Eight decades ago humanity first saw the terrible power of nuclear weapons
By Alexander Alexandrov
The eightieth anniversary of the Great Victory has been celebrated, and the eightieth anniversary of the end of World War II and the victory over Japan is approaching. However, a tragic date is the wedge in between these anniversaries: eight decades ago humanity first saw the terrible power of nuclear weapons: on 6 August Hiroshima was destroyed by a superbomb, and on 9 August Nagasaki fell victim to the second nuclear attack.
The author of these lines heard about the accidents and coincidences that accompanied the infernal deed and what the victims of the «combat atom» released by America experienced from Anatoly Ivanko, an orientalist and translator who spent a lot of time in Japan.
– During my assignments in Japan I repeatedly came across reminders of those terrible pages from the country’s history, – Anatoly Grigorievich emphasised. – I especially remember the story of an old man who owned a small restaurant in Nagasaki.
We met him by chance in the spring of 1992. My companion and I quickly finished our assignment, and since it was lunchtime, we decided to have a snack somewhere. There was the Russian Maxim restaurant nearby. Its manager suddenly came up to our table, apologized and asked for permission to be joined by the restaurant owner who wanted to express his respect to the Russian guests.
A man aged about eighty appeared and introduced himself as Mr Kato. The Japanese confessed that he had dreamed of visiting Russia all his life, but his old age and illness had prevented his dream from coming true. He hoped that his daughter would be able to visit Russia.
When asked how long he had been living in Nagasaki, he replied, «All my life.»
«But what about the atomic bombing?» my companion couldn’t refrain from asking him. Then we heard the memories of a man who had gone through atomic hell.
The Last Confession of «Hibakusha»
During the war Mr Kato worked as a driver at a large enterprise that produced chemical components, which were sent for military needs to the continent, to Manchuria.
On 9 August 1945 he was driving his van back to Nagasaki when, about twenty miles away from the city, he saw a huge cloud of smoke, and, as it seemed to him, it was rising over the city stadium surroundings. A thought flashed through his mind: “Why is there so much smoke? What can be burning so intensively there?”
Pressing the gas pedal, Kato hurried towards the city. The closer he got, the more anxious he felt: “How are my old parents, my wife and two young children?” Soon an unbearable burning smell penetrated the cab, and it was getting hotter and hotter. When he reached the outskirts of Nagasaki, he noticed numerous fires, and there were absolutely no people around – the city seemed to have died out.
The first people he came across were a mother and a child lying on the ground, holding each other’s hand. Kato stopped the van and rushed to help them, but what he saw up close horrified him: these were the burned-out bodies of two people who had not yet died but were no longer alive. Their mouths, stretched into a grimace of charred flesh, were trying to scream, but in vain.
Seeing that it was too late to save those two, Kato dashed towards his house. However, only pieces of smouldering wood were burning on the site of his home, and the same was with the neighbouring buildings and the entire street. The horror of what was going on was aggravated by silence: no screams, no fire, or police sirens… Only the crackling sound of burning wood and buildings breaking in the fire.
Mr Kato did not remember how long he had sat in a daze in the cab of his van. He only came to his senses when it started raining, which looked more like a misty drizzle. It lasted for two or three hours, and all this time he did not leave the cab, which saved his life. As it turned out later, it was a «black” radioactive rain of death.
Not knowing what he should do, Kato drove to his enterprise, which was situated on the opposite side of the city and remained undamaged. The frightened guards couldn’t explain anything and only kept saying that something huge had been dropped from the sky. By the evening, a rescue team arrived in Nagasaki and all the surviving vehicles were used to transport the injured people outside the city. Kato was doing this job with the secret hope of seeing someone close to him.
Almost all who were evacuated had suffered from the fire and extreme temperatures. Some had their skin burned and “peeled off” their bodies like the peel of new potatoes, others had gaping bleeding wounds. Some of the victims had no open wounds, but their whole body was a continuous blister: the fiery flash of the monstrous explosion had burned the poor people evenly from all sides, leaving neither charred nor barely singed areas on them. Their eyes, noses and lips – everything had turned into a single bubble mask, under a thin film of which the accumulated cloudy-white liquid was seen. Many people had no arms, no legs, and no eyes: Nagasaki had become a city of the disabled…
Mr Kato paused for a while and then added, «It seems that the ‘God-chosen’ American nation conducted an experiment on living people using various methods of burning them. But those who survived in the midst of that horror could often envy the dead. My whole family was killed in the atomic strike, and I later remarried, but I have been suffering from leukaemia for many years owing to radiation exposure.»
Realising how hard it was for the old man to recollect the events of August 1945, I decided to change the subject and wondered why Mr Kato had wanted to meet with us in the first place.
