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A World at War — 79 Years Ago, the End of World War II, The Atomic Bomb Explosion
by G. Avidan
The explosion over Hiroshima (left) and Nagasaki (right)
Part III
In the first parts of our review and reflections about World War II, we touched on the dropping of the atomic bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In this final part, we deal with the topic in greater detail and depth.
Was it justified to drop the A-bomb over Japan? The President of the United States thought that his decision had been correct, however, people now feel guilty over the extent of the destruction in Hiroshima. On the one hand, it certainly put a speedy end to the war in the Pacific (though there is evidence that the Japanese may been near to giving up even before the bomb). On the other hand, soon after the explosion, the Russians began to manufacture nuclear weapons of their own, and the Nuclear Age began. A new era dawned in which people feared that nuclear war imminent.
The defense of America rested on a theory called Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD): since America and Russia could each destroy the other if attacked, they would never attack. It seems to have worked, but the fears distorted the face of American culture for years.
Today, the Cold War has ended. But new fears are plaguing us, for what will happen if — chas vesholom — nuclear weapons fall into the hands of terrorist groups?
The Deadly Mushroom
The following descriptions constitute an integral part of twentieth century history, and appear in nearly all of the books written about the Second World War:
It was pleasant and clear day in the tranquil Japanese city of Hiroshima. The adults arose to a day of work, and the children prepared to go to school. Little did they know what terrors lurked behind the innocuous blue of the sky. It was the sixth of August, 1945.
At eight a.m., an American B-29 bomber neared the city. Hiroshima's residents looked up at the sky for a brief moment, and returned to their affairs. They weren't particularly concerned. Experience had taught them that the Americans preferred to bomb large cities, and had little interest in small locales like Hiroshima. Besides, what damage could one lone bomber inflict?
The moments passed. The plane circled the city. It was eight fifteen, and the fateful button was pressed. "Fat Boy" — the code name of the first atomic bomb — was released, and slowly began to descend over Hiroshima. The Americans retreated quickly. The scientists had stressed, over and over again, how important it was for the pilots to leave the region as fast as possible, before the explosion.
"We were still in the air," related the chief pilot, Lieutenant- Colonel Paul Tibets, "when a blinding light filled the plane. We turned around to see Hiroshima."
Silence prevailed for a moment, and then all of the crew shouted at once. "Look — there, there and there," cried the copilot, Robert Lewis, as he tapped the pilot on his back excitedly, in an unprofessional display of emotion.
They looked at the blazing inferno. The large ball of fire, which appeared in Hiroshima's center, was spreading in all directions. The temperature climbed to millions of degrees. A pillar of fire, smoke and nuclear fallout, began to rise above the city. It reached a height of twelve kilometers and then began to expand, like a huge, diabolic mushroom.
Below, the city no longer existed. It had been wiped off the face of the earth. Wherever one looked, one saw fire. Terrified people were running toward the nearest river in order to extinguish the flames which were consuming them — but they did not reach the water. Even the birds which had flown above were burned by the impact of the explosion.
Seventy thousand people died in one minute. Of course, no one knew that many more people would die in the ensuing months, as a result of the burns and the radiation wounds they had suffered.
All of the accounts of the Hiroshima tragedy end with the following words which the terrified Lewis had cried out while he was in the bomber plane above Japan: "What have we done?"
The destruction after the explosion over Hiroshima
Atop Rubble Heaps
Osborne Elliot was a young officer who had just received his first military assignment. He was a soldier in an American unit which had entered Japan after her surrender. He visited Hiroshima. The following excerpts are taken from his memoirs which he publicized fifty years later in Newsweek:
"The city rests — or rather rested — in a valley. It is surrounded on all sides by mountains. One who stands in the middle of the city, sees nothing but demolished structures, charred tree trunks and refuse heaps.
"We saw a fire station that had not been completely destroyed. In it were two fire engines which had been transformed into piles of melted metal. Amidst the rubble, it was possible to discern cash registers, typewriters, bicycles and safes, all of which had become distorted as a result of the terrible heat of the explosion. Glass bottles which had not broken, but had lost their form, assuming strange, grotesque shapes, were scattered all over the place.
