‘My God, what have we done?’
Nuclear weapon killed 70K instantly in Japan
Seventy-five years ago Thursday, the U.S. became – and remains – the only country in the world to detonate a nuclear weapon against an enemy.
At 8:15 a.m. local time on Aug. 6, 1945, an American Boeing B-29 aircraft named Enola Gay dropped a 9,700pound uranium bomb nicknamed “Little Boy” over Hiroshima, Japan. About 70,000 people were killed instantly by the explosion, which had a radius of around a mile.
Three days later, on Aug. 9 at 11:02 a.m. local time, a second atomic bomb, named “Fat Man,” was unleashed by the U.S. over Nagasaki, Japan. This time, 40,000 people died straight away – within five years, the number of deaths approached 140,000, according to archived estimates by the U.S. Department of Energy. The Hiroshima death toll reached an estimated 200,000 by 1950 as those who survived the blast succumbed to burns, radiation sickness and cancers.
On Aug. 14, 1945, Japan surrendered unconditionally, effectively bringing an end to World War II.
Three-quarters of a century later, tensions, complications and uncertainties over nuclear weapons remain. Among the recent developments:
The Trump administration has withdrawn from a 2015 nuclear accord with Iran and world powers designed to limit Tehran’s nuclear capabilities.
President Donald Trump-led talks with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un aimed at denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula have stalled.
The Trump administration has suspended compliance with the Intermediate-Range
Nuclear Forces Treaty, a Reagan administration-era initiative that slashed the number of midrange missiles held by the U.S. and Russia.
Trump has abandoned the Open Skies Treaty – negotiated by President George H.W. Bush after the collapse of the Soviet Union and designed to be a check on nuclear weapons by allowing surveillance flights over signatories’ territories.
Trump has signaled he may not renew New START, the last major U.S.-Russia nuclear arms control treaty, unless China also agrees to be bound by it. Beijing has not committed either way. The treaty expires in February.
Marshall Billingslea, the top U.S. envoy for nuclear negotiations, has confirmed the U.S. has discussed holding the first nuclear test since 1992.
Fred Carriere, who teaches international relations at Syracuse University, said one of the major impediments to getting countries to denuclearize is that “everybody always wants everything up front, with the promise that good things will follow later on, but few will ever be able to accept this strategy.”
In the case of North Korea, negotiations broke down over Pyongyang’s insistence that Washington immediately halt economic sanctions.
“North Korea is not going to give up its nuclear weapons unless it can be absolutely confident that it has turned over a new leaf with the U.S,” he said.
Meanwhile, the stories of atomic bomb survivors have shaped the way we think about the consequences of using nuclear weapons.
Koko Tanimoto Kondo was 8 months old when the house in Hiroshima she and her mother were in caved in, burying them as Japan’s most industrialized city was consumed by the searing heat of the world’s first nuclear attack.
They escaped after her mother, who flitted in and out of consciousness, saw a crack of light through the wreckage and was eventually able to make an opening large enough to push her baby out and then crawl out herself.
In 1946, Kondo’s father, Kiyoshi Tanimoto, made an appearance in “Hiroshima,” a book about survivors by American journalist John Hersey. Tanimoto is described in the wake of the blast as running around trying to help the wounded and dying and encountering “rank on rank of the burned and bleeding.”
Tanimoto later started a program called Hiroshima Maidens that enabled Japanese girls physically altered by the bombing to travel to the U.S. to have corrective plastic surgery.
In a recent Zoom call, Kondo said one of her earliest memories of Hiroshima was being comforted by those girls.
“I could not see their faces. Their lips were seared to their chins. Their eyes would not close because of the burns,” she said.
Kondo said she vowed that day to find the person who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima.
In 1955, she would get her chance on NBC’s “This Is Your Life.”
Also on the show that day was Capt. Robert Lewis, co-pilot of the Enola Gay.
Kondo changed her mind about revenge as she watched the show’s host ask Lewis how he felt after dropping the bomb.
With tears in his eyes, the pilot said he had written in his flight log Aug. 6, 1945: “My God, what have we done?”
On the Zoom call, Kondo said that encounter made her realize she “shouldn’t hate this person. If I should hate anything, I should hate the war itself.”
In a follow-up email, Kondo said: “I constantly remind young people that they need to learn from history, that what happened in Hiroshima must never happen again.”