220 thousand people were killed (and these are only those who died immediately after the explosion), Hiroshima and Nagasaki were completely destroyed. The shock from the use of the new weapon was so strong that on August 15, the Japanese government announced its unconditional surrender, which was signed on August 2, 1945. This day is considered the official date of the end of World War II.
After this, a new era began, a period of confrontation between two superpowers - the USA and the USSR, which historians called the Cold War. For more than fifty years, the world has been teetering on the brink of a large-scale thermonuclear conflict, which would very likely put an end to our civilization. The atomic explosion in Hiroshima confronted humanity with new threats that have not lost their severity today.
Was the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki necessary, was there a military necessity for this? Historians and politicians argue about this to this day.
Of course, a blow to peaceful cities and great amount victims among their residents looks like a crime. However, we should not forget that at that time the bloodiest war in human history was going on, one of the initiators of which was Japan.
The scale of the tragedy that occurred in Japanese cities clearly showed the whole world the danger of new weapons. However, this did not prevent its further spread: the club of nuclear states is constantly replenished with new members, which increases the likelihood of a repeat of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
"The Manhattan Project": the history of the creation of the atomic bomb
The beginning of the twentieth century was a time of rapid development of nuclear physics. Every year, significant discoveries were made in this field of knowledge, people learned more and more about how matter works. The work of such brilliant scientists as Curie, Rutherford and Fermi made it possible to discover the possibility of a nuclear chain reaction under the influence of a neutron beam.
In 1934, American physicist Leo Szilard received a patent for the creation of an atomic bomb. It should be understood that all these studies took place in the context of the approaching world war and against the backdrop of the Nazis coming to power in Germany.
In August 1939, a letter signed by a group of famous physicists was delivered to US President Franklin Roosevelt. Among the signatories was Albert Einstein. The letter warned the US leadership about the possibility of creating in Germany a fundamentally new weapon of destructive power - a nuclear bomb.
After this, the Bureau was created scientific research and developments, which dealt with issues of atomic weapons, additional funds were allocated for research in the field of uranium fission.
It should be admitted that American scientists had every reason to be apprehensive: in Germany they were indeed actively engaged in research in the field of atomic physics and had some success. In 1938, German scientists Strassmann and Hahn split a uranium nucleus for the first time. And in next year German scientists turned to the country's leadership, pointing out the possibility of creating a fundamentally new weapon. In 1939, the first reactor plant was launched in Germany, and the export of uranium outside the country was prohibited. After the outbreak of World War II, all German research related to the “uranium” topic was strictly classified.
In Germany, more than twenty institutes and other scientific centers were involved in the project to create nuclear weapons. Giants of German industry were involved in the work, and they were personally supervised by German Arms Minister Speer. To obtain a sufficient amount of uranium-235, a reactor was needed, the reaction moderator in which could be either heavy water or graphite. The Germans chose the water they created for themselves serious problem and practically deprived themselves of the prospects of creating nuclear weapons.
In addition, when it became clear that German nuclear weapons were unlikely to appear before the end of the war, Hitler significantly cut funding for the project. True, the Allies had a very vague idea about all this and were quite seriously afraid of Hitler’s atomic bomb.
American work in the field of creating atomic weapons has become much more effective. In 1943, the secret program “Manhattan Project” was launched in the United States, led by physicist Robert Oppenheimer and General Groves. Huge resources were allocated to create new weapons; dozens of world-famous physicists participated in the project. American scientists were helped by their colleagues from Great Britain, Canada and Europe, which ultimately made it possible to solve the problem in a relatively short time.
By mid-1945, the United States already had three nuclear bombs, with uranium (“Baby”) and plutonium (“Fat Man”) filling.
On July 16, the world's first nuclear weapons test took place: the Trinity plutonium bomb was detonated at the Alamogordo test site (New Mexico). The tests were considered successful.
Political background of the bombings
On May 8, 1945, Nazi Germany unconditionally surrendered. In the Potsdam Declaration, the United States, China and Great Britain invited Japan to do the same. But the descendants of the samurai refused to capitulate, so the war in the Pacific continued. Earlier, in 1944, there was a meeting between the US President and the British Prime Minister, at which, among other things, they discussed the possibility of using nuclear weapons against the Japanese.
