Hiroshima Day
Sixty-four years ago today, the Nuclear Age began…
At 8.15am on August 6 1945, over the Japanese city of Hiroshima, the B-29 Superfortress bomber Enola Gay opened its payload doors. The payload was the first atomic bomb, codename ‘Little Boy’.
Here’s something I didn’t know.
In April 1945, General Groves was instructed to pick targets for the nuclear bombs… “To enable us to assess accurately the effects of the bomb, the targets should not have been previously damaged by air raids.”
I doubt many people become General without being a stone-cold, sociopathic bastard. To think that the people of Hiroshima probably thought they’d had a lucky escape when, all along, General Groves had something special planned for them.
Posted on August 6th, 2009 at 1:27pm under Science and progress
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• 20 Comments |
We mustn’t forget that these were testing grounds for TWO types of bombs. The atomic bomb, which was dropped on Hiroshima and the hydrogen bomb, dropped on Nagasaki three days later. It was a quite deliberate plan to test the effectiveness of both types of weapon on previously undamaged cities.
“Fat Man”, the Nagasaki weapon, was not a Hydrogen bomb – it was an alternative design of atomic bomb. (Plutonium rather than Uranium).
OK it wasn’t an H-bomb. My point remains, there were two types to be tested and tested they were.
Also take a look at this post from Philip Challinor which deals with most of the bollocks usually spouted about this subject.
Boston.com has, as always, some amazing photos of the terrible bit of bombing.
I doubt many people become General without being a stone-cold, sociopathic bastard
Well, without addressing that, Groves was an engineer – his previous job was building the Pentagon – so he may not have been a typical general.
I don’t know about the people of Hiroshima, but the people of Dresden certainly thought they’d had a lucky escape: there’s reference in Richard Rhodes’ excellent “The Making of the Atomic Bomb” to a running joke that Churchill’s aunt lived in the city, which was why they’d been spared.
A Japanese colleague years ago told me, over a lunch he had organised at a very ‘British’ restaurant in Tokyo (serving very old-fashoned British food not seen in this country in at least 50 years, I’d guess), that as a sixteen year old in early 1945 he had been drafted as a trainee kami-kaze pilot and was due to fly his mission on 7th August, but this was cancelled because of the events of 6th August. He was very grateful as he certainly didn’t wish to fly to his death, being knowledgeable enough to know the war was already lost. He said the downside was that all his family perished in Hiroshima. I hardly knew what to say, but he was a jovial individual and had no hesitation in being glad the war stopped so quickly a few days later (after Nagasaki); he was unashamedly pro-British, specially after having spent a year on secondment with the company in London in the early 1950s. I’ve met other Japanese of his generation who had similar attitudes – they were not all mindlessly willing to go to their deaths for a doomed cause, although a lot were, so a prolonged war would probably have caused many more deaths than the two bombs did, however horrific they certainly were.
a prolonged war would probably have caused many more deaths than the two bombs did
I’m afraid the idea that it was a choice between dropping the bombs and prolonging the war has come a bit of a cropper recently, i.e. since the release of the classified papers relating to the US decision. The Japanese had been trying to negotiate for about a year, and trying to surrender for three months, before the bombs were dropped. The US refused all overtures because the Truman administration wanted to scare the Russians and see what atomic weapons would do to people, or to Asiatics anyway. In other words, the war was prolonged by the US for the purpose of dropping the bombs.
The US was waving their dick for the Nagasaki bomb.
Let’s hope no dick waving in the future,
There is a bright side though – the day after the nuclear age began there were serious doubts about whether we’d still be here 64 years later.
OK it was wrong then again the war was going to end but with the death of a lot of young soldiers, I’ve no problems with the ending of the war because it was going to be a bloody battle.
In the end the best way not to be killed is simple do not go to war,
“I doubt many people become General without being a stone-cold, sociopathic bastard. ”
Whilst finding no fault with this observation within the context in which it is made it needs to be realised that this form of sociopathology has come on in leaps and bounds and reached new levels over the past sixty odd years.
What makes this comment of Groves stand out is just how mundane and technical he sounds – like he was talking about some mere technical/engineering problem/project in much the same way that others in that wider world conflict worried about the technical and cost aspects of the relative merits of say, gas or bullets in the processing of untermenschen.
