Part V - Burying the dead took too long... Hiroshima is no more...

            The attempt to get a person’s mind around the totality of the destruction wrought by man’s first infantile steps into the Atomic Age is nearly futile. To simply state that the event was ‘Hellish’ fails to give it the degree of understanding it deserves. Nonetheless, if mankind has ever developed Hell on Earth, this event must surely sit atop of that accomplishment-of-misery. Simply stated, what had happened in July in the desert at Alamogordo with the Gadget was unbelievable; but, what happened to Hiroshima with Little Boy... the terror & destruction of a modern city… was, and remains, beyond human comprehension. The dead that perished quickly were the lucky. 

            As you read about and view the results of the bombing, bare in mind that due to Pacific geologic fault activity, Japan had stringent building codes; much higher than was the rule in the United States. Had a weapon of this magnitude been used on an American city of comparable size, the devastation would have been even worse than what you will see happened to Hiroshima.

            Death came via any of the following four means:

            Silent Thermal Pulse/Flash: Everything at the hypocenter (area directly under the blast point) was vaporized – nothing remained. Steel and concrete fared no better than tissue paper. Up to 1/2 of a mile, granite melted; it was literally fused into quartz. At 1 mile from the blast point, wood and railroad ties spontaneously ignited. Up to 1 ¼ miles, clothes on exposed persons spontaneously ignited; dark colored clothing absorbed the heat (burning the skin) while light colors reflected the heat.

            Blast Pressure: The Hiroshima Bomb, Little Boy generated up to 6.7 tons per square meter at the hypocenter; The Nagasaki Bomb, Fat Man generated up to 10.0 tons per sq. meter at the hypocenter. This phenomenon also agitated the firestorm process by fanning the firestorms working outward (and then back in) as nature tried to cool the source of the intense heat.

            The best way to understand blast pressure is to mark a 39” x 39” square on the floor; next, step inside the square. Now, try to imagine 6.7 tons of rock being dropped on you, all in the same instant. That was the blast pressure delivered by the Uranium-235 bomb, “Little Boy” upon Hiroshima. At Nagasaki, the Plutonium-239 weapon, “Fat Man” delivered 10 tons of blast pressure per square meter. Bodies were ripped apart like the bursting of a child’s delicate bubbles; and, concrete and steel were swept aside like a child’s sand castle. The city was literally swept away being wiped from the face of the Earth.

            Radiation: Which way the wind blew could have saved or doomed an individual that morning, too. Approximately 20% of victims died from - Gamma, Beta and Neutron radiation exposure. In the atmosphere, as Mother Nature attempted to cool the fireball as it escalates into the upper atmosphere, it began to rain “Purple Rain” (pop song). This rain was charged with radio active fallout that came back to Earth in the raindrops. This process further exposed plant and human life to dangerous levels of radioactive fallout. Fallout also returned to Earth without the help of rain; and, in its ashen state, it was just as dangerous as in its rain-induced liquid state. But the wind patterns determined where and how much of this fallout was spread around the outlying areas of the doomed city. Radiation sickness was measured in three phases:
            Phase one was hours up to a few days – symptoms included nausea, headache, diarrhea, malaise, and light (100-101) fever.             Second phase followed at approximately 10 to 15 days – hair started falling out, severe diarrhea, sever (105-106) fever.             Third Phase followed at approximately 25 to 30 days - blood disorders, gums began bleeding , abrasions appeared over large portions of the body, drop in red blood cell count (anemia), drop in white blood cell count (fights infection), temporary reproductive process was halted – men became sterile and women stop menstruating, and most pregnancies resulted in miscarriage.
            Even those that survived the blast and regained their health later were found to face disorders of malignant cancers such as those associated with thyroid, breast, lung, and salivary gland tumors. Also, due to the half life of some types of radiation, any woman exposed to too much radiation that August morning in 1945 might carry it with her to her eventual death. This also meant that later a pregnant mother would often pass the radiation sickness on to the developing fetus. This led to extremely high incidents of physical and mental birth defects. An example: A ten year old little girl survives the blast in Augusta 1945.  Fast forward to August 1955; and the now twenty year old young lady is happily married and expecting her first born child. Unfortunately, due to the radiation exposure she absorbed in 1945, her chances of having a child afflicted with some form of birth defect was a very big, real risk with which she and thousands of other female survivors had to contend.