"It is difficult to understand how anyone had managed to survive. However, here and there, women and children were seen seated atop the rubble of the city which had once been their home. We did not see wounded people, but most of the people had suffered severe burns. We looked at them, and they looked back at us with empty expressions."
Victory Celebrations
The visit to bombed out Hiroshima was shocking. But Elliot, like his friends, was not sorry about the fatal decision made by the American government. The Americans celebrated their victory everywhere, and did not think about the bitter fate of the people of Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
Indeed, their joy was understandable. After all, no one was eager to fight more with the Japanese, who had, during the long war years, proven their deadliness and cruelty, in dark jungles and on the open sea. The suicide planes of the Japanese, the Kamikaze, exacted a heavy price from the Americans who sailed the ocean. Far from the eyes of man, the Japanese had built camps where biological experiments which were no less cruel than those of the Nazis, were conducted. Certainly it had been preferable to end the struggle with a single blow.
"We drank all the beer that we had hidden, fired our rifles into the air and danced between the tents," related a veteran soldier who feared that he would never return home alive from the invasion of Japan.
Not only was the army exhausted by the endless war. By 1945, the entire American public had grown tired of the continuous battles. President Truman and his advisors, the policy makers of the White House, were not overly concerned about the ethical aspect of nuclear warfare. Their task was to win the war, and they tried to do so in the most effective and economical way possible. Can anyone say that they were wrong?
However, in our highly self-critical generation, no one in the United States is prepared to justify the terrible decision. True, members of the previous generation, who lived through those days and recall the difficult years, do not regret the government's decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However their children, the members of the modern generation which never experienced the horrors of the Second World War, are not ashamed to speak out against their parents and against the leaders of the past and to openly declare that the decision had been wrong.
Harry Truman
Surprising Revelations
The criticism of the younger generation, though, has a basis. New studies conducted about the final stages of the Second World War, revealed perplexing facts which, if known at the right time, could have altered history.
Today, it has become clear that Hirohitu, the Japanese Emperor who led his country into the long and bitter war alongside Nazi Germany, did not believe in an uncompromising war to the end. When he learned that his heretofore unvanquished army had been forced to retreat from the front lines of the entire battle zone, and that the Americans were planning to invade his land, he began to think about a peace treaty. His secret emissaries asked the Russians to mediate between Japan and the United States. This occurred a few weeks prior to the fatal bombing, at a date too late for Japan, the United States and humanity at large.
Historians who reexamined Truman's days in the White House, disclosed that the American President, who had been thrust into his position by surprise, actually felt confused and powerless. The former President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had led the United States during most of the difficult war years, had died, and Harry Truman, his vice president, was forced to replace him. Today, American citizens look back with pride on those days — days in which Truman coined such expressions as: "Here we do not shirk our responsibilities," and "Let's hit 'em in the teeth."
However, the truth is that Truman felt and even admitted that he wasn't big enough for the task he had been called upon to fulfill. He even told this to a crew of reporters who had come to interview him in honor of his appointment as President of the United States, and as and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces.
It has become clear that the obstacles that faced Truman stemmed from the fact that the developers of the atom bomb had not provided him with sufficient information about its ramifications. Was it ethical to delegate the task of deciding when to use the most lethal weapon in the world, to a person who lacked sufficient knowledge about its functioning? Did the United States err by bombing Hiroshima?
Self-Castigation>
Despite these revelations, Truman does not deserve to be criticized. It is easy to ask difficult questions, and to raise reproving eyebrows, a generation later. It is easy to criticize others from afar. But anyone who experienced the events of the Second World War, appreciates the courage and resolve of Harry Truman, and understands the trials and difficulties that faced the leaders of the United States at that time.
"The Americans," some say now, "feel guiltier about the war than the Japanese, who began it and conducted it with untold cruelty."
Newsweek was swept by waves of self-castigation. "What have we done?" it asks, quoting the famous words of copilot Lewis, in the beginning of a series of articles it devoted to the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. These words were a huge headline, spread over two large photographs which covered two full magazine pages.
These pictures show the colossal inferno caused by the explosion, and the destruction it left in its wake. Other newspapers and magazines, such as the moderate U.S. News and World Report, copied Newsweek and chose the same headline. The Japanese have perhaps forgiven the Americans. But the Americans are incapable of forgiving themselves.
