Eighty Years On - Will We Ever Learn?
Eighty years since the first atomic bomb used in anger was exploded about 800 metres above Hiroshima.
Around 140 000 people were killed by the blast, heat and ionising radiation; many others were appallingly badly injured, or developed cancers later from the radiation.
A few days later a second was detonated above Nagasaki.
They did end the Second World War, which in Asia revolved around Japan's imperialist ambitions: she had invaded China in the 1930s, among other countries.
However, it was at terrible civilian cost because like an earlier, massive USAAF bombing raid on Tokyo using conventional weapons, these were deliberately dropped on civilian cities.
Not military targets, as the US government tried deceitfully to claim at the time, while the US President callously claimed it as saving "thousands of young American lives" (US Services' volunteers and conscripts.)
We can all hope the Nagasaki one was the second and last ever to be used.
Those two bombs were designed by a UK/USA consortium of physicists and engineers, not only Americans, but the decision to use them was taken by the Americans alone without consulting their allies.
They had intended yields of 20kilotonnes TNT equivalent. The Hiroshima one seems not to "used" all its enriched uranium, so the actual blast was nearer 16kt. (The rest of the uranium would have been evaporated in the explosion, and condensed among the fallout.)
The result?
Ending the War in Europe had included stopping the Nazis developing the atomic bomb; but since then the Soviet bloc and NATO countries built terrifying arsenals of uranium-fission bombs far more powerful than those two dropped on Japan; and the vastly more powerful hydrogen-fusion bomb of tens of Megatonne TNT equivalents.
The USA placed many of its nuclear bombs, both aircraft-delivered and on ballistic missiles, in Britain. Although that locating would have needed British agreement, we now know the USA would not have sought agreement or prior knowledge to launch them. Essentially the USA saw her allies' territories as sacrificial launch-pads, but was very well aware her own territory would have been a Soviet target too.
Those arsenals and associated war installations have been reduced by post-Soviet treaties, but the Russian Federation and the United States of America, and to a lesser extent the UK (and other NATO countries?) still have them; and we now see unpredictable regimes like North Korea and Iran building them in an increasingly precarious world.
....
Today Hiroshima is marking the anniversary with a memorial event in its "Peace Park" gardens established below the detonation point when the city was rebuilt.
The whole world must note, learn and never forget.
Around 140 000 people were killed by the blast, heat and ionising radiation; many others were appallingly badly injured, or developed cancers later from the radiation.
A few days later a second was detonated above Nagasaki.
They did end the Second World War, which in Asia revolved around Japan's imperialist ambitions: she had invaded China in the 1930s, among other countries.
However, it was at terrible civilian cost because like an earlier, massive USAAF bombing raid on Tokyo using conventional weapons, these were deliberately dropped on civilian cities.
Not military targets, as the US government tried deceitfully to claim at the time, while the US President callously claimed it as saving "thousands of young American lives" (US Services' volunteers and conscripts.)
We can all hope the Nagasaki one was the second and last ever to be used.
Those two bombs were designed by a UK/USA consortium of physicists and engineers, not only Americans, but the decision to use them was taken by the Americans alone without consulting their allies.
They had intended yields of 20kilotonnes TNT equivalent. The Hiroshima one seems not to "used" all its enriched uranium, so the actual blast was nearer 16kt. (The rest of the uranium would have been evaporated in the explosion, and condensed among the fallout.)
The result?
Ending the War in Europe had included stopping the Nazis developing the atomic bomb; but since then the Soviet bloc and NATO countries built terrifying arsenals of uranium-fission bombs far more powerful than those two dropped on Japan; and the vastly more powerful hydrogen-fusion bomb of tens of Megatonne TNT equivalents.
The USA placed many of its nuclear bombs, both aircraft-delivered and on ballistic missiles, in Britain. Although that locating would have needed British agreement, we now know the USA would not have sought agreement or prior knowledge to launch them. Essentially the USA saw her allies' territories as sacrificial launch-pads, but was very well aware her own territory would have been a Soviet target too.
Those arsenals and associated war installations have been reduced by post-Soviet treaties, but the Russian Federation and the United States of America, and to a lesser extent the UK (and other NATO countries?) still have them; and we now see unpredictable regimes like North Korea and Iran building them in an increasingly precarious world.
....
Today Hiroshima is marking the anniversary with a memorial event in its "Peace Park" gardens established below the detonation point when the city was rebuilt.
The whole world must note, learn and never forget.
