At 9:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, the U.S. aircraft Enola Gay dropped a nuclear bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The attack killed 140,000 people—about 40% of the city’s population. Japanese news agencies reported: “The impact of the bomb was so terrific that practically all living things, human and animals, were literally seared to death by the tremendous heat and pressure engineered by the blast. All of the dead and injured were burned beyond recognition.”
Three days later, the U.S. dropped a second nuclear bomb on Nagasaki, killing another 80,000 people. The number of civilians immediately killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was more than double the number of American troops killed during the entire Pacific War. Hundreds of thousands more would later die from radiation poisoning and its long-term effects.
U.S. President Harry S. Truman claimed the bombs were dropped to “shorten the agony of war” and “save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans.” Yet there was no ethical justification for using them. The war in Europe had ended one month earlier, and Japan was already on the verge of surrender. Even the warmongering British Prime Minister Winston Churchill admitted: “It would be a mistake to suppose that the fate of Japan was settled by the atomic bomb.”
The real reason, as Truman himself admitted, was to “put us in a position to dictate the terms of the end of war.” As World War II was drawing to a close, the Cold War with the Soviet Union was beginning. Demonstrating the U.S.’s ability to kill hundreds of thousands with a single bomb projected military dominance. In response to the bombing, U.S. Chief of Staff Admiral Leahy remarked: “We had adopted an ethical standard common to that of the barbarians of the Dark Age.”
Nuclear weapons have not stopped conventional warfare—just look at the many wars being fought today, often by nations with nuclear arsenals. What they have created is the permanent threat of total annihilation at the push of a button. They are also a symbol of how far the world’s rulers are willing to go to cling to power, even at the cost of humanity. The best way to mourn the dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is to demand the complete and permanent abolition of nuclear weapons.