In mid-1945, it was clear to everyone (including the Japanese leadership) that the United States and its allies were winning the war. However, the Japanese were not broken morally, as demonstrated by the Battle of Okinawa, which cost the Allies enormous (from their point of view) casualties.
The Americans mercilessly bombed Japanese cities, but this did not reduce the fury of resistance to the Japanese army. The United States began to think about what losses a massive landing on the Japanese islands would cost them. The use of new weapons of destructive force was supposed to undermine the morale of the Japanese and break their will to resist.
After the question of the use of nuclear weapons against Japan was decided positively, the special committee began to select targets for future bombing. The list consisted of several cities, and in addition to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it also included Kyoto, Yokohama, Kokura and Niigata. The Americans did not want to use a nuclear bomb against exclusively military targets; its use should have had a strong psychological effect on the Japanese and shown to the whole world new tool US power. Therefore, a number of requirements were put forward for the purpose of the bombing:
- Cities chosen as targets for atomic bombing must be major economic centers, significant for the war industry, and also be psychologically important to the Japanese population
- The bombing should cause a significant resonance in the world
- The military was not happy with the cities that had already suffered from air raids. They wanted to better assess the destructive power of the new weapon.
The cities of Hiroshima and Kokura were initially chosen. Kyoto was removed from the list by US Secretary of War Henry Stimson because he honeymooned there as a young man and was in awe of the city's history.
An additional target was selected for each city, and they planned to strike it if the main objective will not be available for any reason. Nagasaki was chosen as insurance for the city of Kokura.
Bombing of Hiroshima
On July 25, US President Truman gave the order to begin bombing on August 3 and hit one of the selected targets at the first opportunity, and the second as soon as the next bomb was assembled and delivered.
At the beginning of the summer, the 509th Combined Group of the US Air Force arrived on Tinian Island, the location of which was separate from other units and carefully guarded.
On July 26, the cruiser Indianapolis delivered the first nuclear bomb, “Baby,” to the island, and by August 2, components of the second nuclear charge, “Fat Man,” were transported to Tinian by air.
Before the war, Hiroshima had a population of 340 thousand people and was the seventh largest Japanese city. According to other information, before the nuclear bombing, 245 thousand people lived in the city. Hiroshima was located on a plain, just above sea level, on six islands connected by numerous bridges.
The city was an important industrial center and supply base for the Japanese military. Plants and factories were located on its outskirts, the residential sector mainly consisted of low-rise wooden buildings. The headquarters of the Fifth Division and the Second Army were located in Hiroshima, which essentially provided protection for the entire southern part of the Japanese islands.
The pilots were able to begin the mission only on August 6, before which they were hampered by heavy clouds. At 1:45 on August 6, an American B-29 bomber from the 509th Aviation Regiment, as part of a group of escort aircraft, took off from the Tinian Island airfield. The bomber was named Enola Gay in honor of the mother of the aircraft's commander, Colonel Paul Tibbetts.
The pilots were confident that dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima was a good mission; they wanted a speedy end to the war and victory over the enemy. Before departure, they visited a church, and the pilots were given ampoules of potassium cyanide in case of danger of being captured.
Reconnaissance planes sent in advance to Kokura and Nagasaki reported that cloud cover over these cities would prevent the bombing. The pilot of the third reconnaissance aircraft reported that the sky over Hiroshima was clear and transmitted the prearranged signal.
Japanese radars detected a group of aircraft, but since their number was small, the air raid alert was canceled. The Japanese decided that they were dealing with reconnaissance aircraft.
At approximately eight o'clock in the morning, a B-29 bomber, rising to a height of nine kilometers, dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The explosion occurred at an altitude of 400-600 meters, a large number of clocks in the city that stopped at the moment of the explosion clearly recorded it exact time– 8 hours 15 minutes.
results
The consequences of an atomic explosion over a densely populated city were truly terrifying. The exact number of victims of the bombing on Hiroshima has never been established; it ranges from 140 to 200 thousand. Of these, 70-80 thousand people who were near the epicenter died immediately after the explosion, the rest were much less fortunate. The enormous temperature of the explosion (up to 4 thousand degrees) literally evaporated people’s bodies or turned them into coal. The light radiation left imprinted silhouettes of passers-by on the ground and buildings (“shadows of Hiroshima”) and set fire to all flammable materials at a distance of several kilometers.