I bring this up because the commnenbt that Justin has highlighted seems to me to be of a similar nature to one I came across a couple of days ago here in the Asia Times about the Chinese following the economic theories of Thomas Mun, from one Michael Hutchinson, author of a book entitled Great Conservatives:
http://atimes01.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/KG30Dj02.html
which was apparently reprinted from
http://www.prudentbear.com/
The interesting bit is the conclusion. After identifying (conceding?) the distinct possibility of resource limits to the current dominant growth paradigm……
“The key problem is natural resources. In Smith’s time, with a global population of only 1 billion and little industrialization, the global supply of resources was almost infinite. Today, however, when we have allowed global population to bloat to 6.8 billion, there are signs that the global resources supply may be becoming disturbingly finite. Under Smith’s economics, that isn’t a problem; if one resource becomes scarce its price rises, and the world switches to an alternative. If, however, we are now dependent on a few critical resources for which alternatives are not readily available, price signals alone may not prevent us from depleting those resources altogether, causing catastrophic disruption to our economic life. ”
…… Hutchinson considers a couple of alternative escape routes….
“There are two possible escapes from this future. One is the 1950s’ dream of space exploration, in which technology advances to the level where we can garner resources from other worlds, and if necessary dispose of surplus population in galactic colonization. However, 40 years after Apollo 11, our advance to that future seems much less certain than it did. Indeed, we are in reality no closer to it than were Jules Verne’s fantasy astronauts of 1865, who shot to the moon from the barrel of a gigantic Florida-based cannon.
The other possibility is to return to the world of Adam Smith, in which global population was around 1 billion, so that resources and environmental problems posed little constraint. In such a world, natural resources would be abundant for centuries to come, so China’s economics would be wholly foolish, and the free market would reign supreme. Government policy would no longer be relevant, and private sector companies would build new technologies and possibilities in a world of globalized free trade. Environmental constraints such as global warming would also pose little threat, since the carbon emitted into the atmosphere by the global economy would be a fraction of its current level.
Returning to a global population of 1 billion would be difficult, but it may be more practicable than a gigantic interstellar exploration program. If so, it may form the only viable exit from the inexorable approach of the world of Thomas Mun. ”
Quite how leading Conservative thinkers like Hutchinson propose to achieve a population reduction from 6.8 down to 1 billion in the sort of time frames which are likely, or which sections of the species will be culled, is not elaborated upon. However, the cold technical logic of his dialectic provides, in my view, some formidable competition for General Groves comment.
Although I do have every confidence that other contributors to this blog can find someone to trump Hutchinson.
I’m afraid the idea that it was a choice between dropping the bombs and prolonging the war has come a bit of a cropper recently, i.e. since the release of the classified papers relating to the US decision. The Japanese had been trying to negotiate for about a year, and trying to surrender for three months, before the bombs were dropped… In other words, the war was prolonged by the US for the purpose of dropping the bombs.
This is a misrepresentation of the facts and should be ignored.
It’s funny (though not funny) how easy some people find it to argue for the single greatest atrocity in human history.
Some people, at least, have always known better:
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism., question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.
Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face
Worth remembering, of course, that the end of British rule in India killed more civilians than the atom bombs.
Worth remembering, of course, that British rule in India killed as many civilians as World War II.
Worth remembering, of course, that British rule in India killed as many civilians as World War II.
No, it didn’t. British rule in India did not kill 50 million people – even if you blame every famine in British India exclusively on British rule, along with the bloodshed in the various wars and the Mutiny/Great Revolt.
But half a million deaths are uncontroversially linked to the bloodshed surrounding Independence and Partition. I’m not trying to say that Britain should have stayed – simply that it’s ironic that the end of what Orwell identified as an indefensible atrocity should have resulted in, ultimately, an atrocity of its own.
Ah, I didn’t realise they called it the Mountbatten Plan just for the fun of it.
That’s not ironic at all, it’s just plain predictable. Colonialism has a tendency to leave chaos and violence in its wake for a whole bunch of well-understood reasons. There are exceptions of course, but they are few and far between.
Ah, I didn’t realise they called it the Mountbatten Plan just for the fun of it.
This sentence lacks meaning.
it’s just plain predictable.
Was it at the time, though? Who predicted it?
This sentence lacks meaning.
This statement is false.