«The Russians are reliable people,» the old Japanese replied. «They wouldn’t have done this. I am surprised at our leaders in choosing friends. How can you trust the Americans after what they committed in 1945?»
We said goodbye to the hospitable owner, and on returning to Russia we sent an invitation for his daughter to visit our country. However, there was no response. Then I dialled the phone number in Nagasaki.
The voice of Mr Kato’s daughter was heard. Barely able to hold back her sobs, she told us that her father had died two days after meeting with us: he had radiation sickness, which he struggled with all the post-war years. Thus, to the 264,000 «hibakusha» (victims of the atomic bombings of Japan) who had already died by that time, another human life was added, taken by the «combat atom».
There Are Already Half a Million of Them
– Thanks to the Japanese bent of my work, I have been searching for facts relating to the atomic tragedy for many years. To better understand what happened in early August 1945, let’s turn to the background, – Anatoly Ivanko suggested. – On the eve of the American nuclear bombing, Japan was in a difficult situation of economic and military blockade. The Imperial Navy was no longer able to withstand the much stronger and larger Navies of the USA and the UK. This is why the Japanese Naval Command focused on the mass production of special combat vehicles operated by suicide bombers: exploding boats, midget submarines and man-torpedoes, which were ordered from above to carry out suicide attacks against enemy ships. However, this tactic ultimately did not pay off. The country was blocked by the Allied fleet and cut off from the import of strategic materials.
Back in early March 1945 several hundred American B-29 bombers dropped incendiary bombs on Tokyo, resulting in the deaths of over 100,000. In total, by the time of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki American aircraft had destroyed over ninety Japanese cities.
The US Interim Committee on the Use of Atomic Weapons was guided by the following criteria when choosing cities for nuclear air strikes:
- The presence of civilian facilities round the military target;
- The importance of the city for the Japanese not only economically and strategically, but also psychologically;
- The high degree of significance of the place, whose destruction would cause a worldwide resonance.
- And lastly, another essential condition: the target must not be damaged by previous bombing so that the military could assess the true power of the new weapons.
– Why did Hiroshima and Nagasaki have such a terrible lot?
– In addition to these two, several other Japanese cities were among the candidates for a nuclear strike.
Kokura was the location of Japan’s major military arsenal.
Yokohama, the centre of the military industry.
Niigata, the concentration of machine–building enterprises, a large port on Hokkaido and very convenient for the landing of Soviet troops (the Americans wanted to prevent it in every possible way).
Kyoto, the most important industrial and cultural centre and the ancient capital of Japan.
Experts identified Kyoto as the most convenient target for an atomic strike. However, according to the surviving memories of the participants in the events, the then US Secretary of War H. Stimson insisted on sparing this city, as he was personally familiar with its sights and realised their cultural significance. The fact is that Mr Stimson had spent his honeymoon in Kyoto in his youth and considered this city his wedding mascot.
As for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, strictly speaking, neither of them was a «hub of Japanese militarism”, but they were peaceful cities with «elements of military purpose”. Hiroshima, for example, had a point for the assembly and subsequent departure of recruits and reservists. And Nagasaki was used as an additional shipyard for ship repairs.
Interestingly, initially both cities were mentioned in the American «blacklist» as backup targets, and bombing them was not seriously considered. This is evidenced by the fact that even before 9 August there had been a “classic” air raid on Nagasaki, using conventional bombs. It alarmed the city residents and made them evacuate most of the local schoolchildren to the surrounding villages. It saved hundreds of children’s lives.
But in the end, after much discussion, the American command chose two main targets for atomic bombing and two backup ones in case of unforeseen situations. These were: for the first bombing – Hiroshima (the backup target: Niigata); for the second– Kokura (the backup target: Nagasaki).
According to information from American sources, the nuclear attack on Hiroshima took place without problems. The weather was more than favourable for dropping the bomb, which was affectionately nicknamed the «Little Boy» by nuclear scientists. When the Japanese air defence units spotted several single objects rushing towards Hiroshima (the main bomber and its accompanying pathfinders), they took them for a reconnaissance raid by American aviation, which did not pose any threat to the city.
The operation to drop the second atomic bomb, nicknamed the «Fat Man”, did not go smoothly. It should be noted that the Americans prepared the first nuclear bombings in history very carefully. The only obstacle could be the weather. And so it happened. In the early morning of 9 August, a plane under the command of Major Charles Sweeney with the «Fat Man» on board took off from the airfield on Tinian Island, with its target being the Japanese city of Kokura. At 8:10 in the morning, the bomber arrived at the place where it was supposed to meet the second B–29 but did not find it.