Nagasaki before and after the explosion
Years of Fear
With the invention of the atomic bomb, a new historical era dawned — an era dominated by the fear that a nuclear holocaust would destroy the entire world. From the moment the Russians managed to develop their own nuclear warfare — due to the assistance granted them by scientists like Neils Bohr — the atomic race began. During the entire Cold War, the citizens of the United States lived under a heavy shadow of fear. No one could be certain of the future. All feared that without any apparent reason, a Third World War was liable to break out between the East and the West — a war in which there would be only losers.
In 1955, the Russians dropped a huge atomic bomb, as an experiment. Two years later, they tried out an intercontinental ballistic land missile. Soon it became clear that the Russians were capable of attacking any point on the American map. The American army at that time had only bombers.
It is difficult today to understand the extent of the influence of the atomic threat on mankind. Hundreds of thousands of people grew up in the shadow of a real and constant fear of impending doom. Perhaps it is not surprising then, that Western culture developed in accordance with the "eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die" philosophy of life.
The literature and art was produced during those years reveals much about the feelings rampant in America at that time. Poets decried the politicians, claiming that they were dragging the world into an atomic war. Authors wrote books which described the world as they imagined it was liable to appear after a nuclear war. These painted a bleak picture of widespread death destruction and left hovering the basic questions of long-term survival after a nuclear holocaust.
A War of Survival
The key word of this era became "survival."
The dreary predictions of authors got the support of the greatest expert in the United States: President John F. Kennedy himself. In July 1961, Kennedy, the leader who knew how to stand up to Krushchev in the missile crisis (which nearly ended in war), warned his country of the dangers that were becoming quite real as a result of the increasing tension between East and West. In public interviews, he unequivocally stated:
"In the event of nuclear war, the lives of the citizens who have not received direct hits from the bomb, will be dependent on their ability to find suitable shelter, on time. It is our obligation to prepare such shelters.And the time to do so is now!"
"Survival Now" became the slogan that swept the United States.
A few days after the interview with Kennedy, a company began to offer ordinary American citizens nuclear bomb shelters for their own back yards. The telephone in the company's office did not stop ringing. In Texas, alone, more than 230 such shelters were sold a month. Soon, a new branch of the bomb shelter company was opened in bustling Chicago, because the company was unable to cope with all of its orders.
The bomb shelter was no more than a hole in the ground, with an appropriate cover, a ventilation pipe, and a radiation meter. For an additional sum, one could purchase a kitchenette and a cabinet which could hold food, medicines, clothing and electrical batteries (which would be needed because after the attack, electric networks would no longer function). Of course, there was a place for ammunition for those customers who recalled warnings of the science fiction books regarding the terrible post nuclear war days.
Simple shelters cost about $6,000. The rich, of course, bought fancier shelters which sometimes even included music rooms, for there was no reason to forego the pleasures of life just because the world was coming to an end.
The Great Panic
The American public stormed the bomb shelter companies. The fear that gripped America was perhaps like that which overcame the Israelis at the onset of the Gulf War when gas attacks seemed imminent. "The marketing potential of nuclear bomb shelters," said a number of economists, at the time, "can reach 20 billion dollars — provided that America lasts another year."
On the other hand, not every one could afford a professional shelter, and having no choice, many people built do-it-yourself ones. The American civil service warned, time and again, that the quality of such shelters was inferior. However, their warnings fell on deaf ears. At a time when all publications in the United States were teaching self-defense in the event of nuclear war, people felt that it was forbidden to waste a moment. Throughout the United States tens of thousands of bomb shelters, which would have been of no avail in the event of an atomic attack, were built.
Shelter builders bought out the stores that sold survival equipment. They bought everything: Water tanks that were impervious to nuclear fallout, long-term supplies of canned goods and even containers of compressed air. Of course they also purchased ammunition — lots of it — because the science fiction authors had predicted that civil wars would erupt in the wake of a nuclear war. "I will post a machine gun at the front of my shelter, which will frighten away my neighbors the day the A-bomb explodes," one shelter owner from Chicago said.
Some preferred not to invest in atomic shelters. However, during those days of panic, it was said that American society was divided into two groups: those who invested in shelters, and those of whom it was said: "They'll pay for their scorn with their lives, when nuclear war breaks out."
