And to this day nothing can live there. Not even weeds will grow among the glowing radioactive rubble.
Current day Hiroshima vs current day Detroit. Just who got bombed?
I visited Hiroshima in the latter 90s while working for the Navy in Yokosuka.
That’s just a wimpy little A-bomb.
After Dad got through killing nazis in Germany he received orders to return to the US and prepare for the invasion of Japan. When these two A-bombs were dropped everyone gave a sigh of relief as they knew the war was about over.
After the A-bombs were dropped the US went back to conventional bombing raids till the surrender was signed. This is not mentioned in most histories as they consider the A-bombs the last. it was not.
When I was on Okinawa in 1968, there was a TV show over AFRTS(Armed Forces Radio & TV Station) telling about the end of the war. When the A-bomb was dropped the screen suddenly went to static for about a minute as they did not want to offend the Japanese watching. Then when it came back on it was told how we continued to crop conventional bombs till the surrender was signed. I had never heard that till that moment.
Back when we used to be as committed to winning wars as our enemies were.
The bomb: Made in the USA and tested in Japan.
From all the Marines who survived Guadalcanal, Peleliu, and Okinawa: Hallelujah!
And THAT U-235 gun-barrel design bomb was NEVER tested; they KNEW that would work.
The beginning of Freedom-
Family had to hide in the mountains of Baguio, and in Mindanao. Never forget what those Yellow Bastards did.
They still teach it today, to the few kids left in that withering society.
FWIW - Beijing is gonna wanna talk about it soon.
I visited Hiroshima last October and took in the sights.
The city is beautiful, and the museum was modern. It leaned heavily on pity for the children that died in the bombing and the aftermath. No mention anywhere about the kids in China.
“We have spent two billion dollars on the greatest scientific gamble in history — and won.” - President Harry Truman (The New York Times, Tuesday, August 7, 1945, p. 1)
“The atom bomb was no ‘great decision’… It was merely another powerful weapon in the arsenal of righteousness.” – Harry S. Truman, at a Columbia University Seminar, April 28, 1959, New York City (from The Buck Stops Here: The 28 Toughest Presidential Decisions and How They Changed History, Thomas J. Craughwell, Edwin Kiester Jr., Quarry Books, 2010, p. 178).
“During a meeting at the White House in October 1945, [Robert] Oppenheimer tried to convey his deep moral crisis. ‘Mr. President, I have blood on my hands,’ he remarked. ‘Never mind,’ Truman replied, ‘it’ll all come out in the wash.’ (According to some accounts he offered Oppenheimer a hankerchief.) ‘Don’t you bring that crybaby in here again,’ Truman later told an aide. ‘After all, all he did was make the bomb. I’m the guy who fired it off.'” Excerpted from The Bomb: A Life (Gerard J. DeGroot, Harvard University Press, 2004, p. 111)
“Don’t bother me with your conscientious scruples. After all the thing’s superb physics.” - Enrico Fermi, taken from Brighter than a Thousand Suns, Robert Jungk, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1970, p. 202.
“There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom. The glib supposition of utilizing atomic energy when our coal has run out is a completely unscientific Utopian dream, a childish bug-a-boo. Nature has introduced a few foolproof devices into the great majority of elements that constitute the bulk of the world, and they have no energy to give up in the process of disintegration.” - Dr. Robert Andrews Millikan (1863-1953), 1923 Nobel Laureate, in 1928 at the Chemists’ Club (New York) (from “It’ll Never Work!“).
“The energy produce by the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine.” - Lord Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937), Cambridge University Professor of Experimental Physics, 1908 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, known as the ‘father of nuclear physics’, as quoted in The New York Herald Tribune, September 12, 1933. Excerpted from Science Says: A Collection of Quotations on the History, Meaning and Practice of Science, Rob Kaplan, E-reads/E-rights, 2009, p. 61.
The ‘calculators’ will jump in with their calculations.. X lives here means Y lives there.. F all that. It’s a sobering day for humanity.
My dad was B25 crew chief in training in the US and had gotten his orders for the Pacific. The training units were being shut down and everyone was slated for Japan. They all cheered when they learned about the in bomb drops. You won’t find many hand writing sob sisters in that generation.
When the Atom Bomb Fell--Karl & Harty (1945)
Atomic Power--Fred Kirby (1946)
Atomic Cocktail--Slim Gaillard Quartet (1946)
Funiyama Mama--Annisteen Allen (1955)
Long but very good read
https://davidlabaree.com/2021/08/09/paul-fussell-thank-god-for-the-atom-bomb/
If it wasn’t for the bomb, my dad most likely would have died on the beaches of Japan and I would not exist.
Harry Truman (D) saved an estimated 1 million G.I.s with that.
The loss of life from these missions was well in excess of the two nuclear weapons dropped.
Accompanying the conventional firebombing missions were many, many, clear warnings of another, unconventional weapon that was to be much more horrific than the firebombing.
Japan ignored all this; at least the decision-makers did.
Reading the posts back then I got the unmistakeable impression that the US commanders were bending themselves into a pretzel, using every diplomatic channel, to try to convince Japan to surrender. But nothing would convince them.
Shock and Awe. Seeing the nuclear blasts snapped them out of whatever trance they were in.
It absolutely ended the war abruptly. It saved several millions of lives. No doubt.
Moreover, the MAD philosophy adopted by everyone afterward has undoubtedly saved billions of lives.