8 thoughts on “From Hiroshima to Fukushima

  1. AAPSO Statement on

    Hiroshima and Nagasaki

    In this month we commemorate the 66th anniversaries of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima on Aug. 6 and Nagasaki on Aug. 9 1945.

    During the final stages of World War II in 1945, the United States conducted two atomic bombings on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, the first on August 6, 1945 and the second on August 9, 1945. These two events were the only use of nuclear weapons in war to date. For six months before the atomic bombings, the United States intensely fire-bombed 67 Japanese cities. Together with the United Kingdom and the Republic of China, the United States called for a surrender of Japan in the Potsdam Declaration on July 26, 1945. The Japanese government ignored this ultimatum. By executive order of President Harry S. Truman, the U.S. dropped the nuclear weapon “Little Boy” on the city of Hiroshima on Monday, August 6, 1945, followed by the detonation of “Fat Man” over Nagasaki on August 9.

    The atomic bomb that detonated on the Japanese city of Hiroshima carried the explosive power of 12.5 kilotons (or 25 million pounds) of TNT. Three days later a second atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, carried the explosive power of 22 kilotons (or 44 million pounds) of TNT.

    Hiroshima; No one will ever know for certain how many people died in the attack on Hiroshima. The U.S. government estimates that 70,000 people died as a result of initial blast, heat, and radiation effects. By the end of 1945, the Hiroshima death toll was probably over 100,000. The five-year total may have exceeded 200,000.

    Nagasaki ; similarly it will never be known for certain how many people died as a result of the atomic bombing on Nagasaki. As many as 40,000 people died initially. By January of 1946 the number of deaths probably approached 70,000, with as many as 140,000 total dead within 5 years.

    And those who affected by the blasts became known as hibakusha (Atom Bomb Survivors). Weeks after the explosions, even those who where uninjured began to succumb to a terrible plague. Those affected would loose their hair and purple spots would erupt on their skin. Vomiting, diarrhea, and uncontrollable bleeding from the gums was followed by death. At the time the Japanese did not realize they were dying from radiation sickness, instead they imagined they were in some Buddhist Hell. Sadly, hibakusha in Japan are still dying today from their radiation induced sicknesses and wounds. This accident has affected even those who were born to the affected mothers.

    The bombing of these two cities marked the first use of atomic weapons in warfare. Atomic weapons deliver enormous explosive power and heat energy, but also poison those who are in the vicinity of the explosion with radiation. The bombs’ radiation killed thousands of people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the explosions. Moreover, radiation effects killed thousands more in the months that followed. Sadly, many more people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki suffered the effects of “radiation sickness” for decades after the August 6th and August 9th bombings.

    According to the U.S. government, the bombs were dropped not only in an effort to end WWII and to prevent the planned invasion of Japan by U.S. forces that was expected to cause 1 million U.S. casualties , but also the united states wanted by interring the post ww2 era by nuclear supremacy to shape the character of the cold war . However, some historians believe that the bombings were unnecessary because at the time the bombs were dropped the Japanese were ready to surrender.

    Really the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a war crime worse than any that Japanese generals were executed for in Tokyo and Manila. There were many more deaths in the following years from the radioactive climate left behind by the bombings.

    In this occasion Afro Asian People’s Solidarity Organization “AAPSO” call all leaders of the nuclear states to eliminate nuclear weapons and to cut funding for nuclear weapons and to redirect those funds to meet the needs to the people.




    In addition to this , there were many nuclear catastrophic such as Japan’s 9.0 earthquake on March 11 caused also massive tsunami that crippled the cooling systems at the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO) nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan . It also led to hydrogen explosions and reactor meltdowns that forced evacuations of those living within a 20km radius of the plant. Japan’s Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters finally admitted earlier that reactors at the Fukushima plant experienced full meltdowns. Such these accidents urge us to raise the Nuclear safety actions taken to prevent nuclear and radiation accidents or to limit their consequences.
    We all must implement the existing obligations in the Non-Proliferation Treaty” NPT”. The nuclear weapons states have made solemn promises to the international community to negotiate in good faith to achieve nuclear disarmament. Each of the nuclear weapons states accepted this obligation when it signed the NPT, and extended this promise at the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference. India and Pakistan, which are not signatories of the NPT, have committed themselves to abolish their nuclear arsenals if the other nuclear weapons states agree to do so. The only nuclear weapons state that has not made this promise is Israel, and surely it could be convinced to do so if the other nuclear weapons states agreed to the elimination of their nuclear arsenals. The International Court of Justice, the world’s highest court, unanimously highlighted the obligation for nuclear disarmament in its 1996 Opinion: “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.” This means an obligation to reduce the world’s nuclear arsenals to zero.
    AAPSO appeals to the nuclear power countries in particular and to all countries in general, that it is our responsibility to protect the future generation from any nuclear calamity and eliminate all the nuclear weapons from the world.

  2. Mountain War Time

    Wednesday 19 October 2011

    by Isobel Dixon


    National Geographic, Vol. 160 No. 6, December 1981

    Renowned for its height and perfect cone,
    the American Fuji-san
    now rises with a broken crown

    above the slopes made mud- and ashscape,
    burying bobcat, spotted owl and elk.
    Ghost vapours from a methane lake

    unfurl, before the pearly everlasting
    and the lilies of the avalanche
    emerge. Trailing blackberry, lupine,

    bracken fern, disguise the scars
    of that May day in this volcanic arc.
    The Cascades shaken, parted

    from old certainties. Remember,
    here, this is the Ring of Fire,
    the lava flow not far from where,

    made pure, Element 94,
    plutonium, formed Fat Man’s core –
    the Sumo Bomb, its promised rain of ruin:

    molten kimono flowers singed to skin,
    a city threshed and sewn with blossoms, fissioning.

    Isobel Dixon grew up in South Africa, and she now lives in Cambridge, England. Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Financial Times, The Guardian, Magma and elsewhere, and she has been commissioned to write poems for the British Film Institute. This poem is featured in her most recent collection The Tempest Prognosticator (Salt), and was written for Roddy Lumsden’s 50 States commission in 2008 on the state of Washington. Plutonium formed the fissionable core of the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki, and the Hanford Works atomic energy plant in Washington State (in which Mount St Helens stands) was instrumental in the development of the bomb. “The Atomic Age began at exactly 5.30 Mountain War Time on the morning of July 16, 1945,” wrote William Lawrence after witnessing the test blast for Little Boy, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

    Well Versed is edited by Jody Porter.


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