The Shadow of the Bomb
Nuclear fantasies stopped plaguing the United State toward the 70's. Shelters became game rooms for children. Articles about the war of survival stopped appearing. During recent years, the fall of Communism and the new friendship between Russia and the United States, has resulted in the dissipation of most nuclear war phobias. Most people no longer fear that war will break out between the two major powers.
However, the danger of nuclear warfare still hasn't vanished, but is rather more pressing and real than ever. The political leaders of Iran, Iraq and South Korea are continuing to develop nuclear bombs. Russia's ammunition stockpiles are wide open, and any thief who so wishes can acquire unconventional weapons quite easily.
The early scientists who developed the bomb, comforted themselves with the thought that such deadly weapons would eventually become instruments of peace. Among these scientists was Louis Alvarez, one of the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project. A few hours after the atomic bomb landed over Hiroshima, the first photographs of the bombing explosion reached his laboratory. At that time, he wrote a letter to his four year old son, who would read it only years later.
"I feel deep regret over having participated in the murder and injuring of thousands of Japanese citizens. However, beneath all of this sorrow, is the hope that the weapons which we have helped develop will draw the nations of the world closer together and prevent future wars."
Pipedreams!
But he still continued to justify his hopes, saying:
"Alfred Nobel thought that the TNT which he invented would bring peace to the world, because it would make wars so terrible that no one would wish to engage in them. Sadly, he achieved precisely the opposite. The new explosive energy which we have created is thousands of times more deadly than Nobel's TNT. And this time we hope that we will be able to fulfill his dream."
Pipedreams! Fine words, noble thoughts, rosy hopes. However scores of years of cold war, accompanied by the new fear that nuclear weapons will fall into the hands of terrorists, brings us back to the age old truth that "Man's inclination is bad from his youth."
Not in Their Wildest Dreams
200 thousand people, in thirty-seven secret atomic plants and laboratories, labored for years to develop the atomic bomb. Their expenses reached two billion dollars (a sum which, in today's dollars, would be twenty billion dollars).
Virtually all of the famous nuclear physicists of the world participated in the effort. Neils Bohr from Denmark, the father of modern nuclear physics; Enrico Fermi from Italy, the first to stimulate a nuclear chain reaction in a laboratory; Robert G. Oppenheimer, and John von Neuman, one of the best physicists and mathematicians in the United States, and Leo Szilard of Hungary, who wrote the famous letter to President Roosevelt, and encouraged him to invest in the development of the atomic bomb. This letter was also signed by the brilliant Jewish physicist, Albert Einstein.
They called it the Manhattan Project, and few of the participants, from the top physicist to the smallest professional worker, ever dreamed that he was developing so powerful and lethal a weapon.
Even the first trial explosion of the bomb, did not alert the professional staff to the force of the weapon in their hands. It took place in a Mexican desert, on the 16th of July, at dawn. During those gray hours before sunrise, none of the participants even dreamed of Hiroshima. Enrico Fermi, for example, made jokes about the impact of the bomb, and even about its outcomes. Many thought that the experiment would fail.
Dawn broke. General Groves, head of the project, gave orders to begin the countdown. The agonizing question: "What will happen if the countdown ends and nothing occurs" gave him and the other members of his staff no peace.
But the bomb didn't disappoint them. Before the startled eyes of the scientists, a green, red and blue pillar of fire appeared. The pillar rose three kilometers high, and then expanded in all directions, like a deadly flower.
The light that accompanied the explosion created supposed window panes in the sky, General Groves later told the President. Hundreds of kilometers away, the window panes of apartment houses were shattered. Later on, the army's spokesman explained that this had occurred as a result of a chance explosion on an empty military base somewhere in the desert.
The scientists were quite proud of their accomplishment. "It's grand," the experts said, "wonderful, amazing," and the excited Truman was convinced, and decided to bomb Hiroshima.
Once more, despite the impressive experiment, no one in his wildest dreams could have imagined how much damage the bomb dropped over Hiroshima would cause. The scientists themselves recommended dispatching additional American bombers, in order to complete the work of A-bomb. No one thought that the A-bomb could — in an instant's time — snuff out so many lives, and do so much harm. No one thought that the scientists would one day look back and say — "It's too bad that the experiment didn't fail."
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