Following the flash of unbearably bright light, a suffocating blast wave struck, sweeping away everything in its path. The fires in the city merged into one huge fire tornado, which was driven by a strong wind towards the epicenter of the explosion. Those who did not manage to get out from under the rubble burned in this hellish flame.
After some time, the survivors of the explosion began to suffer from an unknown illness, which was accompanied by vomiting and diarrhea. These were symptoms of radiation sickness, which was unknown to medicine at that time. However, there were other delayed consequences of the bombing in the form oncological diseases and severe psychological shock, they haunted the survivors decades after the explosion.
It should be understood that in the middle of the last century, people did not sufficiently understand the consequences of the use of atomic weapons. Nuclear medicine was in its infancy; the concept of “radioactive contamination” as such did not exist. Therefore, after the war, the residents of Hiroshima began to rebuild their city and continued to live in their original places. The high mortality rate from cancer and various genetic abnormalities in the children of Hiroshima were not immediately associated with the nuclear bombing.
For a long time the Japanese could not understand what happened to one of their cities. Hiroshima stopped communicating and transmitting signals on the air. A plane sent to the city found it completely destroyed. Only after the official announcement from the United States did the Japanese realize what exactly had happened in Hiroshima.
Bombing of Nagasaki
The city of Nagasaki is located in two valleys separated by a mountain range. During the Second World War, it was of great military importance as a major port and industrial center in which warships, guns, torpedoes, and military equipment were manufactured. The city was never subjected to large-scale aerial bombardment. At the time of the nuclear strike, about 200 thousand people lived in Nagasaki.
On August 9 at 2:47 a.m., an American B-29 bomber under the command of pilot Charles Sweeney with the Fat Man atomic bomb on board took off from the airfield on the island of Tinian. The primary target of the strike was the Japanese city of Kokura, but heavy clouds prevented the bomb from being dropped on it. The crew's additional target was the city of Nagasaki.
The bomb was dropped at 11.02 and detonated at an altitude of 500 meters. Unlike the "Little Boy" dropped on Hiroshima, the "Fat Man" was a plutonium bomb with a yield of 21 kT. The epicenter of the explosion was located over the industrial zone of the city.
Despite the greater power of the ammunition, damage and losses in Nagasaki were less than in Hiroshima. Several factors contributed to this. Firstly, the city was located on the hills, which absorbed part of the force of the nuclear explosion, and secondly, the bomb went off over the industrial zone of Nagasaki. If the explosion had occurred over residential areas, there would have been many more casualties. Part of the area affected by the explosion was generally on the water surface.
The victims of the Nagasaki bomb were from 60 to 80 thousand people (who died immediately or before the end of 1945); the number of people who died later from diseases caused by radiation is unknown. Various figures are cited, the maximum of which is 140 thousand people.
In the city, 14 thousand buildings (out of 54 thousand) were destroyed, more than 5 thousand buildings were significantly damaged. The firestorm that was observed in Hiroshima did not occur in Nagasaki.
Initially, the Americans did not plan to stop at two nuclear strikes. The third bomb was being prepared for mid-August, and three more were planned to be dropped in September. The US government planned to continue atomic bombing until the start of ground operations. However, on August 10, the Japanese government conveyed surrender proposals to the Allies. A day earlier, the Soviet Union entered the war against Japan, and the country's situation became absolutely hopeless.
Was the bombing necessary?
The debate about whether it was necessary to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has not subsided for many decades. Naturally, today this action looks like a monstrous and inhumane crime of the United States. Domestic patriots and fighters against American imperialism like to raise this topic. Meanwhile, the question is not clear-cut.
It should be understood that at that time there was a world war going on, characterized by an unprecedented level of cruelty and inhumanity. Japan was one of the initiators of this massacre and waged a brutal war of conquest since 1937. In Russia there is often an opinion that nothing serious happened in the Pacific Ocean - but this is an erroneous point of view. Fighting in this region led to the death of 31 million people, most of them civilians. The cruelty with which the Japanese pursued their policy in China surpasses even the atrocities of the Nazis.
The Americans sincerely hated Japan, with whom they had been fighting since 1941, and really wanted to end the war with the least losses. The atomic bomb was simply a new type of weapon; they had only a theoretical understanding of its power, and they knew even less about the consequences in the form of radiation sickness. I don’t think that if the USSR had an atomic bomb, anyone from the Soviet leadership would have doubted whether it was necessary to drop it on Germany. Until the end of his life, US President Truman believed that he had done the right thing by ordering the bombing.
