At the end of the Second World War United States President Harry S. Truman was desperate for the war to come to a close. It was in this vein that after more than six months of intense bombing during which the Empire of Japan refused to surrender, that he ordered to use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As of today, these are the only atomic weapons to ever have been used on a populace. Many people do not realize that the two attacks were actually three days apart. Hiroshima was bombed first, and the blast is reported to have killed more than one hundred and forty thousand people. The bomb in Nagasaki claimed eighty thousand lives. Most of them died on the day of the bombing, but many others died later due to intense burns, radiation exposure, and other bombing related injuries.
Hiroshima was chosen because of its significance at the time as a minor industrial and military zone. It has also been said that another reason it was given such high priority as a bombing site was that it was without any prisoner of war camps, so there was little chance of collateral damage to U.S. troops who might be in Japanese custody. At the time of the bombing, it is estimated that Hiroshima’s population was around two hundred and fifty-five thousand.
On August 6th, 1945, the crew of the Enola Gay departed from an island roughly six hours away from the blast site. The atomic bomb nicknamed “Little Boy” was released at eight fifteen in the morning, and it detonated over Shima Surgical Clinic with a blast unlike anything the world had ever seen. The thirteen kiloton equivalent of TNT decimated the city in mere moments with a path of complete destruction going out from the radius for close to a mile. The fires that sprang up as a result of the intense heat stretched out from the nucleus with a radius of more than four additional miles. From this it has been estimated that over ninety percent of Hiroshima was either significantly damaged or completely destroyed on that day. It is believed that some of the survivors from this blast may have ended up in Nagasaki where they were immediately bombed again.
After the bombing, Truman declared that if Japan did not surrender to the Allies that they would continue to rain “ruin from the air the likes of which has never been seen on this earth.” However, Emperor Hirohito and the Japanese government decided not to react to the declaration. Originally the plan had been to drop the second bomb on Kokura on August 11th, but due to the predicted onset of bad weather conditions the date was moved up to August 9th. On the day of the bombing, the crew flew to Kokura; however, a large cloud cover kept them from being able to secure a visual target for the bombing. At the last minute as the planes were running low on fuel, Nagasaki was chosen for a bomb site instead.
Nagasaki was most likely chosen as a secondary bomb site because it was an incredibly large and important sea port in the south of Japan. It was considered to be important during wartime because it could produce both ships and other military related materials through the breadth of industrial activity which was capsulated inside the city. It experienced very little of the larger scale bombing raids that had occupied so much of Japan during the end of the war. While the bombing on Nagasaki was not officially designated until the last minutes of that mission, events had taken place which somewhat helped to reduce the number of civilian casualties. This was because the United States had dropped a number of high impact bombs on the city beginning at the first of August. Since the city had not known of an attack before, this concerned them and caused them to take many of the children, sick, and elderly, to be evacuated to more rural areas. Since this occurred just nine days before the atomic blast, many of them were still out of the city area.
On August 9th, 1945, the atomic bomb nicknamed “Fat Man” was released over Nagasaki. At 11:01 a.m. the clouds broke over Nagasaki, allowing them to release the bomb at the last minute. It detonated approximately fifteen hundred feet above the ground near the Mitsubishi Steel plant, more than two miles from the planned drop point. This bomb contained even more firepower than “Little Boy” had and detonated with a force equal to twenty one kilotons of TNT. Official documents have shown that the government of the United States was prepared to continue dropping nuclear bombs over Japan until they either surrendered or an invasion had begun in full.
The display of atomic weaponry by the United States combined with the recent declaration of war on the Japanese by the soviets, forced them to surrender shortly thereafter. On August 14th, Emperor Hirohito addressed the nation of Japan and surrendered. Occupation of Japan began shortly thereafter led by General Douglas MacArthur.
In an attempt to understand the power of the atomic bombs that had been released on Japan, President Truman set up the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC). The purpose of this commission was to establish what kind of long-term effects the radiation from the blasts had on the survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However the ABCC later came under fire as some people claimed that they did not offer medical treatment to some people in order to get better results on their studies of radiation poisoning and its affects. In 1975 the responsibilities that had been established by the ABCC were formerly taken over by the Radiation Effects Research Foundation.
The people who survived the atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki eventually became known as the hibakusha, or “explosion-affected people.” It was through these people’s suffering that the country of Japan began to see the dangers of nuclear weaponry and since then have called for an abolishment of the weapons ever since. There are currently close to two hundred and fifty thousand hibakusha who are formerly recognized by the Japanese government still living, and it is estimated that one percent of these still suffer from illnesses caused by the radiation from the bombings. Memorials in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki hold the names of the victims of the blast and are updated each year on the anniversary of the bombings with the names of those hibakusha who have passed away during the preceding year.
In the years after the bombings it has been found that there were some unintended casualties from the blasts. These include prisoners of war, Korean and Chinese workers, students from other countries, and over three thousand Japanese-American citizens who had returned home. For many years after the bombs, the Koreans who suffered from illnesses could not get their medical expenses covered because they had been denied recognition as hibakusha, or bombing victims, even though it has been estimated that nearly thirty percent of all killed in Hiroshima was of Korean descent. In recent years many of these issues have been addressed through lawsuits and most of the Korean survivors are receiving the benefits and treatment they need.
The decision to drop the atomic bomb is one that still comes under fire from groups who believe that it was an unnecessary display of force on an already weakened country. Some have even gone so far as to call it state sponsored terrorism. While it is not an issue that is likely to be resolved any time soon, many have speculated that if Truman had known about the long-term health affects and utter devastation of the bomb that he may not have been so quick to use it. It is through the examples of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in which many have seen the devastating effects of this type of weapon and vowed never to allow its use again.