The bomb was called ‘little boy’. It was smaller than the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. It was 3 metres in length and 70 centimetres in diameter, AND weighed 4,080 kilograms. It exploded to the northwest of the city. Hiroshima is a city in Japan, which is in southwest Honshu. The city was founded in 1594. It is a big commercial city and in 1868 developed a big military base. During the World War 2 at quarter past eight in the morning as most workers had already made it to work after a first warning on August the 6th 1945, America dropped the first bomb on the city. When the bomb exploded a firestorm was caused which was a phenomenon where almost simultaneously fires were springing up. Then the fire wind reached a maximum velocity of 30 to 40 miles per hour per 2-3 hours after the explosion, the fire wind and the symmetry of the built up area burnt out about 4.4 square kilometres. It was reported that 129,558 people were killed, injured or missing and a colossal 176,987 people were made homeless. In 1940 the population of Hiroshima was 343,698.The explosion flattened 10 square kilometres (4 square miles) about 60% of the city.
In November the population was back to 137,000. The whole city needed to be rebuilt; in the heart of the city and the residential area as well as the administrative area, only 50 buildings remained standing and had been built with reinforced concrete.
The Japanese figures showed that the total building destruction was 62,000 out of 90,000 buildings in the urban area or 69% were total ruins.
Despite all of this happening, lack of sanitation and medical facilities no outbreak of a disease occurred. The Japanese authorities said this was because of the fires, which disinfected the whole city.
Three days later at Nagasaki another bomb went off, but this time there was no firestorm and because of Nagasaki’s uneven terrain the bombs damage was mostly kept to the valley walls. The area of devastation was much smaller than Hiroshima; it was only 1.8 square kilometres. Casualties were lower as well between 35,000 and 40,000 were killed and nearly the same injured
At Nagasaki a different type bomb was used, it was called ‘The fat man’ and it was 3.2 metres long and 1.5 metres in diameter, it weighed 4,500 kilograms. The amount of damage was greater than Hiroshima, even though the area of damage was smaller. The people of Nagasaki mostly all had radiation disease, in fact 95%. These pieces of information are the casualty’s statistics; flash burns 20-30%; radiation sickness 15-20%; other injuries 50-60%. A flash burn was when the bomb exploded the flash of light, which was extremely fast, emitted radiant heat, which travelled at the speed of light. All of the people that were in the open sustained flash burns. Survivors said that most people didn’t have their eyeballs burnt out because they are more susceptible to heat than skin.
Most of the victims were to have died within a few minutes or hours depending on the intensity of their burns. The victims bodies were either very brown or they looked as if they were covered in charcoal.
According to people in the city who had not been affected, people who had got radiation disease became ill 2-3 days later; the radiation affected the stomach of a person and literally all of the other vital organs, especially the kidneys and liver. Doctors who have done autopsies said that their results showed nearly a complete absence of white blood cells, and deterioration of bone marrow.
Most of the radiation cases showed that they were further away from the explosion. But they did not show symptoms until 1-4 weeks after the explosion, even though they said that they were feeling weak and unwell. 12-48 hours later people were said to have temperatures up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Most symptoms were hair loss; gangrene of the gums; inflammation of the mouth and pharynx (voice box).
The radiation had apparently affected reproduction. It made a lot of the Japanese men infertile and even today Japanese men have seem to become even more infertile in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
After the bomb had gone off the Japanese leaders decided to give up the war. Probably because of the thought of the Americans dropping another bomb on the same place.
Importance of the dropping of the bomb
This was a very important event in history because it was the first use of a nuclear bomb and when the Americans used it, the rest of the world could see what damage it could do. For example in the 1950’s when the cold war was still going on the public were very nervous about nuclear warfare.
About a month after the bomb was dropped an American general said that the easiest way to win a nuclear war is not to start one. He also said that you couldn’t have a nuclear war with anyone because the same bomb could harm your own country, with the power of the radiation, unless your country is so far away like Japan and America.
This was so important because now if any country breaks some of the world’s law e.g. starting a war for no reason on a country that is very small, and the U.N came to intervene the country getting stopped could have access to nuclear weapons, so they would be able to react.
The bomb affected everyone’s life in Japan. Children when they walking around had to wear masks over their mouths and noses because the smell of rotting bodies was too much. This is important because the children will remember the smell for the rest of their lives, and some of them became very ill because of the nauseous smell.
The dropping of the bomb was classed, as a good thing in some people’s eyes because they thought that there would never be a war again because of the use of a nuke and Japan in the 1950’s became an ally with the U.S.A.
After some years the two cities were rebuilt and there were more people living in the cities than there were in 1945. But people were scarred physically and mentally because of what they had suffered, people who were scarred were known as hibakusha. This just means that they were 10% more likely to catch leukaemia and other cancers than a person who wasn’t affected.
