The Light of a Thousand Suns: The Birth of the Atomic Age
by Have paraphrased the title from a well-known book on the nuclear arms race, but the rest of the article is of my own steam. I am a sucker for the big historical stories, and few are larger than the dropping of the Bomb.
At 08:15 on the 6th August 1945, the world changed forever. With the light of a thousand suns, the first atomic bomb exploded above Hiroshima, obliterating thousands of people and property and casting a shadow under which we still live today. At 11.01 on the 9th August, the second bomb was dropped on the fishing port of Nagasaki, and the war in the Pacific effectively ended, with the declaration of surrender announced on the 15th August.
The Second World War was over, but at what cost? Several hundred thousand civilians were killed instantly when those two steel cases fell from the sky, and thousands more died or suffered from radiation based illnesses for decades to come. The nuclear age was ushered in with the suffering of countless innocents and the total devastation of two beautiful Japanese cities. The threat of nuclear exchange was to loom large throughout the rest of the twentieth century, with the world coming perilously close to doom at least three times since 1945.
There has been much written over the years about the dropping of Fat Boy and Little Man on those August days, namely focussing on the need to unleash the atom on an already defeated enemy. The Australian journalist, John Pilger calls it a ‘criminal act on an epic scale’ and many modern writers have discussed the savagery of dropping the bomb on Japan and argued that it was merely a way of demonstrating the United State’s mastery of the atom to the Soviet Union. Indeed, Pilger further argues that the bomb wasn’t intended to end the Pacific war at all, and was solely a ‘show of strength’ for the benefit of Stalin.
To claim this is fundamentally wrong, and a rash example of ‘shock and awe’ journalism that chooses to ignore key facts to achieve maximum impact over its readers. The dropping of the first A-bombs by the Enola Gay (Hiroshima) and Bock’s Car (Nagasaki) ultimately saved the allies potentially a million casualties and many more Japanese. The planners of Operation Olympic, the invasion of mainland Japan, anticipated almost 800,000 fatalities on the side of the allies. An invasion would have been protracted, bloody, and would have totally devastated the Japanese nation. The Japanese Imperial Air Force had ceased to be a fighting force in early July, but the Army and Navy were willing and prepared to fight on. The largely militarised Japanese population would have fought for every inch of their beloved homeland; honour and a way of life were at stake. However, after the two bombs, the peace faction within the Japanese government –including Emperor Hirohito- overruled the nationalists that were campaigning for continuation of the war, and began to sue for peace. On the 14Th August 1945, the emperor informed his divided War Council that they must accept the surrender. Despite an attempted coup, the Emperor addressed his nation for the first time the next day and issued his ‘endure the unendurable’ speech. Thus, the loss of countless thousands of lives was prevented and the first true global and total war was over. Had the bombs not been used, the face of the world today would be hugely different, with almost an entire generation worldwide dying in a maelstrom of fanatical fighting on the Japanese mainland.
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