After forty minutes of waiting in the air, it was decided to carry out the bombing without an accompanying observation plane. However, it emerged that during the unexpected delay, seventy percent cloud cover had gathered over Kokura, which could have prevented the bomber from reaching the target accurately. There was another, purely technical “trifle”: just before the departure of Major Sweeney’s plane a malfunction of its fuel pump was detected, and the situation was aggravated by the forty extra minutes in the air. And now, with the final choice between the main and backup targets, it became obvious that it was risky to fly to Kokura, so the only way to apply the «Fat Man» was to do it while flying over Nagasaki, which was closer.
However, even there the vagaries of the weather awaited the bomber. Clouds began to cover the city, hiding it from the American pilots. At one point, it even seemed that Major Sweeney would have to turn the plane round and return to the base without completing the combat mission. But suddenly a «window» appeared in the clouds, through which a characteristic «marker» on the ground became visible below – the stadium in Nagasaki. Guided by it, the crew of the B-29 dropped the bomb. Fortunately, if such words are appropriate in such cases, the bomb fell rather far from the densely populated areas, which somewhat reduced the number of victims.
The effect of using the «combat atom» proved overwhelming. According to eyewitnesses, all who were within 800 yards of the epicentres of the explosions died. Very high temperatures at the sites where the «Little Boy» and the «Fat Man» fell caused massive fires, and in Hiroshima they soon turned into a fire tornado because of the wind, which was about thirty to forty miles per hour. Of the 245,000 inhabitants of Hiroshima, 70,000 or 80,000 perished immediately. Several days later, the number of victims increased due to those who died from wounds and burns, and then…
The nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki gave mankind radiation sickness. The doctors were the first to detect it. They were surprised that at first the condition of the survivors improved, and then they died from a disease whose symptoms in many cases resembled diarrhea. After the atomic raid few could have imagined that those who survived it would suffer from various serious diseases and even have sick children.
– How can we evaluate the purely military results of the American use of superbombs?
– On 9 August, after the news of the bombing of Nagasaki and the declaration of war by the USSR, Emperor Hirohito called for immediate surrender on condition they maintain his power in the country. In the text of his statement spread by the Japanese media His Majesty mentioned that one of the causes of his decision was the enemy’s possession of «terrible weapons», the use of which could lead to the annihilation of the nation.
It would seem that it confirmed the assurances of the American leadership that the main purpose of their use of atomic weapons was to end the war swiftly. However, this statement does not stand up to serious criticism. Firstly, as mentioned above, before the bombing Japan had already ceased to pose a real military threat. And secondly, in the summer of 1945, two weeks before the Potsdam Conference, Stalin informed his allies Truman and Churchill that Japan was ready to enter into negotiations on surrender. Unfortunately, this information was not perceived by the US and UK leaders as a signal for the end of hostilities.
The United States wanted to surprise the whole globe with a new type of weapon of mass destruction. And most importantly, to demonstrate it in action to the Soviet Union and thereby prove that the days when all the three powers of the anti-Hitler coalition decided the destiny of the world on equal terms were gone forever and now the USA would decide the fate of humanity single-handedly.
Another objective of the atomic bombing was to prevent the Soviet Army’s invasion of Japan and thereby ensure its occupation by America. It is confirmed by the date of the bombing of Nagasaki: 9 August is the day when the USSR entered the war with Japan and our troops had already begun to successfully crack into the defences of the Kwantung Army in Manchuria, which meant the imminent military defeat of Emperor Hirohito’s Army.
Finally, it should be taken into account that the USA pursued goals not only of a military and political nature, but also a commercial one: to justify to taxpayers the $2 billion spent on the development of the nuclear project.
– Is the total number of those whose lives were cut short by the «Little Boy» and «Fat Man» known?
– According to various estimates, by late 1945 the number of victims of the nuclear bombing had reached between 90,000 and 160,000 in Hiroshima and between 60,000 and 80,000 in Nagasaki. But even after that people continued to die. For eight decades now, the Japanese have had the word «hibakusha», which refers to the victims of the American atomic bombings.
According to available statistics, in August 2013, sixty-eight years after the tragedy, the total number of deaths as a result of the nuclear attacks exceeded 450,000. But the list continues to grow even now.
These thousands of dead and sick people have served as “subjects” to test the effects of the new weapons on human-beings. Remarkably, the US leadership had no qualms about such a cynical approach to solving the «Japanese issue”. The words of President Harry Truman proved this very eloquently. On the second day after the bombing of Nagasaki he said, «The only language they (the Japanese) understand is the language of bombing. When you have to deal with an animal, you have to treat it as an animal. It’s sad, but it’s true…»
