The attack on Japan and the Japanese people
...l around with a dazzling luminosity. Up it went, a great ball of fire about a mile in diameter, changing colors as it kept shooting upward, from deep purple to orange, expanding, growing bigger, rising as it expanded, an elemental force freed from its bonds after being chained for billions of years. For a fleeting instant the color was unearthly green, such as one sees only in the corona of the sun during a total eclipse. It was as though the earth had opened and the skies had split. One felt as though one were present at the moment of creation when God said ‘Let there be light.’ With the flash came a delayed roll of mighty thunder heard, just as the flash was seen, for hundreds of miles. The roar echoed and reverberated from the distant hills and the Sierra Oscura range nearby, sounding as though it came from the supramundane source as well as from the bowels of the earth. The hills said yes and the mountains chimed in yes. It was as if the earth had spoken and the suddenly iridescent clouds and sky had joined in one affirmative answer. Atomic energy—yes. It was like the grand finale of a mighty symphony of the elements, fascinating and terrifying, uplifting and crushing, ominous, devastating, full of great promise and great forebodings (qtd. in Lifton and Mitchell 14-15). On July 26, Truman issued the Potsdam Declaration, signed by President Truman and Prime Minister Attlee of the United Kingdom; with the concurrence of Chiang Kai-Shek, the president of the national government of China. The declaration called for Japan's unconditional surrender and listed peace terms. Truman had already heard about the successful Trinity bombing in Alamogordo, New Mexico, which took place ten days earlier. The Japanese were given an ultimatum that warned of the consequences by the terms of the Potsdam Declaration of continued resistance. Japan rejected the ultimatum two days later, because the Japanese pride would not allow them to surrender without putting up a good fight (Lifton and Mitchell 107). As a result, Truman authorized use of the bomb. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson felt the choice of using the atomic bomb against Japan would be the "least abhorrent choice." This would be weighed against sacrificing the lives of thousands of soldiers (Lifton and Mitchell 108). Military advisers had told Truman that a potential loss of about 500,000 American soldiers was at stake. It was vital to produce the greatest possible blow upon the Japanese, if the war was to be effectively shortened and the lives of the U.S. soldiers were to be saved. The atomic bomb provided such a blow. Military specialists selected the cities of Hiroshima and Kokura as targets after exhaustive study. Hiroshima and Kokura had been virtually untouched by the Allied bombings. On August 6, 1945, at 9:15 AM Tokyo time, a B-29 plane, the "Enola Gay" piloted by Paul W. Tibbets, dropped a uranium atomic bomb, code named "Little Boy" on Hiroshima, Japan's seventh largest city. In minutes, half of the city vanished. A firestorm of winds followed the blast at Hiroshima as the air was drawn back into the center of the burning area, and many Trees were uprooted. Close to two hundred thousand Japanese people were killed or missing as a result of this attack (Hook 18). Deadly radiation reached over four and a half miles. In the blast, thousands died instantly. The city was unbelievably devastated. Of ninety thousand buildings, over sixty thousand were demolished (Hook 15). Another bomb was assembled at Tinian Island on August 6. On August 8, Field Order No.17 issued from the 20th Air Force Headquarters on Guam called for its use the following day on Kokura, the primary target, or Nagasaki, the secondary target. Three days after Hiroshima, the B-29 bomber, "Bockscar", piloted by Sweeney, reached the sky over Kokura on the morning of August 9, but abandoned the primary target because of smoke cover and changed course for Nagasaki. Nagasaki was an industrialized city with a natural harbor in Western Kuushu, Japan (Lifton and Mitchell 17). At 11:02 a.m., this bomb, known as the "Fat Man" bomb, exploded over the north factory district at one thousand, eight hundred feet above the city to achieve maximum blast effect. Buildings collapsed. Electrical systems were shorted. A wave of secondary fires resulted, adding to their holocaust. Flash burns from primary heat waves caused most of the casualties to inhabitants. Others were burned when their homes burst into flame. Flying debris caused many injuries. It destroyed thirty-nine percent of all the buildings in Nagasaki. Seventy thousand Japanese people were killed or never found as a result of the second bomb (Hook 18). Highly penetrating radiation from the nuclear explosion had a heavy casualty effect. Energy released by the explosion of this type of atomic bomb used over Nagasaki is roughly equivalent to the power generated by exploding twenty thousand tons of TNT, or forty million pounds of TNT. In the early stages of the explosion, temperatures of tens of millions of degrees were produced. The light emitted is roughly ten times the brightness of the sun. During the explosion, various types of radiation such as gamma rays and alpha and beta particles emanated from the explosion. These radioactive particles give the atomic bomb its greatest deadliness. They may last years or even centuries in dangerous amounts. Gamma radiation and neutrons caused thousands of cases of radiation sickness in Japan. First, the blood was affected, and then the blood making organs were impaired, including the bone marrow, the spleen and the lymph nodes. When radiation was severe, the organs of the body became necrotic within a few days, marking the victim for certain death within a short period of time. Surveys disclosed that severe radiation injury occurred to all exposed persons within a radius of one kilometer. Serious to moderate radiation injury occurred between one and two kilometers. Persons within two to four kilometers suffered slight radiation effects. What the bomb had produced was concentrated chaos, from which no city or nation could easily or rapidly recover. No significant repair or reconstruction was accomplished until months later. On September 2, the Japanese government, which had seemed ready to fight to the death, surrendered unconditionally. Many people believed then that the atomic bombings were unnecessary for the surrender of Japan. Japan, by August 1945, was in desperate shape and ready to surrender. A New York Times military analyst wrote, shortly after the war: “The enemy, in a military sense, was in a hopeless strategic position by the time the Potsdam demand for unconditional surrender was made on July 26.” (Maley and Mohan) The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, set up by the War Department in 1944 to study the results of aerial attacks in the war, interviewed hundreds of Japanese civilian and military leaders after Japan surrendered, and reported just after the war: Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to December 31 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated (Maley and Mohan). Contrary to widely held opinion, the first critics of ...