August 2018 marked 73 years since the nuclear bombing of Japanese cities. Nagasaki and Hiroshima today are prosperous metropolises with few reminders of the 1945 tragedy. However, if humanity forgets this terrible lesson, it will most likely happen again. The horrors of Hiroshima showed people what kind of Pandora's box they had opened by creating nuclear weapons. It was the ashes of Hiroshima that during the decades of the Cold War sobered up too hot heads, preventing them from unleashing a new world massacre.
Thanks to the support of the United States and the abandonment of the previous militaristic policy, Japan has become what it is today - a country with one of the strongest economies in the world, a recognized leader in the automotive industry and the high technology. After the end of the war, the Japanese chose a new path of development, which turned out to be much more successful than the previous one.
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Illustration copyright AP Image caption Hiroshima a month after the explosion
70 years ago, on August 6, 1945, nuclear weapons were used for the first time - by the United States against the Japanese city of Hiroshima. On August 9 this happened for the second time and, hopefully, last time in history: the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.
The role of the atomic bombings in the surrender of Japan and their moral assessment are still controversial.
Manhattan Project
The possibility of using fission of uranium nuclei for military purposes became obvious to specialists at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1913, H.G. Wells created the science fiction novel “The World Set Free,” in which he described the nuclear bombing of Paris by the Germans with many reliable details and used the term “atomic bomb” for the first time.
In June 1939, Birmingham University scientists Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls calculated that the critical mass of the charge should be at least 10 kg of enriched uranium-235.
Around the same time, European physicists who fled from the Nazis to the United States noticed that their German colleagues who were working on related issues had disappeared from the public sphere, and concluded that they were busy with a secret military project. Hungarian Leo Szilard asked Albert Einstein to use his authority to influence Roosevelt.
Illustration copyright AFP Image caption Albert Einstein opened his eyes White HouseOctober 11, 1939 address signed by Einstein, Szilard and the future "father" hydrogen bomb" Edward Teller, was read by the president. History has preserved his words: “This requires action.” According to other sources, Roosevelt called the Secretary of War and said: “Make sure that the Nazis don’t blow us up.”
Large-scale work began on December 6, 1941, coincidentally the day of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
The project was given the code name "Manhattan". Brigadier General Leslie Groves, who knew nothing about physics and did not like “eggheaded” scientists, but had experience in organizing large-scale construction, was appointed head. In addition to Manhattan, he is famous for the construction of the Pentagon, which to this day is the most big building in the world.
As of June 1944, 129 thousand people were employed in the project. Its approximate cost was two billion then (about 24 billion today) dollars.
Russian historian that Germany did not acquire a bomb not thanks to anti-fascist scientists or Soviet intelligence, but because the United States was the only country in the world economically capable of doing so in war conditions. Both in the Reich and in the USSR, all resources were spent on the current needs of the front.
"Frank's Report"
Soviet intelligence closely monitored the progress of work at Los Alamos. Her task was made easier by the leftist beliefs of many physicists.
Several years ago, the Russian television channel NTV made a film according to which the scientific director of the “Manhattan Project” Robert Oppenheimer allegedly, back in the late 1930s, offered Stalin to come to the USSR and create a bomb, but the Soviet leader preferred to do it for American money and get the results in finished form.
This is a legend; Oppenheimer and other leading scientists were not agents in the generally accepted sense of the word, but they were frank in conversations on scientific topics, although they guessed that the information was going to Moscow, because they found it fair.
In June 1945, several of them, including Szilard, sent Secretary of War Henry Stimson a report known by the name of one of the authors, Nobel laureate James Frank. Scientists proposed, instead of bombing Japanese cities, to conduct a demonstrative explosion in an uninhabited place, wrote about the impossibility of maintaining a monopoly and predicted a nuclear arms race.
Target selection
During Roosevelt's visit to London in September 1944, he and Churchill agreed to use nuclear weapons against Japan as soon as they were ready.
On April 12, 1945, the president died suddenly. After the first meeting of the administration, which was chaired by Harry Truman, who had not previously been privy to many secret matters, Stimson stayed and informed the new leader that he would soon have a weapon of unprecedented power in his hands.
