Project Gutenberg Self-Publishing - eBooks | Read eBooks online

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Remembering the Bombs

The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nag...
Hiroshima (by John Hersey)
The Manhattan Project
Nuclear survival manual : BOSDEC--the co... (by Fairlamb, James R)

Is a short and brutal implementation of total warfare preferable to a long, drawn out limited warfare which culminates in more casualties and greater economic strain? The bombings of Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the culmination of the Pacific Theater of World War II, which began in 1941 with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. But what if the Americans, or any country for that matter, had atomic bombs at the beginning of WWII? Would they have been justified in using them right off the bat if they knew it would prevent the high price of years of world war to come?

“On Monday, August 6th, 1945, a new era in human history opened,” begins the publisher’s note to John Hersey’s Hiroshima. This date marked the first of the only two nuclear bombs to ever be used in war. It was the final, monumental act of World War II, the war which had become the prototypical total war over the course of a grueling 6 years (1939 - 1945).

“Little Boy” was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945—not even a century ago—resulting in an estimated 90,000 to 146,000 deaths. Three days later, the United States dropped “Fat Man” on Nagasaki, resulting in an estimated 39,000 to 80,000 deaths. The injuries incurred in each city were estimated in the hundreds of thousands.

Stalin once said, “One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic.” Among the Allies, the bombings were simply additional figures in a war that had already trudged through a swampland of death. The war had already caused over 50 million deaths. It was the lesser evil to a war that had no end of evils. Many were thankful for the totality of these bombs. It curbed more American casualties, and was seen as the main factor leading to the surrender of the Japanese. But most of these people were too far removed from the event to have any real idea of its impact.

Public opinion in America would sway the following year, after the publication of a special edition of The New Yorker. For the first and only time in the magazine’s history, they dropped all their articles, cartoons, advertisements and columns, and filled their issue with one 30,000 word article titled “Hiroshima” by John Hersey. It was filled with first-hand accounts of survivors of the nuclear blast. Hersey spent over a month gathering those stories under the radar. The preface of the book version posed some serious questions to the ethics of the bombs:

“Should the Japanese have received advanced warning of America’s intention to use it? Should a demonstration bomb have been exploded in the presence of enemy observers in some remote spot where it would do minimum damage, as a warning to the Japanese people, before its first serious use?”

These questions remain relevant. With nuclear bombs today being over 1000 times as powerful as the two dropped on Japan in 1945, and with at least nine countries owning such weapons, one wonders if the consistent threat of world destruction by nuclear warfare is the only thing keeping us from entering the final Dark Age.

Albert Einstein, who was half of the substance of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, which called for world leaders to de-escalate arms and conflicts in the later ensuing Cold War, said, “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

For more reading on the nuclear weapons and the bombings, check out Nuclear Survival Manual by James Fairlamb, The Manhattan Project, and The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by The Manhattan Engineer District.

By Thad Higa