Hiroshima bombing atomic society
The bombs that detonated on the two cities were – by modern standards at least – relatively modest, yet the devastation they inflicted was brutal enough to ensure that the whole world remains in fear of the next nuclear strike.
More than seven decades after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the horrifying scenes that emerged from Japan in August 1945 undoubtedly continue to haunt international relations. Worryingly, as we saw with Iraq, such disputes have the capacity to escalate into all-out war. This led to the tense, decades-long standoff that was the Cold War and to the ongoing political disputes over certain so-called “rogue” states – notably Iraq, Iran and North Korea – developing nuclear weaponry. Nuclear armament quickly became a priority for countries that could afford to fund its development. Agreed to by the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union, the treaty prohibited all testing of nuclear weapons, except underground. Kennedy signs the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty on 7 October 1963. But, while peace was undoubtedly established in the aftermath of the bombings, the question of whether or not such brutal force was really necessary has never gone away.
Japanese surrender came less than a month after the strike on Nagasaki. On the face of it at least, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a success. Crucially, the nuclear strikes on Japan also seemed to represent a route to victory that didn’t entail the loss of any more American lives. After two monumentally destructive assaults, Japan would be left with little option but to surrender – or so the logic went. The atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were shock and awe in extremis. On balance, the US decided that a demonstration of overwhelming destructive force (and the vast number of Japanese civilian casualties that would come with it) made sense as an alternative to prolonged warfare. The battles at Iwo Jima and Okinawa had been extremely costly for America and the tenacity of Japan’s military defence left little doubt that an invasion couldn’t be achieved without similarly bloody conflict. The atomic assaults were viewed by the US as a swift alternative to an ongoing Allied attempt to invade Japan, a plan that had so far proved unnervingly messy. In Imperial Japan, surrender was deemed to be dishonest, and both Emperor Hirohito and the army were adamant that they would fight on until the death rather than surrender. The decision to take nuclear action against Japan is widely justified as a measure designed to end World War Two and thus save countless lives that might otherwise have been lost in battle. Sure enough, just as US military planners expected, the two strikes shook the world, inflicting unprecedented and visually impactful annihilation on an obstinate enemy. Robert Lewis, co-pilot of the bomber that dropped the “Little Boy” atomic bomb on Hiroshima, recalled his thoughts in the moments after the detonation: “My God, what have we done?” Indeed, it’s clear that no one was under any illusions that this was anything but an unprecedented act of war and that its significance would resonate for decades to come. Dan talks to Hirata San, a survivor of the Hiroshima attacks, and one of the few remaining survivors who speak English, about the Hiroshima bombing.