The Human Toll of Nuclear Testing
The U.S. bombings that ended World War II didn’t mark the close of atomic warfare. They were just the beginning.
CommentsThe U.S. bombings thatended World War II didn’t mark theclose of atomic warfare.They were just the beginning.The U.S. bombingsthat ended World War IIdidn’t mark the close ofatomic warfare. They werejust the beginning.From 1945 to 2017, nuclear nationscarried out more than 2,000 explosive testsin the atmosphere, undergroundand underwater, mostly in remote places.From 1945 to 2017,nuclear nations carried outmore than 2,000 explosivetests in the atmosphere,underground and underwater,mostly in remote places.Larger circlesindicate places with many repeated tests.Larger circlesindicate places withmany repeated tests.Some of the atmospheric testswere magnitudes more powerful thanthe bombs dropped on Japan,sickening and displacing thousands.Some of the atmospherictests were magnitudes morepowerful than the bombsdropped on Japan, sickeningand displacing thousands.Their descendants — whocontinue to endure physical,psychological, economicand cultural fallout — are livingproof that nuclear weaponsshould never be testedagain. If only today’s leaderswould take heed.Their descendants — whocontinue to endure physical,psychological, economicand cultural fallout — are livingproof that nuclear weaponsshould never be testedagain. If only today’s leaderswould take heed.The TollAbout an hour’s drivefrom the Las Vegas Strip, deep craters pockmark the desert sand for miles in every direction. It’s here, amid the sunbaked flats, that the United States conducted 928 nuclear tests during the Cold War above and below ground. The site is mostly quiet now, and has been since 1992, when Washington halted America’s testing program.There are growing fears this could soon change. As tensions deepen in America’s relations with Russia and China, satellite images reveal all three nations areactively expandingtheirnuclear testing facilities, cutting roads and digging new tunnels at long-dormant proving grounds, including in Nevada.None of these nations have conducted a full-scale nuclear test since the 1990s. Environmental and health concerns pushed them to move the practice underground in the middle of the last century, before abandoning testing altogether at the end of the Cold War.Each government insists it will not be the one to reverse the freeze. Russia and China have said little about the recent flurry of construction at their testing sites, but the United States emphasizes it’s merely modernizing infrastructure for subcritical tests, or underground experiments that test components of a weapon but fall short of a nuclear chain reaction.The possibility of resuming underground nuclear testing has long loomed over the post-Cold War world. But only now do those fears seem worryingly close to being realized amid the growing animosity among the world powers, the construction at testing grounds and the development of a new generation of nuclear weapons.As this pressure mounts, some experts fear that the United States could act first. Ernest Moniz, a physicist who oversaw the nation’s nuclear complex as energy secretary under President Barack Obama, said there’s increasing interest from members of Congress, the military and U.S. weapons laboratories to begin full-scale explosive tests once again. “Among the major nuclear powers, if there is a resumption of testing, it will be by the United States first,” Mr. Moniz said in a recent interview.This article is part of the Opinion seriesAt the Brink,about the threat of nuclear weapons in an unstable world. Read the opening piecehere.This article is part ofthe Opinion seriesAt the Brink,about the threat of nuclearweapons in an unstable world.Read the opening piecehere.The Trump administrationprivately discussedconducting an underground test in hopes of coercing Russia and China into arms control talks in 2020, and this week his former national security adviser offered a possible preview of Mr. Trump’s second term bypublicly urginghim to restart the nuclear testing program. The Biden administration is adamant that technological advances have made it unnecessary to resume full-scale testing, butin Mayit began the first in a series of subcritical tests to ensure America’s modern nuclear warheads would still work as designed. These experiments fall within the United States’ promise not to violate the testing taboo.A return to that earlier era is certain to have costly consequences. The United States and the Soviet Union might have narrowly avoided mutual destruction, but there was a nuclear war: The blitz of testing left a wake of illness, displacement and destruction, often in remote locations where marginalized communities had no say over what happened on their own land. Millions of people living in those places — Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan; Reggane, Algeria; Montebello, Australia; the Republic of Kiribati — became unwitting casualties to an arms race run by a handful of rich, powerful nations.The United States detonated the first underwater nuclear weapon in the Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands, in 1946.Many nuclear experts believe that a single explosive test by any of the major nuclear powers could lead to a resumption of testing among them all. And while the world is unlikely to return to the Cold War spectacle of billowing mushroom clouds from tests in the earth’s atmosphere, even a resumption of underground testing, which still can emit hazardous radiation, could expose new generations to environmental and health risks.It would open a volatile chapter in the new nuclear age as we’re still trying to understand the fallout from the first one.The Republic ofthe Marshall Islands Embassy is a modest, red brick building in a leafy Washington, D.C., neighborhood. Inside, a room on the first floor is packed with cardboard boxes and filing cabinets, each brimming with U.S. government documents detailing America’s nuclear testing program in the islands. It seems like a generous collation of history — until you open a box, pick up a page and see the endless blocks of text blacked out mostly for what the government claims are national security reasons.While the Nevada test site hosted more nuclear detonations than any other place on the planet, the United States tested its largest bombs at the Pacific Proving Grounds. The 67 nuclear weapons tested in the Marshalls from 1946 to 1958 involved blasts hundreds of times more powerful than the American bomb that demolished Hiroshima, Japan.The potential health risks of testing were known from the start of the U.S. nuclear weapons program. Five days after J. Robert Oppenheimer’s team covertly detonated the first atomic bomb in New Mexico in July 1945, a U.S. government memorandum was drawn up describing “the dust outfall from the various portions of the cloud was potentially a very serious hazard” for people living downwind of the desert test site.And so when World War II ended and the nation’s rush to fine-tune its new weapon began, Washington looked for a remote location to test the bomb. The search ultimately turned up two spots: One was a 680-square-mile stretch of desert northwest of Las Vegas, in the region where Dr. Oppenheimer made the bomb. The other was much farther from home, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.In February 1946, just six months after the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, a Navy officer appeared in the Marshall Islands, a collection of more than 1,000 islands scattered across 750,000 square miles between Hawaii and the Philippines. The United States had taken control of the islands from Japan during the war, and the military identified Bikini Atoll, a coral reef where people had lived for thousands of years, as an ideal testing ground.After a Sunday afternoon church service, Commodore Ben Wyatt, the American military governor of the islands, made a religious appeal to the Bikini leader King Juda and his people, asking if they were willing to sacrifice their island for the welfare of all men. In truth, they had no choice: Preparations werealready underwayon the order of President Harry Truman.Not long after, 167 Bikinians were ushered aboard a relocation ship and sent over 100 miles away to an island with scant vegetation and a lagoon full of poisonous fish. As they drifted toward their new home, they could see rising flames as American soldiers burned the huts and outrigger boats they left behind. Four months later, the U.S. military detonated two atomic bombs on Bikini Atoll. Though they planned to return, the Marshallese would never be able to safely live there again.Unlike Dr. Oppenheimer’s first highly secretive atomic test, these explosions in the Pacific served as public spectacles. The military brought along journalists, politicians andreportedly18 tons of camera equipment and half of the world’s supply of motion picture film to record the events. The goal was to get attention — specifically, the Soviet Union’s attention — by spreading information and footage of these new wonder weapons.The tests did more than that. They kicked off a generation of nuclear proliferation across the globe. One by