‘Unspeakable Horror’: The attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

TOKYO – Japan this week marks 80 years since the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War.

The first bomb, dropped on 6 August 1945, killed approximately 140 000 people in Hiroshima, whilst three days later another 74 000 perished in Nagasaki.

The first atomic bomb was dropped on the western city of Hiroshima by the US bomber Enola Gay. Nicknamed “Little Boy”, it detonated approximately 600 m above the ground with a force equivalent to 15 000 tonnes of TNT.

Tens of thousands died instantly, whilst others succumbed to injuries or illness in the weeks, months and years that followed.

Three days later, the US dropped a second bomb, dubbed “Fat Man”, on the southern city of Nagasaki.

These attacks remain the only time atomic bombs have been used in warfare.

The immediate impact

In Hiroshima, the first thing people noticed was an “intense ball of fire”, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

Temperatures near the blast reached an estimated 7 000 °C incinerating everything within a radius of approximately three kilometres.

“I remember the charred bodies of little children lying around the hypocentre area like black rocks,” recalled Koichi Wada, a witness who was 18 at the time of the Nagasaki attack.

ICRC experts report there were cases of temporary or permanent blindness due to the intense flash of light, along with subsequent related damage such as cataracts.

A whirlwind of heat also ignited thousands of fires that ravaged large parts of the mostly wooden city. A firestorm that consumed all available oxygen caused additional deaths by suffocation.

It has been estimated that burn- and fire-related casualties accounted for more than half of the immediate deaths in Hiroshima.

The explosion generated an enormous shock wave that hurled people through the air. Others were crushed to death inside collapsed buildings or injured or killed by flying debris.

Radiation effects

Radiation sickness was reported in the aftermath by many who survived the initial blasts and firestorms.

Acute symptoms included vomiting, headaches, nausea, diarrhoea, haemorrhaging and hair loss, with radiation sickness proving fatal for many within a few weeks or months.

Survivors, known as “hibakusha”, also experienced longer-term effects including elevated risks of thyroid cancer and leukaemia. Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki have recorded elevated cancer rates.

Of 50 000 radiation victims from both cities studied by the Japanese-US Radiation Effects Research Foundation, approximately 100 died of leukaemia and 850 suffered from radiation-induced cancers.

However, the group found no evidence of a “significant increase” in serious birth defects amongst survivors’ children.

The aftermath

The twin bombings dealt the final blow to Imperial Japan, which surrendered on 15 August 1945, bringing an end to the Second World War.

Historians have debated whether the bombings ultimately saved lives by ending the conflict and averting a ground invasion.

However, those calculations meant little to survivors, many of whom battled decades of physical and psychological trauma, as well as the stigma that sometimes accompanied being a hibakusha.

Despite their suffering, many survivors were shunned—particularly for marriage—because of prejudice over radiation exposure.

Survivors and their supporters have become some of the loudest and most powerful voices opposing nuclear weapons, including meeting world leaders to press their case.

Last year, the Japanese anti-nuclear group Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of hibakusha, won the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 2019, Pope Francis met several hibakusha in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, decrying the “unspeakable horror” and calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

In 2016, Barack Obama became the first sitting US president to visit Hiroshima. He offered no apology for the attack but embraced survivors and called for a world free of nuclear weapons.

Russia is amongst approximately 100 countries expected to attend this year’s memorial in Nagasaki—the first time Moscow has been invited to commemorations in the city since the start of the war with Ukraine.