(Above and below: Short video clips from the "Lost Generation Remembers" recounted by survivors concerning examples of radiation burns and sickness from radioactive fallout. You will see and hear more from Mr. Tamiguchi, below. Jane Fonda is the narrator)

            Fire Storm: This is a natural phenomenon resulting from the unbelievably intense heat that was emanating outward in all directions. Basically, the silent heat pulse represented what was an instantaneous, man-inspired, sun/star-on Earth. On the ground, anything combustible, and not vaporized at ground zero, spontaneously combusted as the heat moved outward. Fires need oxygen to feed upon, and horrific winds were rapidly whipped up. While nature was attempting to cool the source of the intense heat; supplying massive winds meant feeding the fires in towards the vortex . The more oxygen that fed the fire, the more the fire spread outwards to find combustible materials. Winds reached well beyond tornado intensity - today, estimates are up to 470 miles an hour from a 20 megaton blast. Also, inwards towards the center of the fire’s source, there became a void of oxygen; therefore, those that did not perish in the initial blast were suffocating while in the process of being burned to death.
            Following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the war came to a very rapid close. Japan would be occupied by the United States; however, unlike Germany, Japan remained sovereign. There was no carving-up of Japan into multiple zones as was the case with Germany. Also, Emperor Hirohito remained the sovereign head of Japan. The United States' military governor, General Douglas MacArthur, ran the real show; still, Japan maintained its national identity and territorial integrity. The bottom line is, America did not get its unconditional terms for surrender met. Compared to Germany, Japan's terms were decidedly better.

            Oddly, the world received virtually no accurate information (especially photographs) about Hiroshima & Nagasaki. This was no accident; on September 18, 1945, just over a month after Japan had surrendered, General Douglas MacArthur, as Military Governor of Occupied Japan, imposed a strict code of censorship on the newly defeated nation. It read, in part: “nothing shall be printed which might, directly or by inference, disturb public tranquility.”

           Fearing public backlash, the “public tranquility” MacArthur cited in his decree was not directed at the newly conquered Japanese populace; the target was intended to keep the American public in the dark. The following is the visual proof of why our government “locked down” any information – especially visual – from getting back to main street America.

(Above and below: Dark colors absorbed the heat, light colors deflected it. Depending on an individual's  distance from the blast, and the color of the clothes they put on that morning, they may have been spared or suffered horribly. This youngster, even though the position of his body placed him in harm’s way, was wearing a light colored head covering that protected his forehead and hair while the rest of his exposed clothing facing the heat source absorbed the heat. The woman below can be seen to have had the strap of a sack slung over her shoulder; the white cloth reflected the heat.)

(Above: A victim of the Hiroshima bomb as seen at the Ujina Branch of the US First Army Hospital in Hiroshima. The thermal rays emitted by the explosion burned the pattern of this woman's kimono into her back. Signal Corps, A.O.O., September 1945)
 

(Above: Including his chest and the left side of his belly, this 16 year old boy had thermal burns on more than one-third of his body. He managed to leave the hospital after 3 years and 7 months. He went on to become the father of two children. "In the early stages, the only treatment I received for my burns was the application of a mixture of ash and oil as a substitute for medicine. I do not know how many times I yelled "kill me!" because of the severe pain and desperate feeling. Thereafter, as a result of the several operations I underwent, I escaped death and returned to work.   Since I have once given up my life, I wish to dedicate my new life to the struggle against atomic bombs."  Mr. Tamiguchi)

(Above: This is Mr. Tamiguchi the 16 year old young man in the preceding picture.)

(Above: Suffering beyond belief.)