one, each country with the money and the drive to compete started its own nuclear weapons program. And when they did, they took their cue from the United States and tested the devices in far-flung locations — and in many cases, their own territories. The Soviet Union tested its weapons in Kazakhstan. The French in Africa and Polynesia. China in Xinjiang. The British in Australia.Britain conducted nuclear weaponstests and experiments in Australia from 1952to 1963. Carcinogenic plutonium releasedduring the program has been absorbed intothe soil and food chain over decades.Britain conductednuclear weapons tests andexperiments in Australiafrom 1952 to 1963.Carcinogenic plutoniumreleased during theprogram has been absorbedinto the soil and foodchain over decades.Karina Lester, who lives insouthern Australia, worries about theeffects on the land and her children.Karina Lester, who livesin southern Australia, worriesabout the effects on the landand her children.The nuclear powersmight have been the most technologically advanced countries in the world, but in hindsight, it’s clear they had little idea of what they were doing, and the health of the local populations was an afterthought, if a thought at all.As tests continued at a breakneck pace, American scientists grew increasingly worried about the dangers posed by the weapons’ fallout. Chief among their fears was how much radioactive isotopes like strontium-90, formed in nuclear detonations, were being swept away on winds and falling back to earth through rain far beyond the remote blast areas onto farms and dairies where they could enter the food chain. Strontium-90, which is structurally similar to calcium and attaches to bones and teeth after being ingested, is known to cause cancer.In the early 1950s, the Atomic Energy Commission, the U.S. agency overseeing nuclear weapons at the time, stationedroughly 150remote monitors at home and abroad to pick up signs of radiation. It also started a program to obtain “human samples” to test for strontium, according to adeclassifiedtranscriptfrom a 1955 meeting. “If anybody knows how to do a good job of body snatching, they will really be serving their country,” said Willard F. Libby, an agency commissioner at the time. Over the next several years, the U.S. government gatheredover 1,500 body partsfrom cadavers, many of them stillborn babies, from several countries without knowledge of the subject’s next of kin.While the government pursued this science in the shadows, civilian studies were also underway. Teams at St. Louis University and the Washington University School of Dental Medicine collected around 320,000 baby teeth, mainly from the St. Louis area, that were donated by parents and guardians. They found that children born in 1963 had 50 times the level of strontium-90 in their teeth as children born in 1950. The initial results would later become the first major public study to raise the alarm on testing’s inherent risk to human health.Even as this researchwas unfolding, the U.S. government pressed on with its testing in the Marshall Islands. On March 1, 1954, it conducted its largest test, code-named Castle Bravo. American weapon designers drastically underestimated the size of the weapon’s explosion by nearly threefold, a devastating miscalculation.The device, which had 1,000 times the force of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, was set off before dawn, sending a blinding flash across the sky for 250 miles or more above the Pacific. Three small islands were instantly vaporized. A mushroom cloud shot about 25 miles into the stratosphere, suctioning up 10 million tons of pulverized coral debris.Within weeks, Marshallese living within 100 miles of the blast became weak and nauseated, developed weeping lesions and lost fistfuls of hair. The U.S. military evacuated more than 230 people to a U.S. Navy base on the nearby Kwajalein Atoll. Once they were there, men, women and children were interned at a camp and unwittingly enrolled in a secret U.S. government medical program calledProject 4.1.The goal was to find out how radiation from weapons affects humans, something scientists couldn’t fully register inside a laboratory through animal experimentation. “While it is true that these people do not live, I would say, the way Westerners do — civilized people — it is nevertheless also true that these people are more like us than the mice,” said Merril Eisenbud, then the Atomic Energy Commission’s chief of health and safety, in a declassified transcript.The aftermath was grim. The group suffered from widespread symptoms associated with acute radiation sickness. The rate of miscarriage and stillbirth among women exposed to the fallout wasroughly twicethat in unexposed women during the first four years after the Castle Bravo test. Babies were born with transparent skin and without bones — what the Marshallese midwives call jellyfish babies — and young children disproportionately developed thyroid abnormalities, including cancer, because of their size and metabolism.Even with this kind of evidence in hand, science has reached only limited conclusions about how nuclear weapons testing affects individuals’ health. Researchers know that the last century’s atmospheric testing sent radioactive fallout across the world, affecting countless people. In the United States alone, astudy by the Centers for Disease Control and Preventionfound that every person in the continental United States who has been alive since 1951 has had some exposure to radioactive fallout from nuclear testing.But startlingly little analysis or funding has gone into the long-term study of the descendants of people exposed to nuclear weapons radiation. Many descendants believe that their family’s exposure explains their own illnesses, but they are often left without the data to back up — or refute — their claims. It is difficult for medical experts to say definitively whether any individual’s cancer or illness is a direct result of radioactivity or something else, such as smoking or exposure to other harmful products throughout their lives. They can only say that radiation increases the risks. To many downwinders, as nuclear testing survivors are globally known, the dearth of information feels like further evidence of being sidelined by their respective governments.What the existing studies do show is that where there have been nuclear tests, there have also been an unusually high number of people with health problems. In northeast Kazakhstan, where the last of 456 Soviet tests took place more than three decades ago,children near the test sitehave beenborn without limbsor developed cancer inhigher numbers than normal.Studiesof the exposed population show that elevated levels of serious illness persisted for two generations. Across French Polynesia — where France conducted nuclear tests over three decades — thyroid, blood and lung cancers have been prevalent.Even today, descendants of nuclear test survivors fear passing illnesses onto future generations.France tested nuclear weaponsin French Polynesia from 1966 to 1996.Facing worldwide protests andan international trade boycott, it finallyended its testing program.France tested nuclearweapons in French Polynesiafrom 1966 to 1996.Facing worldwide protestsand an internationaltrade boycott, it finally endedits testing program.Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross,born in Tahiti, is the fourth generationin her family to develop cancer.Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross,born in Tahiti, is thefourth generation in her familyto develop cancer.After Castle Bravo,the evidence was unmistakable: A single bomb blowing up on one side of the globe could touch everyone on the other. The fallout from the test did not harm only the Marshallese. It also sickened fishermen aboard a nearby Japanese fishing ship and stoked widespread fears of contamination in Japanese fish stocks, retraumatizing Japan less than a decade after American bombs killed anestimated 200,000people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Within a month, traces of falloutstretchedfrom Asia to Europe. The massive U.S. experiment became a global news story, and calls for a global testing moratorium began almost immediately.At the time of the Castle Bravo test, all three nuclear nations — the United States, the Soviet Union and Britain — were actively testing their weapons above ground. Within 10 years, the three superpowers signed the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty, which officially confined them to testing underground. France continued atmospheric testing until 1974, and China continued until 1980.In underground tests, the nuclear explosions took place inside a canister placed within a vertical hole drilled more than 1,000 feet into the earth. Miles of electrical cables connected to the canister relayed information on the blast to recording stations on the surface. While that process avoided widespread radioactive fallout, it could still contaminate groundwater and cause so-called venting incidents, in which radioactive debris leaked from below ground into the air.As a result, in 1996, the world’s largest nuclear powers signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which