August 6th and 9th are the dates which cannot be forgotten by the mankind. It showed the effect of a nuclear war .They were the dates when man became a monster and let lose the genie of mass destruction. They were the dates when to win peace and end the war, two lethal weapons of mass destruction, which were never used before and it is hoped would never be used again, were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, two cities of Japan.
This mass destructive device was invented by spending over $ 2 Billion from 1939 to 1945 called as Manhatten Project by the United States of America as it was afraid that German Chancellor Hitler whose scientists were attempting to purify uranium-235 to build an atom bomb. might take a lead in the manufacture of atom bomb. But U.S. Scientists outwitted them and they invented the deadly device which ultimately resulted in atom bomb. This device was tested at Los Alamos, New Mexico on 16th of July 1945. The test was a success and the Scientists who were involved in the said project even felt that had got the power of God and they can destroy by a single device anything and everything. They can devastate an entire city by blast, fire and radiation.
When the Allied Powers to which United states of America joined when Japan attacked Pearl Harbour, it decided to drop this newly discovered nuclear weapon on military base inside Japan and bring Japan to it’s heels. A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter; a modern thermonuclear weapon weighing little more than a thousand kilograms can produce an explosion comparable to the detonation of more than a billion kilograms of conventional high explosive.
The atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima on 6th August 1945 was called Little Boy It’s weight was over four and a half tons, though nick named as Little Boy. Its length was 9ft,8 inches and diameter 28 inches. It had two thousand times the blast power of ten tonner bomb which was the most powerful bob till then. It was dropped on the Aioi Bridge, one of 81 bridges connecting the seven-branched delta of the Ota River, was the target; ground zero was set at 1,980 feet. At 0815 hours, the bomb was dropped from the Enola Gay. It missed by only 800 feet. At 0816 hours, in an instant, 66,000 people were killed and 69,000 injured by a 10-kiloton atomic explosion out of a population of 286,000. The area of total vaporization from the atomic bomb blast measured one half mile in diameter; total destruction one mile in diameter; severe blast damage as much as two miles in diameter. Within a diameter of two and a half miles, everything flammable burned. The remaining area of the blast zone was riddled with serious blazes that stretched out to the final edge at a little over three miles in diameter.
Next day that is on 7th August “the Guardian†reported that the “ British and American scientists have achieved what the Germans were unable to do and have won the “greatest scientific gamble in history “ The announcement was made yesterday by President Truman, who said:
“We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city…..If they do not now accept our terms they may accept a rain of ruin from the air the like of which has never been seen on this earth.” The first bomb was dropped on a port serving as one of the Army’s main supply bases. An impenetrable cloud of dust and smoke covered the town, so that the results could not be observed at the time.â€
Before the people of Japan could realize the extent of devastation of Hiroshima, they were not aware that they would be stuck by another equally big bomb within a short time. The military had been given full powers to strike and hence without the orders of their President Truman, the military could strike another target at any time. If at all there was delay it was because they were waiting only for a sufficient amount of plutonium-239 for the atomic bomb. . However they did not delay it. On August 9, 1945 only three days after the bombing of Hiroshima, another B-29 carried a plutonium bomb nick named “Fat Man.†This weapon weighed about 10,000 lbs and was approximately 10 feet 8 inches long. It had the explosive capacity, which was equivalent to around 20,000 tons of higher explosives. It was dropped on Nagasaki at 12.02 a.m. The bomb exploded 1650 ft. above the city. Approximately 40 percent of Nagasaki was destroyed. With a population of 270,000, approximately 70,000 people died by the end of the year. As Nagasaki is a city of terrain the destruction was less otherwise it would have been more than that.
A graphic description of the devastation is given in this article . This is quoted because let us know the consequences of a nuclear war.
The radio broadcast of Japan said that all living things, which included humans and animals, were seared to death as a result of the bombing. One of the survivors described the damage; that burns blackened the people; they did not have hair as the hair was also burned. Their skin became loose and hung down and it was a city of walking Ghosts. There were seventy thousand people who were killed by the immediate effects of the bombing and there were several thousands more, approximately 90,000 to 140,000 who died as a result of burns, radiation and the related diseases, which had a greater impact due to lack of medical resources. According to surveys, approximately nine percent of the survivors died of Cancer and Leukemia due to the radiation from the bomb. It is said that after the explosion, the temperature of the affected place was somewhere around ten million degrees and the light that was emitted was much brighter than the brightness of the sun. The radiations that were emitted were of many types, namely gamma rays, alpha and beta particles that are the normal outcomes of fusion. The emissions make a nuclear bombing more dangerous than they actually are. The survivors and their children suffered form radiation sickness long after the explosion. In case of radiation injuries, first the blood is affected and then the blood producing organs that includes the bone marrow, lymph nodes and the spleen.
On August 15, 1945, World War II ended with the surrender of the Japanese. The atom bomb brought peace!!! What a travesty of justice. What kind of peace was it? Let us pray god the almighty, that let not the humans use the nuclear weapons once again and let us dedicate ourselves to have a world free of nuclear weapons..