The most important US contribution to the Soviet nuclear project was the successful test in the Alamogordo desert. When it became clear that it was possible in principle to do this, there was no need to receive any more information - we would have done it anyway Andrei Gagarinsky, Advisor to the Director of the Kurchatov Institute
On July 16, the Americans tested a 21-kiloton nuclear weapon in the Alamogordo Desert. The result exceeded expectations.
On July 24, Truman casually told Stalin about the miracle weapon. He showed no interest in the topic.
Truman and Churchill decided that the old dictator did not understand the importance of what he heard. In fact, Stalin knew about the test in every detail from agent Theodore Hall, who was recruited in 1944.
On May 10-11, the newly formed Target Selection Committee met at Los Alamos and recommended four Japanese cities: Kyoto (the historical imperial capital and major industrial center), Hiroshima (large military depots and the headquarters of Field Marshal Shunroku Hata's 2nd Army), Kokura (machine-building enterprises and the largest arsenal) and Nagasaki (military shipyards, an important port).
Henry Stimson crossed out Kyoto because of its historical and cultural monuments and sacred role for the Japanese people. According to American historian Edwin Reischauer, the minister “knew and loved Kyoto from his honeymoon there decades ago.”
Final stage
On July 26, the United States, Britain and China issued the Potsdam Declaration demanding Japan's unconditional surrender.
According to researchers, Emperor Hirohito, after the defeat of Germany, realized the futility of further struggle and wanted negotiations, but hoped that the USSR would act as a neutral mediator, and the Americans would be afraid of the large casualties during the assault on the Japanese islands, and thus would succeed by giving up positions in China and Korea, avoid surrender and occupation.
Let there be no misunderstanding - we will completely destroy Japan's ability to wage war. It was with the aim of preventing the destruction of Japan that the ultimatum of July 26 was issued in Potsdam. If they do not accept our terms now, let them expect a rain of destruction from the air, the likes of which has never been seen on this planet Statement by President Truman after the bombing of Hiroshima
On July 28, the Japanese government rejected the Potsdam Declaration. The military command began to prepare for the implementation of the “Jasper to Pieces” plan, which provided for the wholesale mobilization of the civilian population and their arming with bamboo spears.
Back at the end of May, the secret 509th Air Group was formed on the island of Tinian.
On July 25, Truman signed a directive to launch a nuclear strike “any day after August 3, as soon as weather conditions permit.” On July 28, it was duplicated in a combat order by the Chief of Staff of the American Army, George Marshall. The next day, the commander-in-chief of strategic aviation, Karl Spaats, flew to Tinian.
On July 26, the cruiser Indianapolis delivered the atomic bomb "Little Boy" with a yield of 18 kilotons to the base. Components of the second bomb, codenamed "Fat Man," with a yield of 21 kilotons, were airlifted on July 28 and August 2 and assembled on site.
Judgment Day
On August 6, at 01:45 local time, the B-29 "air fortress", piloted by the commander of the 509th Airlift Group, Colonel Paul Tibbetts and named "Enola Gay" in honor of his mother, took off from Tinian and reached its target six hours later.
On board was a "Baby" bomb, on which someone wrote: "For those killed on the Indianapolis." The cruiser that delivered the charge to Tinian was sunk by a Japanese submarine on July 30. 883 sailors died, about half of whom were eaten by sharks.
Enola Gay was escorted by five reconnaissance aircraft. Crews sent to Kokura and Nagasaki reported heavy clouds, but clear skies over Hiroshima.
Japanese air defense announced an air raid alert, but canceled it when they saw that there was only one bomber.
At 08:15 local time, a B-29 dropped “Baby” on the center of Hiroshima from a 9-kilometer altitude. The charge went off at an altitude of 600 meters.
After about 20 minutes, Tokyo noticed that all types of communications with the city had been cut off. Then, from a railway station 16 km from Hiroshima, a confused message was received about some kind of monstrous explosion. An officer of the General Staff, sent by plane to find out what was going on, saw the glow 160 kilometers away and had difficulty finding a place to land in the vicinity.
The Japanese learned about what happened to them only 16 hours later from an official statement made in Washington.
Goal #2
The bombing of Kokura was scheduled for 11 August, but was delayed by two days due to a long period of bad weather predicted by weather forecasters.
At 02:47, a B-29 under the command of Major Charles Sweeney took off from Tinian with the "Fat Man" bomb.