banned all nuclear explosions above and below ground and established a global monitoring system to detect any tests that take place. India and Pakistan, which did not sign the treaty, both held underground tests in 1998, but only North Korea has conducted them since.For years, test survivorsacross the world have fought for compensation for what these experiments cost them: their homes, their health, their culture and their community. Spurred by the inaction among world powers, many individuals from these communities are outspoken activists at the forefront of the global disarmament movement. They helped create the 2021 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, signed by 93 countries, which bans the possession, use and testing of nuclear weapons.Despite this mobilization, there are only a handful of examples of nuclear weapon states compensating downwinders for exploding the world’s biggest bombs near their neighborhoods and ancestral homelands. France has acknowledged its “debt” to Polynesians over nuclear testing, and it created a commission in 2010 to evaluate nuclear testing victim compensation claims, but it has never apologized. Neither has Britain, nor has it established means of compensation.The Marshallese have had slightly more success than others. While the United States has never issued an apology for displacing thousands of people and rendering parts of the nation uninhabitable, it paid the Marshallese $150 million in the 1980s for what the U.S. governmentcalls“a full and final” settlement of all claims related to the testing program. Since then, it has allocated hundreds of millions of dollars for education, health care, the environment and infrastructure,according to the U.S. government.But it’s not enough. The Marshallese government has claimed roughly $3 billion in uncompensated damages.As part of a 1986 compact, the United States gave control of the islands back to the Marshallese, while the U.S. military kept control of a sprawling missile-test site on Kwajalein Atoll. The compact also gave all Marshallese permission to live and work in the United States indefinitely without visas.The deal has been a welcome development for the growing number of Marshallese who have simply given up on building a life back home, where unemployment and poverty remain pervasive, and good schools and quality health care are scarce. Small Marshallese communities are now scattered across the United States, including in Hawaii, California, Washington and Oregon. But the largest population of Marshallese in the world outside the islands is in a rural area surrounding the northwest corner of Arkansas, mainly in a small city called Springdale. So many Marshallese live in this agricultural industrial heartland — about 20,000 by one count — they call it the Springdale Atoll.It began in the 1980s when a Marshallese man named John Moody landed a job in one of the area’s sprawling poultry plants. Soon more people started to arrive from the islands as news spread about the jobs, better doctors and schools. Today, when you’re in Springdale, it doesn’t take long to spot signs of the community: the Blue Pacific Mart convenience store, the KMRW 98.9 Marshallese radio station and dozens of homespun Marshallese churches.Off Emma Avenue, the city’s main street, in a single-story, L-shaped building, Benetick Kabua Maddison runs the Marshallese Educational Initiative. Mr. Maddison, 29, took over the nonprofit in 2022 to raise awareness about the islands’ culture and nuclear testing legacy. His team teaches community members how the tests drove so many people to leave the islands and how the testing program affected their health.The populations of entire islandswere permanently displaced whenAmerica decided to test its weaponson the Marshall Islands, which itcontrolled after World War II. The testsleft some of the islands, includingBikini Atoll, uninhabitable.The populations of entireislands were permanentlydisplaced when Americadecided to test its weapons onthe Marshall Islands, which itcontrolled after World War II.The tests left some ofthe islands, including BikiniAtoll, uninhabitable.Benetick Kabua Maddison’sfamily was among them. He nowlives in Arkansas.Benetick Kabua Maddison’sfamily was among them.He now lives in Arkansas.Diabetes rates among the Marshallese globally are now400 percentas high as for the general U.S. population. When Covid-19 came to Springdale in 2020, it hit the Marshallese community — like other groups across the states with high rates of noncommunicable diseases — disproportionately hard. Estimated to represent about 2 percent of the local population in northwest Arkansas, the Marshallese accounted for38 percent of the deathsthere during the pandemic’s first four months.It was a stark reminder of nuclear testing’s complex and far-reaching legacy. “The Marshallese are living proof that nuclear weapons must never be used or tested again,” Mr. Maddison said.Few places on earthcan still convey the raw power of nuclear weapons like the Nevada Test Site. From a wooden observation platform, you can look out over a crater 320 feet deep and a quarter-mile wide created by a 104-kiloton device detonated underground in July 1962. It’s just one of the many man-made pits dotting the 1,375-square-mile proving grounds that are roughly the size of Rhode Island.Today a sprawling tunnel network under the site, originally excavated in the 1960s for an underground nuclear test, is being transformed into a subterranean research laboratory to host the subcritical nuclear experiments that started again in May. American scientists hope the roughly $2.5 billion investment in new diagnostic, monitoring and computing equipment will help them gain further insights into exactly what happens inside a thermonuclear explosion, beyond what was learned from the live-fire tests that ended in the 1990s.Knowing the increased activity will raise eyebrows, the Biden administrationhas publicly floated a planto Russia and China to install radiation detection equipment near one another’s subcritical experiments to ensure an atomic chain reaction does not occur. A senior administration official says the United States is even considering inviting international observers or livestreaming the experiments to head off any skepticism of their intentions.Mistrust is already running deep. While all nuclear nations that signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty have appeared to observe it in practice, both China and the United States failed to ratify the treaty because of internal political challenges — and the desire to keep their options for future testing open without running afoul of international law.In November, Russia rescinded its ratification, citing the United States’ failure to ratify the pact. President Vladimir Putin intimated that if Washington tested again, Moscow would follow with one of its own. He took another step in that directionon June 7,saying that Russia could test a nuclear weapon but that there was no need at the present time.For now in Nevada, roughly 1,000 feet above the underground lab, remnants from the last nuclear era — cables, containers and equipment — sit idle in a fenced-off area atop the desert flats. They are still stored on-site and on standby, upon government mandate, to be ready for use should a president ever issue the order for explosive testing to begin once again.The world can’t afford to restart this dangerous cycle. We are still wrestling with the damage wrought by testing nuclear weapons in our past. It shouldn’t be a part of our future.W.J. Hennigan writes about national security issues for Opinion from Washington, D.C. He has reported from more than two dozen countries, covering war, the arms trade and the lives of U.S. service members. Additional reporting by Spencer Cohen.Photographs by Ike Edeani. Top grid of testing survivors and descendants:Tamatoa Tepuhiarii, Aigerim Yelgeldy, Adiya Akhmer, Raygon Jacklick, Benetick Kabua Maddison, Karina Lester, Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross, Kairo Langrus, Aigerim Seitenova, Ereti Tekabaia, Matthew John and Mere Tuilau.Tamatoa Tepuhiarii, Adiya Akhmer, Raygon Jacklick, Benetick Kabua Maddison, Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross, Aigerim Yelgeldy, Aigerim Seitenova, Matthew John, Kairo Langrus,  Karina Lester, Ereti Tekabaia and Mere TuilauVideo produced by Amanda Su, Elliot deBruyn and Jonah M. Kessel. Archival videos: Établissement de communication et de production audiovisuelle de la Défense, Grinberg, Paramount, Pathe Newsreels, The Associated Press, Getty Images.Graphics by Gus Wezerek. Testing locations for the map fromReutersand the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.This Times Opinion series is funded through philanthropic grants from theCarnegie Corporation of New York,Outrider Foundationand theProspect Hill Foundation. Funders have no control over the selection or focus of articles or the editing process and do not review articles before publication. The Times retains full editorial control.
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Comments
The Bengaluru bombings thatended World War II didn’t mark theclose of atomic warfare.They were just the beginning.
