“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer said in the New Mexico desert in July 1945 after witnessing mankind split the atom and unleash the power of the sun in one split second.
On Aug. 6, 1945 — 70 years ago tomorrow — the U.S. Army Air Forces crew of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress nicknamed Enola Gay flew over the Japanese city of Hiroshima and dropped a single nuclear fission bomb at 8:15 a.m.
Slightly missing the Aioi Bridge, and instead falling above Shima Hospital, a second sun burst in sky 1,900 feet above the Earth, turning 70,000 people instantly into mere memories. In total 140,000 people were killed by the sudden firestorm and in the days after from the radiation unleashed by the detonation.
A second fission bomb fell on Nagasaki three days later on Aug. 9, 1945.
Faced with the impending annihilation of his island, Japanese Emperor Hirohito spoke on the radio for the first time, announcing the unconditional surrender of the Empire of Japan to Allied forces, ending World War II. More people were killed in Nazi death camps, in the Imperial Japanese Army’s Rape of Nanking, in the Allied firebombing of Tokyo, along the brutal Eastern Front between the Soviet Union and Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe and in Axis-occupied territories around the globe, but never in the history of our species had so many died so suddenly as in those two bomb blasts 70 years ago.
Nuclear weapons theory is rooted in the premise of Mutual Assured Destruction, the policy that if a weapon is used by one state against another, it will receive in turn the full weight of its opponent’s nuclear arsenal in retaliation.
Leaders are protected from pulling the trigger because there is a gun pointed at their heads. For most of the Cold War, we lived in the 11 minutes between missile silo launch and impact.
Nine nations now possess nuclear weapons: The United States, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel, but none have used them in anger against military units or civilian populations since 1945.
Nuclear fission supplies 10.9 percent of the world’s power in 31 countries. One day, nuclear fusion plants may provide environmentally clean power, but we can never forget these tools were first developed so we could kill each other faster and more efficiently.
Near the rebuilt Aioi Bridge, the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall still stands in ruins of steel and concrete 70 years after a bomb vaporized the city around it. Renamed the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, it exists as a reminder of our first use of nuclear weapons.
Two camphor trees scorched at the Sannō Shrine near Nagaski’s Ground Zero returned to life after the bombing. We are left with the solemn hope that they will be the last witnesses to mankind’s use of these weapons.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
