"The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul." -Herbert Hoover
Hiroshima
Once the atomic bomb tumbled out of the bay of the Enola Gay, 80,000 people had thirty-four seconds to live, and another 60,00 people had only a couple of years left to live (due to radiation). Usually it would take hundreds of bombs to inflict this amount of damage, but with the atomic bomb, it only took one. The explosion razed Hiroshima to the ground, flattening the buildings like they were sand. At the heart of the explosion, it was 3,000-4,000 degrees Celsius, hot enough to melt steel. The shock wave traveled 1,443.5 feet per second, fast enough to strip away skin, blow out intestines, and make eyeballs pop out. An atomic bomb survivor recalled, “All green vegetation perished . . . Some [people] were burnt black, some had blistered skin that was peeling off, and some had pieces of glass in them all over.”
Two-thirds of Hiroshima was leveled. Within three miles of the explosion, 60,000 of the 90,000 buildings were destroyed. |
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Hitoshi Motoshima, Mayor of Nagasaki, called the atomic bombing of Japan, "one of two great crimes against humanity in the 20th century, along with the Holocaust. . .Does avoiding the death of servicemen justify the sacrifice of tens of thousands of guiltless noncombatants?” asked Hitoshi. "This is tantamount to killing a flea with a sledgehammer. It can hardly be called a justified act, even in wartime."