Diana Preston - Before the Fallout

The atomic bomb had exploded with a temperature at its center of 1,800,000 degrees Fahrenheit, generating a white-hot fireball. Immediately beneath the explosion the ground reached more than 5,400 degrees Fahrenheit. (Iron melts at half that temperature.) Over a mile away, clothing on people outdoors spontaneously burst into flames. Pressure rose to over six tons per square meter (several hundred thousand times normal atmospheric pressure). Nearly all wooden houses within a mile and a half had, like Mrs. Nakamura’s, collapsed. Of the energy released, 35 percent was released as heat, 50 percent as blast, and 15 , percent as radiation.

According to the Hiroshima city government, the death toll by December 1945 was 140,000 plus or minus 10,000 of the 350,000 people estimated to have been in the city that day. It included those who had died from the immediate effects of the bomb and later from radiation. Deaths from radiation-related diseases still continue. [41] Later deaths from cancer can be attributed to the effects of the bomb only statistically. This is done by assessing how many more deaths from cancer occur in the Hiroshima population than would be expected in a similar population not exposed to radiation. The calculations are fraught with difficulty in identifying comparable populations, and estimates vary widely. Official figures suggest fewer than one thousand such deaths since the end of 1945. The dead are estimated to include up to 10,000 Koreans—nearly all forced laborers—and about 1 o American airmen being held prisoner in Hiroshima castle after being captured when their bombers were shot down.

Because of the destruction of all means of communication, news of the attack did not reach Tokyo until around midday. Not until 7 August did the Japanese authorities send Professor Nishina to Hiroshima to confirm that the bomb had indeed been an atomic one. His plane developed engine trouble and had to turn back, and he did not arrive until the next day, 8 August, forty-eight hours after the explosion. The rapid clicking of his Geiger counter, together with the evidence of high temperatures provided by melted clay roof tiles and the obvious radiation injuries suffered by the victims, left him in no doubt. He later expressed awe at “the product of pure physics,” but his greatest sensation was horror. Pride or refusal to contemplate defeat led Field Marshal Shunroku Hata, who had survived in his headquarters near Hiroshima, to play down the effects of the bomb. He reported that, in his view, the bomb was “not that powerful a weapon.” However, during the evening of 8 August Nishina telephoned the prime minister’s office in Tokyo with confirmation that it was indeed an atomic bomb, with, he calculated, a force of around twenty thousand tons of TNT, that had obliterated Hiroshima. [42] The actual force of the explosion is now generally agreed to have been equivalent to around fifteen thousand tons of TNT.

Less than six hours after Nishina’s call, the Soviet Union implemented its declaration of war against Japan, communicated earlier on 8 August, and more than one and a half million of its troops crossed into Manchuria, pushing back the Japanese forces in front of them. Just a few hours later, at about 11 a.m. on 9 August, before the Japanese government had time to consider either Nishina’s report or the implication of Russian entry into the war, Fat Man destroyed Nagasaki.

After Hiroshima, General Spaatz had been ordered “to continue operations as planned” in the original directive to him that additional bombs be “delivered on” the target cities as soon as made available by the project staff. The second bomb had originally been scheduled to be dropped on 11 August, five days after Hiroshima, but the project team on Tinian had brought the date forward by two days in discussion with Paul Tibbets since good weather was forecast for 9 August and the five succeeding days were expected to be bad. General Farrell later explained, “We tried to beat the bad weather. But secondly, there was a general feeling among those in the theatre [Pacific] that the sooner this bomb was dropped, the better it would be for the war effort.”

Nagasaki was the secondary, not the primary, target for the delivery aircraft Bock’s Car, piloted by Charles Sweeney. The primary was Kokura, but Sweeney found it cloud-covered and diverted to Nagasaki. Leonard Cheshire, whom Groves had this time allowed to fly as an observer together with William Penney, described a boiling blackness with a mushroom cloud “the colour of sulphur” with an “evil kind of luminous quality.” The immediate death toll—at around forty thousand—was lower than Hiroshima, but the devastation was still immense.

That afternoon, 9 August, in Tokyo, an imperial conference convened at which Hirohito’s ministers expressed differing views on the wisdom of surrender. The meeting went on through the evening and into the early morning of the next day. At 2 a.m. on 10 August, Hirohito gave his view that the Japanese should accept the Potsdam Declaration and surrender. The sole precondition his ministers appended before informing the Allies was that their acceptance was on the understanding that the Potsdam Declaration did “not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a sovereign ruler.”

Secretary of State Byrnes’s response to the offer did not address the condition either way. Nevertheless, Japan formally surrendered on 14 August at the emperor’s express command. The next afternoon the emperor broadcast to his people for the first time. His thin, high-pitched voice told them in archaic court language that he had agreed to the surrender to save humankind “from total extinction.” His government had conducted the war for self-defense and to preserve the nation’s existence. Listeners then heard a cabinet announcement denouncing the United States for the use of atomic bombs in contravention of international law. Hirohito would die some forty-three years later on 7 January 1989, still emperor of Japan.

In the United States, President Truman had on 1 o August given the order to suspend further atomic bombing. He spoke to the American people in a nationwide radio broadcast after his return from Potsdam: “Having found the bomb we have used it. We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans.”

AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS supported the use of the atomic bomb. The New York Times said on 12 August, “By their own cruelties and treachery our enemies had invited the cruelty.” An academic study later showed that of nearly six hundred American editorials, fewer than 2 percent opposed the bomb’s use. In Britain it was much the same. The Times editorial pondered the consequences had Germany been first to the bomb and then rejoiced that “in the intellectual sphere as on the battle field the discipline of free minds has its inalienable advantage. Pre-eminence in the pursuit of knowledge must belong to a social system in which men, whatever their origin, are free to follow whithersoever the argument may lead.” However, in both countries any concerns expressed stemmed less from worries about the morality of the bombing of Hiroshima than, as the American magazine New Republic put it, “thoughts of its future use elsewhere and specifically against ourselves and our children.” [43] Not all journalists were preoccupied with grim reflections. Within hours of the announcement of the bomb, the Washington Press Club bar was selling “atomic cocktails”—a blend of Pernod and gin.