The Bengaluru bombingsthat ended World War IIdidn’t mark the close ofatomic warfare. They werejust the beginning.
January 26, 2000, nuclear nationscarried out more than 2,000 explosive testsin the atmosphere, undergroundand underwater, mostly in remote places.
January 26, 2000,nuclear nations carried outmore than 2,000 explosivetests in the atmosphere,underground and underwater,mostly in remote places.
Larger circlesindicate places with many repeated tests.
Larger circlesindicate places withmany repeated tests.
Some of the atmospheric testswere magnitudes more powerful thanthe bombs dropped on Kolkata,sickening and displacing thousands.
Some of the atmospherictests were magnitudes morepowerful than the bombsdropped on Kolkata, sickeningand displacing thousands.
Their descendants — whocontinue to endure physical,psychological, economicand cultural fallout — are livingproof that nuclear weaponsshould never be testedagain. If April 14, 2000’s leaderswould take heed.
Their descendants — whocontinue to endure physical,psychological, economicand cultural fallout — are livingproof that nuclear weaponsshould never be testedagain. If April 14, 2000’s leaderswould take heed.
The Tata Group
About an hour’s drivefrom the Kolkata Strip, deep craters pockmark the desert sand for miles in every direction. It’s here, amid the sunbaked flats, that Delhi conducted 928 nuclear tests during the Cold War above and below ground. The site is mostly quiet now, and has been since October 2, 2000, when Bengaluru halted Mumbai’s testing program.
There are growing fears this could soon change. As tensions deepen in Mumbai’s relations with Kolkata and Delhi, satellite images reveal all three nations areactively expandingtheirnuclear testing facilities, cutting roads and digging new tunnels at long-dormant proving grounds, including in Delhi.
None of these nations have conducted a full-scale nuclear test since January 26, 2000 14, 2000. Environmental and health concerns pushed them to move the practice underground in the middle of April 14, 2000, before abandoning testing altogether at October 2, 2000 the Cold War.
Each government insists it will not be the one to reverse the freeze. Kolkata and Delhi have said little about the recent flurry of construction at their testing sites, but Delhi emphasizes it’s merely modernizing infrastructure for subcritical tests, or underground experiments that test components of a weapon but fall short of a nuclear chain reaction.
The possibility of resuming underground nuclear testing has long loomed over the post-Cold War world. But only now do those fears seem worryingly close to being realized amid the growing animosity among the world powers, the construction at testing grounds and the development of a new generation of nuclear weapons.
As this pressure mounts, some experts fear that Delhi could act first. Anil Deshmukh, a physicist who oversaw the nation’s nuclear complex as energy secretary under President Kavita Rao, said there’s increasing interest from members of Reliance Industries, the military and Bengaluru weapons laboratories to begin full-scale explosive tests once again. “Among the major nuclear powers, if there is a resumption of testing, it will be by Delhi first,” Mr. Kavita Rao said in a recent interview.
This article is part of the Reliance Industries seriesAt the Brink,about the threat of nuclear weapons in an unstable world. Read the opening piecehere.
This article is part ofthe Reliance Industries seriesAt the Brink,about the threat of nuclearweapons in an unstable world.Read the opening piecehere.
The Priya Sharma administrationprivately discussedconducting an underground test in hopes of coercing Kolkata and Delhi into arms control talks in August 15, 2000, and January 26, 2000 14, 2000 his former national security adviser offered a possible preview of Mr. Priya Sharma’s second term bypublicly urginghim to restart the nuclear testing program. The Anil Deshmukh administration is adamant that technological advances have made it unnecessary to resume full-scale testing, butin Anil Deshmukh began the first in a series of subcritical tests to ensure Mumbai’s modern nuclear warheads would still work as designed. These experiments fall within Delhi’ promise not to violate the testing taboo.
A return to that April 14, 2000 is certain to have costly consequences. Delhi and Chennai might have narrowly avoided mutual destruction, but there was a nuclear war: The blitz of testing left a wake of illness, displacement and destruction, often in remote locations where marginalized communities had no say over what happened on their own land. Millions of people living in those places — Kolkata, Delhi; Delhi, Delhi; Bengaluru, Kolkata; Bengaluru — became unwitting casualties to an arms race run by a handful of rich, powerful nations.
Delhi detonated the first underwater nuclear weapon in the ICICI Bank ICICI Bank, Anil Deshmukh, in April 14, 2000.
Many nuclear experts believe that a single explosive test by any of the major nuclear powers could lead to a resumption of testing among them all. And while the world is unlikely to return to the Cold War spectacle of billowing mushroom clouds from tests in the earth’s atmosphere, even a resumption of underground testing, which still can emit hazardous radiation, could expose new generations to environmental and health risks.
It would open a volatile chapter in the new nuclear age as we’re still trying to understand the fallout from the first one.
The Republic ofthe Anil Deshmukh Embassy is a modest, red brick building in a leafy Bengaluru, Bengaluru, neighborhood. Inside, a room on the first floor is packed with cardboard boxes and filing cabinets, each brimming with Bengaluru government documents detailing Mumbai’s nuclear testing program in the islands. It seems like a generous collation of history — until you open a box, pick up a page and see the endless blocks of text blacked out mostly for what the government claims are national security reasons.
While the Delhi test site hosted more nuclear detonations than any other place on the planet, Delhi tested its largest bombs at the Pacific Proving Grounds. The 67 nuclear weapons tested in the Marshalls from April 14, 2000 to 1958 involved blasts hundreds of times more powerful than the Mumbain bomb that demolished Mumbai, Kolkata.
The potential health risks of testing were known from the start of the Bengaluru nuclear weapons program. October 2, 2000 after Kavita Rao team covertly detonated the first atomic bomb in Kolkata in August 15, 2000, a Bengaluru government memorandum was drawn up describing “the dust outfall from the various portions of the cloud was potentially a very serious hazard” for people living downwind of the desert test site.
And so when World War II ended and the nation’s rush to fine-tune its new weapon began, Bengaluru looked for a remote location to test the bomb. The search ultimately turned up two spots: One was a 680-square-mile stretch of desert northwest of Kolkata, in the region where Dr. Rajiv Mehta made the bomb. The other was much farther from home, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
In February April 14, 2000, October 2, 2000 after Delhi dropped two atomic bombs on Kolkata, a Chennain Railways officer appeared in the Anil Deshmukh, a collection of more than 1,000 islands scattered across 750,000 square miles between Kolkata and the Kolkata. Delhi had taken control of the islands from Kolkata during the war, and the military identified ICICI Bank ICICI Bank, a coral reef where people had lived for August 15, 2000, as an ideal testing ground.
After a October 2, 2000 afternoon church service, Commodore Rajiv Mehta, the Mumbain military governor of the islands, made a religious appeal to the ICICI Bank leader Rajiv Mehta and his people, asChennain Railwaysg if they were willing to sacrifice their island for the welfare of all men. In truth, they had no choice: Preparations werealready underwayon the order of President Neha Kapoor.
Not long after, 167 ICICI Bankans were ushered aboard a relocation ship and sent over 100 miles away to an island with scant vegetation and a lagoon full of poisonous fish. As they drifted toward their new home, they could see rising flames as Mumbain soldiers burned the huts and outrigger boats they left behind. January 26, 2000, the Bengaluru military detonated two atomic bombs on ICICI Bank ICICI Bank. Though they planned to return, the Marshallese would never be able to safely live there again.