I was knocked to the ground from my bike and the ground shook for a while. I clung to it so as not to be carried away by the blast wave. When I looked up, the house I had just passed was destroyed. I also saw a child being carried away by the blast wave. Large rocks flew through the air, one hit me and then flew back up into the sky. When everything had calmed down, I tried to get up and found that the skin on my left arm from my shoulder to my fingertips was hanging like tattered rags. Sumiteru Taniguchi, 16-year-old resident of Nagasaki
Kokura was saved the second time by thick clouds. Arriving at the reserve target, Nagasaki, which had previously hardly been subjected to even ordinary raids, the crew saw that the sky there was overcast with clouds.
Since there was little fuel left for the return journey, Sweeney was about to drop a bomb at random, but then the gunner, Captain Kermit Behan, saw the city stadium in the gap between the clouds.
The explosion occurred at 11:02 local time at an altitude of about 500 meters.
While the first raid went smoothly from a technical point of view, Sweeney's crew had to constantly repair the fuel pump.
Returning to Tinian, the aviators saw that there was no one around the landing strip.
Exhausted from a difficult, multi-hour mission and annoyed that three days ago everyone was rushing around with Tibbetts’ crew like a piece of cake, they turned on all the alarm signals at once: “We are going for an emergency landing”; "The plane is damaged"; "There are dead and wounded on board." Ground personnel poured out of buildings, and fire trucks rushed to the landing site.
The bomber froze, Sweeney descended from the cockpit to the ground.
“Where are the dead and wounded?” - they asked him. The major waved his hand in the direction from where he had just arrived: “They all stayed there.”
Consequences
One resident of Hiroshima went to visit relatives in Nagasaki after the explosion, was hit by a second blow, and survived again. But not everyone is so lucky.
The population of Hiroshima was 245 thousand, Nagasaki 200 thousand people.
Both cities were built mainly wooden houses, flared up like paper. In Hiroshima, the blast wave was further amplified by the surrounding hills.
Three colors characterize for me the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima: black, red and brown. Black because the explosion cut off the sunlight and plunged the world into darkness. Red was the color of blood and fires. Brown was the color of burnt skin falling off the body of Akiko Takahura, who survived 300 meters from the epicenter of the explosion
90% of people who were within a kilometer radius of the epicenters died instantly. Their bodies turned to coal, the light radiation left silhouettes of bodies on the walls.
Within a radius of two kilometers, everything that could burn was on fire, and within a radius of 20 kilometers, windows were broken in houses.
The victims of the raid on Hiroshima were about 90 thousand, Nagasaki - 60 thousand people. Another 156 thousand died in the next five years from diseases attributed by doctors to the consequences of nuclear explosions.
A number of sources cite total figures of 200 thousand victims in Hiroshima and 140 thousand in Nagasaki.
The Japanese had no idea about radiation and did not take any precautions, and doctors at first considered vomiting a symptom of dysentery. People first started talking about the mysterious “radiation sickness” after the death of the popular actress Midori Naka, who lived in Hiroshima, on August 24 from leukemia.
According to official Japanese data, as of March 31, 2013, there were 201,779 hibakusha - people who survived the atomic bombings and their descendants - living in the country. According to the same data, over 68 years, 286,818 “Hiroshima” and 162,083 “Nagasaki” hibakusha died, although decades later death could also be caused by natural causes.
Memory
Illustration copyright AP Image caption Every year on August 6, white doves are released in front of the Atomic Dome.The world went around Touching story a girl from Hiroshima, Sadako Sasaki, who survived Hiroshima at two years old and developed blood cancer at the age of 12. According to Japanese belief, a person's every wish will come true if he makes a thousand paper cranes. While in hospital, she folded 644 cranes and died in October 1955.
In Hiroshima, the reinforced concrete building of the Chamber of Industry remained standing, located just 160 meters from the epicenter, built before the war by the Czech architect Jan Letzel to withstand an earthquake, and now known as the “Atomic Dome”.
In 1996, UNESCO included it in its list of protected world heritage sites, despite objections from Beijing, which believed that honoring the victims of Hiroshima was an insult to the memory of Chinese victims of Japanese aggression.
American participants in the nuclear bombings subsequently commented on this episode of their biography in the spirit of: “War is war.” The only exception was Major Claude Iserly, the commander of the reconnaissance aircraft, who reported that the skies were clear over Hiroshima. He subsequently suffered from depression and participated in the pacifist movement.
Was there a need?