(Above: Within the initial 8 seconds after detonation, up to 100,000 people died and another 100,000 people were doomed. This youngster’s carbonized corpse indicates that he was probably a 12-15 year old male, mobilized into the local industry to meet the badly needed war labor efforts. From middle school into high school (up to the age to serve in the military) children made up a large portion of the Japanese labor force.  For health reasons, his corpse was among the tens of thousands burned or buried in mass graves by the Japanese Government to prevent disease.)

 

(Above: This is the eye of a blinded victim unfortunate enough to have been looking in the general direction of the blast. At such an intense luminosity, the brightness of the heat pulse at the instant of the detonation welded the retina to the pupil of this victim’s eye.)

            In a moment, Hiroshima was wiped from the face of the Earth. At the hypocenter, the silent heat pulse vaporized everything and working outward from that point varying degrees of carbonization took place. Much like erasing a chalkboard, the immense blast pressure collapsed and destroyed everything in its path. The spontaneous ignition of combustible materials initiated a firestorm that burned for hours and only ended because there was nothing combustible left to feed its flames. As if this were not horrific enough, later - years later in many cases - thousands would suffer before succumbing to radiation sickness.

            Below are still pictures of the remains of Hiroshima. Suffice to say, the conquering US Army of Occupation found very little remained to “occupy”. Due to structural concerns, the Army Corp of Engineers condemned all but six buildings that remained in the city-proper. A paltry half-dozen buildings out of a city of 350-400,000 populace, was all that remained. What the bomb had not wiped away, US Army Corpsmen finished with their bulldozers.

(Above: View of Hiroshima looking toward the financial district.)

(Above: As can be seen in the photo with the remains of the church, Christianity had made inroads into Japanese culture. While certainly a minority, Christians were not persecuted in Japan.)

(Above: The aiming point for the Enola Gay's bombardier, Tom Ferebee, was the T-shaped Aioi River Bridge. The cruising speed for the huge B-29 was 220 mph; and, the Enola Gay was at 36,000 feet when the bomb was released. The fact that Ferebee came so close to hitting the mark, from that altitude and speed, is a credit to his skill and the training the crew had received in the Utah desert at Wendover Army Airfield.)

(Above: This photograph was taken 2 hours before this man’s death at the request of an American Army surgeon. This soldier's symptoms recorded a typical description of the acute nature of radiation sickness. The photograph shows a 21 year-old soldier who was in a wooden house situated a mile from the hypocenter. Since he was indoors, he was saved from burns, but, as he received cuts on his back, right elbow, and stomach, first-aid treatment was given to him; however, he became a subject of interest as the result of the following: August 18 --Hair falling out is noticed; August 19 --Bleeding from gum, and purplish subcutaneous hemorrhage starts to appear as in the photograph; August 30 --Is hospitalized in the Ujina Branch of the Army Hospital, and on the 31st becomes feverish; September 1 --Tonsillitis occurs and with a sore throat he can not eat. Bleeding from gums does not stop, and subcutaneous hemorrhage multiplies on face and upper half of body: September 2 –slips into semi consciousness and starts to talk in delirium. September 3 --Died at 9:30 p.m.)

(Above: This 11 year old girl was in her home approximately 2 miles from the hypocenter. She received no observable physical injury. However, within a week of the blast, she had many of the same symptoms as the soldier in the prior slide. She did recover, but died in 1971 from cancer related radiation exposure from 1945. She was 37 years old.)

(Above: This is a video collection showing the extent of the types of injuries that existed. Be advised that it is graphic.)

(Above: The shadows to the left side of the bridge are where people were at the time of the detonation. A person absorbed the heat pulse, thereby protecting the surface material behind him/her.)

(Above: The remains of A-bomb victims were still being recovered years after the bombing. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and surrounding areas occasionally will still find sites of hastily made mass graveyards of A-bomb victims. Due to the utter number of victims buried, it is not an unusual occurrence for this situation to take place. However, the picture is misleading. The truth is that the Japanese Government quickly realized – for health reasons – that mass burial was not an option… most victims were cremated. Due to the sheer number of dead, they could not dig the mass graves fast enough; therefore, the government had to resort to mass cremation.)

“I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor, dumb bastard die for his country.”  General George S. Patton, US Army