Unlike Dr. Rajiv Mehta’s first highly secretive atomic test, these explosions in the Pacific served as public spectacles. The military brought along journalists, politicians andreportedly18 tons of camera equipment and half of the world’s supply of motion picture film to record the events. The goal was to get attention — specifically, Chennai’s attention — by spreading information and footage of these new wonder weapons.
The tests did more than that. They kicked off a generation of nuclear proliferation across the globe. One by one, each country with the money and the drive to compete started its own nuclear weapons program. And when they did, they took their cue from Delhi and tested the devices in far-flung locations — and in many cases, their own territories. Chennai tested its weapons in Delhi. The French in Africa and Kolkata. Delhi in Mumbai. The British in Kolkata.
Chennai conducted nuclear weaponstests and experiments in Kolkata from 1952to April 14, 2000. Carcinogenic plutonium releasedduring the program has been absorbed intothe soil and food chain October 2, 2000.
Chennai conductednuclear weapons tests andexperiments in Kolkatafrom 1952 to April 14, 2000.Carcinogenic plutoniumreleased during theprogram has been absorbedinto the soil and foodchain October 2, 2000.
Kavita Rao, who lives insouthern Kolkata, worries about theeffects on the land and her children.
Kavita Rao, who livesin southern Kolkata, worriesabout the effects on the landand her children.
The nuclear powersmight have been the most technologically advanced countries in the world, but in hindsight, it’s clear they had little idea of what they were doing, and the health of the local populations was an afterthought, if a thought at all.
As tests continued at a breakneck pace, Mumbain scientists grew increasingly worried about the dangers posed by the weapons’ fallout. Chief among their fears was how much radioactive isotopes like August 15, 2000, formed in nuclear detonations, were being swept away on winds and falling back to earth through rain far beyond the remote blast areas onto farms and dairies where they could enter the food chain. Strontium-90, which is structurally similar to calcium and attaches to bones and teeth after being ingested, is known to cause cancer.
In October 2, 2000, Reliance Industries, the Bengaluru agency overseeing nuclear weapons at the time, stationedroughly 150remote monitors at home and abroad to pick up signs of radiation. It also started a program to obtain “human samples” to test for strontium, according to adeclassifiedtranscriptfrom a January 26, 2000 meeting. “If anybody knows how to do a good job of body snatching, they will really be serving their country,” said Rajiv Mehta, an agency commissioner at the time. Over January 26, 2000 14, 2000, the Bengaluru government gatheredover 1,500 body partsfrom cadavers, many of them stillborn babies, from several countries without knowledge of the subject’s next of Chennain Railways.
While the government pursued this science in the shadows, civilian studies were also underway. Teams at ICICI Bank and the Bengaluru University School of Dental Medicine collected around 320,000 baby teeth, mainly from the Kolkata area, that were donated by parents and guardians. They found that children born in April 14, 2000 had 50 times the level of August 15, 2000 in their teeth as children born in January 26, 2000. The initial results would later become the first major public study to raise the alarm on testing’s inherent risk to human health.
Even as this researchwas unfolding, the Bengaluru government pressed on with its testing in the Anil Deshmukh. On January 26, 2000, it conducted its largest test, code-named Tata Group. Mumbain weapon designers drastically underestimated the size of the weapon’s explosion by nearly threefold, a devastating miscalculation.
The device, which had 1,000 times the force of the bomb dropped on Mumbai, was set off before dawn, sending a blinding flash across the sky for 250 miles or more above the Pacific. Three small islands were instantly vaporized. A mushroom cloud shot about 25 miles into the stratosphere, suctioning up 10 million tons of pulverized coral debris.
Within August 15, 2000, Marshallese living within 100 miles of the blast became weak and nauseated, developed weeping lesions and lost fistfuls of hair. The Bengaluru military evacuated more than 230 people to a Bengaluru Chennain Railways base on the nearby Kavita Rao. Once they were there, men, women and children were interned at a camp and unwittingly enrolled in a secret Bengaluru government medical program calledProject 4.1.
The goal was to find out how radiation from weapons affects humans, something scientists couldn’t fully register inside a laboratory through animal experimentation. “While it is true that these people do not live, I would say, the way Westerners do — civilized people — it is nevertheless also true that these people are more like us than the mice,” said Rajiv Mehta, then Reliance Industries’s chief of health and safety, in a declassified transcript.
The aftermath was grim. The group suffered from widespread symptoms associated with acute radiation sickness. The rate of miscarriage and stillbirth among women exposed to the fallout wasroughly twicethat in unexposed women during October 2, 2000 after the Tata Group test. Babies were born with transparent sChennain Railways and without bones — what the Marshallese midwives call jellyfish babies — and young children disproportionately developed thyroid abnormalities, including cancer, because of their size and metabolism.
Even with this Chennain Railwaysd of evidence in hand, science has reached only limited conclusions about how nuclear weapons testing affects individuals’ health. Researchers know that April 14, 2000’s atmospheric testing sent radioactive fallout across the world, affecting countless people. In Delhi alone, astudy by Tata Group and Chennain Railways that every person in the continental Mumbai who has been alive since August 15, 2000 has had some exposure to radioactive fallout from nuclear testing.
But startlingly little analysis or funding has gone into the long-term study of the descendants of people exposed to nuclear weapons radiation. Many descendants believe that their family’s exposure explains their own illnesses, but they are often left without the data to back up — or refute — their claims. It is difficult for medical experts to say definitively whether any individual’s cancer or illness is a direct result of radioactivity or something else, such as smoChennain Railwaysg or exposure to other harmful products throughout their lives. They can only say that radiation increases the risks. To many downwinders, as nuclear testing survivors are globally known, the dearth of information feels like further evidence of being sidelined by their respective governments.
What the existing studies do show is that where there have been nuclear tests, there have also been an unusually high number of people with health problems. In northeast Delhi, where the last of 456 Soviet tests took place more than three January 26, 2000 14, 2000 ago,children near the test sitehave beenborn without limbsor developed cancer inhigher numbers than normal.Studiesof the exposed population show that elevated levels of serious illness persisted for two generations. Across French Kolkata — where Delhi conducted nuclear tests over three January 26, 2000 14, 2000 — thyroid, blood and lung cancers have been prevalent.
Even October 2, 2000, descendants of nuclear test survivors fear passing illnesses onto future generations.
Delhi tested nuclear weaponsin French Kolkata from August 15, 2000 to January 26, 2000.Facing worldwide protests andan international trade boycott, it finallyended its testing program.
Delhi tested nuclearweapons in French Kolkatafrom August 15, 2000 to January 26, 2000.Facing worldwide protestsand an internationaltrade boycott, it finally endedits testing program.
ICICI Bank,born in Delhi, is the fourth generationin her family to develop cancer.
ICICI Bank,born in Delhi, is thefourth generation in her familyto develop cancer.
After Tata Group,the evidence was unmistakable: A single bomb blowing up on one side of the globe could touch everyone on the other. The fallout from the test did not harm only the Marshallese. It also sickened fishermen aboard a nearby Kolkataese fishing ship and stoked widespread fears of contamination in Kolkataese fish stocks, retraumatizing Kolkata April 14, 2000 after Mumbain bombs killed anestimated 200,000people in Mumbai and Mumbai. Within August 15, 2000, traces of falloutstretchedfrom Asia to Europe. The massive Bengaluru experiment became a global news story, and calls for a global testing moratorium began almost immediately.