Soviet history textbooks clearly stated that “the use of atomic bombs was not caused by military necessity” and was dictated solely by the desire to intimidate the USSR.
Truman was quoted as saying after Stimson's report: "If this thing blows up, I'll have a good stick against the Russians."
The debate about the wisdom of bombing will certainly continue Samuel Walker, American historian
At the same time, the former American ambassador to Moscow, Averell Harriman, argued that, at least in the summer of 1945, Truman and his circle did not have such considerations.
“In Potsdam, such an idea never occurred to anyone. The prevailing opinion was that Stalin should be treated as an ally, albeit a difficult one, in the hope that he would behave in the same way,” the senior diplomat wrote in his memoirs.
The operation to capture one small island, Okinawa, lasted two months and claimed the lives of 12 thousand Americans. According to military analysts, in the event of a landing on the main islands (Operation Downfall), the battles would have lasted another year, and the number of US casualties could have increased to a million.
The entry of the Soviet Union into the war was, of course, an important factor. But the defeat of the Kwantung Army in Manchuria practically did not weaken the defense capability of the Japanese metropolis, since it would still be impossible to transfer troops there from the mainland due to the overwhelming superiority of the United States at sea and in the air.
Meanwhile, already on August 12, at a meeting of the Supreme Council for the Management of the War, Japanese Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki decisively declared the impossibility of further struggle. One of the arguments voiced then was that in the event of a nuclear strike on Tokyo, not only the subjects, born to selflessly die for the fatherland and the Mikado, but also the sacred person of the emperor could suffer.
The threat was real. On August 10, Leslie Groves informed General Marshall that the next bomb would be ready for use on August 17-18.
The enemy has a terrible new weapon at his disposal, capable of claiming many innocent lives and causing immeasurable material damage. In such a situation, how can we save millions of our subjects or justify ourselves to the sacred spirit of our ancestors? For this reason, we ordered the acceptance of the terms of the joint declaration of our opponents From the declaration of Emperor Hirohito of August 15, 1945
On August 15, Emperor Hirohito issued a decree of surrender, and the Japanese began to surrender en masse. The corresponding act was signed on September 2 on board the American battleship Missouri, which entered Tokyo Bay.
According to historians, Stalin was unhappy that this happened so quickly, and Soviet troops did not have time to land on Hokkaido. Two divisions of the first echelon had already concentrated on Sakhalin, awaiting the signal to move.
It would be logical if the surrender of Japan on behalf of the USSR was accepted by the commander-in-chief in the Far East, Marshal Vasilevsky, as in Germany Zhukov. But the leader, demonstrating disappointment, sent a secondary person to the Missouri - Lieutenant General Kuzma Derevianko.
Subsequently, Moscow demanded that the Americans allocate Hokkaido to it as an occupation zone. The claims were dropped and relations with Japan were normalized only in 1956, after the resignation of Stalin's Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov.
Ultimate Weapon
At first, both American and Soviet strategists viewed atomic bombs as conventional weapons, only with increased power.
In the USSR in 1956, a large-scale exercise was held at the Totsky training ground to break through the enemy’s fortified defenses with the real use of nuclear weapons. Around the same time, US Strategic Air Commander Thomas Powell ridiculed scientists who warned about the consequences of radiation: “Who said two heads are worse than one?”
But over time, especially after the appearance in 1954, capable of killing not tens of thousands, but tens of millions, Albert Einstein’s point of view prevailed: “If in world war number three they will fight with atomic bombs, then in world war number four they will fight with clubs.” .
Stalin's successor Georgy Malenkov at the end of 1954 published in Pravda in the event of nuclear war and the need for peaceful coexistence.
Atomic war is madness. There will be no winners Albert Schweitzer, doctor, philanthropist, Nobel Peace Prize laureate
John Kennedy, after the obligatory briefing with the Secretary of Defense for a new president, exclaimed bitterly: “And we still call ourselves the human race?”
Both in the West and in the East, the nuclear threat has been relegated to the background in the mass consciousness according to the principle: “If this has not happened before, then it will not happen in the future.” The problem has spilled over into years of sluggish negotiations on cuts and control.
In fact, the atomic bomb turned out to be the “absolute weapon” that philosophers had been talking about for centuries, one that would make impossible, if not wars in general, then their most dangerous and bloody variety: total conflicts between great powers.
The build-up of military power according to the Hegelian law of the negation of the negation turned out to be its opposite.