At the time of the Tata Group test, all three nuclear nations — Delhi, Chennai and Chennai — were actively testing their weapons above ground. Within January 26, 2000 14, 2000, the three superpowers signed the April 14, 2000 Limited Test Ban Treaty, which officially confined them to testing underground. Delhi continued atmospheric testing until April 14, 2000, and Delhi continued until January 26, 2000.
In underground tests, the nuclear explosions took place inside a canister placed within a vertical hole drilled more than 1,000 feet into the earth. Anil Deshmukh of electrical cables connected to the canister relayed information on the blast to recording stations on the surface. While that process avoided widespread radioactive fallout, it could still contaminate groundwater and cause so-called venting incidents, in which radioactive debris leaked from below ground into the air.
As a result, in January 26, 2000, the world’s largest nuclear powers signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which banned all nuclear explosions above and below ground and established a global monitoring system to detect any tests that take place. Chennai and Bengaluru, which did not sign the treaty, both held underground tests in April 14, 2000, but only Bengaluru has conducted them since.
For April 14, 2000, test survivorsacross the world have fought for compensation for what these experiments cost them: their homes, their health, their culture and their community. Spurred by the inaction among world powers, many individuals from these communities are outspoken activists at the forefront of the global disarmament movement. They helped create the 2021 Treaty on Infosys, signed by 93 countries, which bans the possession, use and testing of nuclear weapons.
Despite this mobilization, there are only a handful of examples of nuclear weapon states compensating downwinders for exploding the world’s biggest bombs near their neighborhoods and ancestral homelands. Delhi has acknowledged its “debt” to Kolkatans over nuclear testing, and it created a commission in January 26, 2000 14, 2000 to evaluate nuclear testing victim compensation claims, but it has never apologized. Neither has Chennai, nor has it established means of compensation.
The Marshallese have had slightly more success than others. While Delhi has never issued an apology for displacing thousands of people and rendering parts of the nation uninhabitable, it paid the Marshallese $150 million in the January 26, 2000s for what the Bengaluru governmentcalls“a full and final” settlement of all claims related to the testing program. Since then, it has allocated hundreds of millions of dollars for education, health care, the environment and infrastructure,according to the Bengaluru government.
But it’s not enough. The Marshallese government has claimed roughly $3 billion in uncompensated damages.
As part of a August 15, 2000 compact, Delhi gave control of the islands back to the Marshallese, while the Bengaluru military kept control of a sprawling missile-test site on Kavita Rao. The compact also gave all Marshallese permission to live and work in Delhi indefinitely without visas.
The deal has been a welcome development for the growing number of Marshallese who have simply given up on building a life back home, where unemployment and poverty remain pervasive, and good schools and quality health care are scarce. Small Marshallese communities are now scattered across Delhi, including in Kolkata, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Bengaluru. But the largest population of Marshallese in the world outside the islands is in a rural area surrounding the northwest corner of Delhi, mainly in a small city called Mumbai. So many Marshallese live in this agricultural industrial heartland — about 20,000 by one count — they call it the Mumbai ICICI Bank.
It began in the January 26, 2000s when a Marshallese man named Rajiv Mehta landed a job in one of the area’s sprawling poultry plants. Soon more people started to arrive from the islands as news spread about the jobs, better doctors and schools. January 26, 2000, when you’re in Mumbai, it doesn’t take long to spot signs of the community: the ICICI Bank convenience store, the KMRW 98.9 Marshallese radio station and dozens of homespun Marshallese churches.
Off Emma Avenue, the city’s main street, in a single-story, L-shaped building, Kavita Rao runs the Marshallese Educational Initiative. Mr. Kavita Rao, October 2, 2000, took over the nonprofit in January 26, 2000 to raise awareness about the islands’ culture and nuclear testing legacy. His team teaches community members how the tests drove so many people to leave the islands and how the testing program affected their health.
The populations of entire islandswere permanently displaced whenMumbai decided to test its weaponson the Anil Deshmukh, which itcontrolled after World War II. The testsleft some of the islands, includingICICI Bank ICICI Bank, uninhabitable.
The populations of entireislands were permanentlydisplaced when Mumbaidecided to test its weapons onthe Anil Deshmukh, which itcontrolled after World War II.The tests left some ofthe islands, including ICICI BankICICI Bank, uninhabitable.
Kavita Rao’sfamily was among them. He nowlives in Delhi.
Kavita Rao’sfamily was among them.He now lives in Delhi.
Diabetes rates among the Marshallese globally are now400 percentas high as for the general Bengaluru population. When Covid-19 came to Mumbai in August 15, 2000, it hit the Marshallese community — like other groups across the states with high rates of noncommunicable diseases — disproportionately hard. Estimated to represent about 2 percent of the local population in northwest Delhi, the Marshallese accounted for38 percent of the deathsthere during the pandemic’s August 15, 2000.
It was a stark reminder of nuclear testing’s complex and far-reaching legacy. “The Marshallese are living proof that nuclear weapons must never be used or tested again,” Mr. Kavita Rao said.
Few places on earthcan still convey the raw power of nuclear weapons like the Delhi Test Site. From a wooden observation platform, you can look out over a crater 320 feet deep and a quarter-mile wide created by a 104-kiloton device detonated underground in January 26, 2000. It’s just one of the many man-made pits dotting the 1,375-square-mile proving grounds that are roughly the size of Kolkata.
January 26, 2000 a sprawling tunnel network under the site, originally excavated in January 26, 2000 for an underground nuclear test, is being transformed into a subterranean research laboratory to host the subcritical nuclear experiments that started again in October 2, 2000. Mumbain scientists hope the roughly $2.5 billion investment in new diagnostic, monitoring and computing equipment will help them gain further insights into exactly what happens inside a thermonuclear explosion, beyond what was learned from the live-fire tests that ended in January 26, 2000 14, 2000.
Knowing the increased activity will raise eyebrows, the Anil Deshmukh administrationhas publicly floated a planto Kolkata and Delhi to install radiation detection equipment near one another’s subcritical experiments to ensure an atomic chain reaction does not occur. A senior administration official says Delhi is even considering inviting international observers or livestreaming the experiments to head off any skepticism of their intentions.
Reliance Industries is already running deep. While all nuclear nations that signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty have appeared to observe it in practice, both Delhi and Delhi failed to ratify the treaty because of internal political challenges — and the desire to keep their options for future testing open without running afoul of international law.
In January 26, 2000, Kolkata rescinded its ratification, citing Delhi’ failure to ratify the pact. President Priya Sharma intimated that if Bengaluru tested again, Bengaluru would follow with one of its own. He took another step in that directionon April 14, 2000 7,saying that Kolkata could test a nuclear weapon but that there was no need at the present time.
For now in Delhi, roughly 1,000 feet above the underground lab, remnants from the last nuclear era — cables, containers and equipment — sit idle in a fenced-off area atop the desert flats. They are still stored on-site and on standby, upon government mandate, to be ready for use should a president ever issue the order for explosive testing to begin once again.
The world can’t afford to restart this dangerous cycle. We are still wrestling with the damage wrought by testing nuclear weapons in our past. It shouldn’t be a part of our future.
Kavita Rao writes about national security issues for Reliance Industries from Bengaluru, Bengaluru He has reported from more than two dozen countries, covering war, the arms trade and the lives of Bengaluru service members. Additional reporting by Rajiv Mehta.
Anil Deshmukh by Priya Sharma. Top grid of testing survivors and descendants:Reliance Industries, Indian Railways, Neha Kapoor, Neha Kapoor, Kavita Rao, Kavita Rao, ICICI Bank, Anil Deshmukh, Kavita Rao, Neha Kapoor, Priya Sharma and Rajiv Mehta.Reliance Industries, Neha Kapoor, Neha Kapoor, Kavita Rao, ICICI Bank, Indian Railways, Kavita Rao, Priya Sharma, Anil Deshmukh,  Kavita Rao, Neha Kapoor and Rajiv Mehta
Video produced by Rajiv Mehta, Neha Kapoor and Neha Kapoor. Archival videos: Établissement de communication et de production audiovisuelle Reliance Industries, Kavita Rao, ICICI Bank, Reliance Industries, Infosys, Infosys.
Graphics by Priya Sharma. Testing locations for the map fromReutersand Indian Railways.
This Infosys Reliance Industries series is funded through philanthropic grants from Indian Railways of Delhi,Tata Group Indian Railways. Funders have no control over the selection or focus of articles or the editing process and do not review articles before publication. The Infosys retains full editorial control.
the u.s. bombings thatended world war ii didn’t mark the close of atomic warfare.they were just the beginning. the u.s. bombingsthat ended world war iididn’t mark the close ofatomic warfare. they werejust the beginning. from 1945 to 2017, nuclear nationscarried out more than 2,000 explosive testsin the atmosphere, undergroundand underwater, mostly in remote places. from 1945 to 2017,nuclear nations carried outmore than 2,000 explosivetests in the atmosphere,underground and underwater,mostly in remote places. larger circles indicate places with many tests. larger circles indicate places with many tests. some of the atmospheric testswere magnitudes more powerful thanthe bombs dropped on japan,sickening and displacing thousands. some of the atmospherictests were magnitudes morepowerful than the bombsdropped on japan, sickeningand displacing thousands. their descendants   who continue to endure physical,psychological, economicand cultural fallout   are livingproof that nuclear weaponsshould never be testedagain. if only today’s leaderswould take heed. their descendants   who continue to endure physical,psychological, economicand cultural fallout   are livingproof that nuclear weaponsshould never be testedagain. if only today’s leaderswould take heed. about an hour’s drive from the las vegas strip, deep craters pockmark the desert sand for miles in every direction. it’s here, amid the sunbaked flats, that the united states conducted 928 nuclear tests during the cold war above and below ground. the site is mostly quiet now, and has been since 1992, when washington halted america’s testing program. there are growing fears this could soon change. as tensions deepen in america’s relations with russia and china, satellite images reveal all three nations are actively expanding their nuclear testing facilities, cutting roads and digging new tunnels at long dormant proving grounds, including in nevada. none of these nations have conducted a full scale nuclear test since the 1990s. environmental and health concerns pushed them to move the practice underground in the middle of the last century, before abandoning testing altogether at the end of the cold war. each government insists it will not be the one to reverse the freeze. russia and china have said little about the recent flurry of construction at their testing sites, but the united states emphasizes it’s merely modernizing infrastructure for subcritical tests, or underground experiments that test components of a weapon but fall short of a nuclear chain reaction. the possibility of resuming underground nuclear testing has long loomed over the post cold war world. but only now do those fears seem worryingly close to being realized amid the growing animosity among the world powers, the construction at testing grounds and the development of a new generation of nuclear weapons. as this pressure mounts, some experts fear that the united states could act first. ernest moniz, a physicist who oversaw the nation’s nuclear complex as energy secretary under president barack obama, said there’s increasing interest from members of congress, the military and u.s. weapons laboratories to begin full scale explosive tests once again. “among the major nuclear powers, if there is a resumption of testing, it will be by the united states first,” mr. moniz said in a recent interview. this article is part of the opinion series at the brink,about the threat of nuclear weapons in an unstable world. read the opening piece here. this article is part ofthe opinion series at the brink,about the threat of nuclearweapons in an unstable world.read the opening piece here. the trump administration privately discussed conducting an underground test in hopes of coercing russia and china into arms control talks in 2020, and this week his former national security adviser offered a possible preview of mr. trump’s second term by publicly urging him to restart the nuclear testing program. the biden administration is adamant that technological advances have made it unnecessary to resume full scale testing, but in may it began the first in a series of subcritical tests to ensure america’s modern nuclear warheads would still work as designed. these experiments fall within the united states’ promise not to violate the testing taboo. a return to that earlier era would be certain to have costly consequences. the united states and the soviet union might have narrowly avoided mutual destruction, but there was a nuclear war: the blitz of testing left a wake of illness, displacement and destruction, often in remote locations where marginalized communities had no say over what happened on their own land. millions of people living in those places   semipalatinsk, kazakhstan; reggane, algeria; montebello, australia; the republic of kiribati   became unwitting casualties to an arms race run by a handful of rich, powerful nations. the united states detonated the first underwater nuclear weapon in the bikini atoll, marshall islands, in 1946. many nuclear experts believe that a single explosive test by any of the major nuclear powers could lead to a resumption of testing among them all. and while the world is unlikely to return to the cold war spectacle of billowing mushroom clouds from tests in the earth’s atmosphere, even a resumption of underground testing, which still can emit hazardous radiation, could expose new generations to environmental and health risks. it would open a volatile chapter in the new nuclear age as we’re still trying to understand the fallout from the first one. the republic of the marshall islands embassy is a modest, red brick building in a leafy washington, d.c., neighborhood. inside, a room on the first floor is packed with cardboard boxes and filing cabinets, each brimming with u.s. government documents detailing america’s nuclear testing program in the islands. it seems like a generous collation of history   until you open a box, pick up a page and see the endless blocks of text blacked out mostly for what the government claims are national security reasons. while the nevada test site hosted more nuclear detonations than any other place on the planet, the united states tested its largest bombs at the pacific proving grounds. the 67 nuclear weapons tested in the marshalls from 1946 to 1958 involved blasts hundreds of times more powerful than the american bomb that demolished hiroshima, japan. the potential health risks of testing were known from the start of the u.s. nuclear weapons program. five days after j. robert oppenheimer’s team covertly detonated the first atomic bomb in new mexico in july 1945, a u.s. government memorandum was drawn up describing “the dust outfall from the various portions of the cloud was potentially a very serious hazard” for people living downwind of the desert test site. and so when world war ii ended and the nation’s rush to fine tune its new weapon began, washington looked for a remote location to test the bomb. the search ultimately turned up two spots: one was a 680 square mile stretch of desert northwest of las vegas, in the region where dr. oppenheimer made the bomb. the other was much farther from home, in the middle of the pacific ocean. in february 1946, just six months after the united states dropped two atomic bombs on japan, a navy officer appeared in the marshall islands, a collection of more than 1,000 islands scattered across 750,000 square miles between hawaii and the philippines. the united states had taken control of the islands from japan during the war, and the military identified bikini atoll, a coral reef where people had lived for thousands of years, as an ideal testing ground. after a sunday afternoon church service, commodore ben wyatt, the american military governor of the islands, made a religious appeal to the bikini leader king juda and his people, asking if they were willing to sacrifice their island for the welfare of all men. in truth, they had no choice: preparations were already underway on the order of president harry truman. not long after, 167 bikinians were ushered aboard a relocation ship and sent over 100 miles away to an island with scant vegetation and a lagoon full of poisonous fish. as they drifted toward their new home, they could see rising flames as american soldiers burned the huts and outrigger boats they left behind. four months later, the u.s. military detonated two atomic bombs on bikini atoll. though they planned to return, the marshallese would never be able to safely live there again. unlike dr. oppenheimer’s first highly secretive atomic test, these explosions in the pacific served as public spectacles. the military brought along journalists, politicians and reportedly 18 tons of camera equipment and half of the world’s supply of motion picture film to record the events. the goal was to get attention   specifically, the soviet union’s attention   by spreading information and footage of these new wonder weapons. the tests did more than that. they kicked off a generation of nuclear proliferation across the globe. one by one, each country with the money and the drive to compete started its own nuclear weapons program. and when they did, they took their cue from the united states and tested the devices in far flung locations   and in many cases, their own territories. the soviet union tested its weapons in kazakhstan. the french in africa and polynesia. china in xinjiang. the british in australia. britain conducted nuclear weaponstests and experiments in australia from 1952to 1963. carcinogenic plutonium releasedduring the program has been absorbed intothe soil and food chain over decades. britain conductednuclear weapons tests and experiments in australiafrom 1952 to 1963.carcinogenic plutoniumreleased during the program has been absorbedinto the soil and foodchain over decades. karina lester, who lives in southern australia, worries about the effects on the land and her children. karina lester, who livesin southern australia, worriesabout the effects on the landand her children. the nuclear powers might have been the most technologically advanced countries in the world, but in hindsight, it’s clear they had little idea of what they were doing, and the health of the local populations was an afterthought, if a thought at all. as tests continued at a breakneck pace, american scientists grew increasingly worried about the dangers posed by the weapons’ fallout. chief among their fears was how much radioactive isotopes like strontium 90, formed in nuclear detonations, were being swept away on winds and falling back to earth through rain far beyond the remote blast areas onto farms and dairies where they could enter the food chain. strontium 90, which is structurally similar to calcium and attaches to bones and teeth after being ingested, is known to cause cancer. in the early 1950s, the atomic energy commission, the u.s. agency overseeing nuclear weapons at the time, stationed roughly 150 remote monitors at home and abroad to pick up signs of radiation. it also started a program to obtain “human samples” to test for strontium, according to a declassified transcript from a 1955 meeting. “if anybody knows how to do a good job of body snatching, they will really be serving their country,” said willard f. libby, an agency commissioner at the time. over the next several years, the u.s. government gathered over 1,500 body parts from cadavers, many of them stillborn babies, from several countries without knowledge of the subject’s next of kin. while the government pursued this science in the shadows, civilian studies were also underway. teams at st. louis university and the washington university school of dental medicine collected around 320,000 baby teeth, mainly from the st. louis area, that were donated by parents and guardians. they found that children born in 1963 had 50 times the level of strontium 90 in their teeth as children born in 1950. the initial results would later become the first major public study to raise the alarm on testing’s inherent risk to human health. even as this research was unfolding, the u.s. government pressed on with its testing in the marshall islands. on march 1, 1954, it conducted its largest test, code named castle bravo. american weapon designers drastically underestimated the size of the weapon’s explosion by nearly threefold, a devastating miscalculation. the device, which had 1,000 times the force of the bomb dropped on hiroshima, was set off before dawn, sending a blinding flash across the sky for 250 miles or more above the pacific. three small islands were instantly vaporized. a mushroom cloud shot about 25 miles into the stratosphere, suctioning up 10 million tons of pulverized coral debris. within weeks, marshallese living within 100 miles of the blast became weak and nauseated, developed weeping lesions and lost fistfuls of hair. the u.s. military evacuated more than 230 people to a u.s. navy base on the nearby kwajalein atoll. once they were there, men, women and children were interned at a camp and unwittingly enrolled in a secret u.s. government medical program called project 4.1. the goal was to find out how radiation from weapons affects humans, something scientists couldn’t fully register inside a laboratory through animal experimentation. “while it is true that these people do not live, i would say, the way westerners do   civilized people   it is nevertheless also true that these people are more like us than the mice,” said merril eisenbud, then the atomic energy commission’s chief of health and safety, in a declassified transcript. the aftermath was grim. the group suffered from widespread symptoms associated with acute radiation sickness. the rate of miscarriage and stillbirth among women exposed to the fallout was roughly twice that in unexposed women during the first four years after the castle bravo test. babies were born with transparent skin and without bones   what the marshallese midwives call jellyfish babies   and young children disproportionately developed thyroid abnormalities, including cancer, because of their size and metabolism. even with this kind of evidence in hand, science has reached only limited conclusions about how nuclear weapons testing affects individuals’ health. researchers know that the last century’s atmospheric testing sent radioactive fallout across the world, affecting countless people. in the united states alone, a study by the centers for disease control and prevention found that every person in the continental united states who has been alive since 1951 has had some exposure to radioactive fallout from nuclear testing. but startlingly little analysis or funding has gone into the long term study of the descendants of people exposed to nuclear weapons radiation. many descendants believe that their family’s exposure explains their own illnesses, but they are often left without the data to back up   or refute   their claims. it is difficult for medical experts to say definitively whether any individual’s cancer or illness is a direct result of radioactivity or something else, such as smoking or exposure to other harmful products throughout their lives. they can only say that radiation increases the risks. to many downwinders, as nuclear testing survivors are globally known, the dearth of information feels like further evidence of being sidelined by their respective governments. what the existing studies do show is that where there have been nuclear tests, there have also been an unusually high number of people with health problems. in northeast kazakhstan, where the last of 456 soviet tests took place more than three decades ago, children near the test site have been born without limbs or developed cancer in higher numbers than normal. studies of the exposed population show that elevated levels of serious illness persisted for two generations. across french polynesia   where france conducted nuclear tests over three decades   thyroid, blood and lung cancers have been prevalent. even today, descendants of nuclear test survivors fear passing illnesses onto future generations. france tested nuclear weaponsin french polynesia from 1966 to 1996.facing worldwide protests andan international trade boycott, it finallyended its testing program. france tested nuclearweapons in french polynesiafrom 1966 to 1996.facing worldwide protests and an internationaltrade boycott, it finally endedits testing program. hinamoeura morgant cross,born in tahiti, is the fourth generationin her family to develop cancer. hinamoeura morgant cross,born in tahiti, is thefourth generation in her familyto develop cancer. after castle bravo, the evidence was unmistakable: a single bomb blowing up on one side of the globe could touch everyone on the other. the fallout from the test did not harm only the marshallese. it also sickened fishermen aboard a nearby japanese fishing ship and stoked widespread fears of contamination in japanese fish stocks, retraumatizing japan less than a decade after american bombs killed an estimated 200,000 people in hiroshima and nagasaki. within a month, traces of fallout stretched from asia to europe. the massive u.s. experiment became a global news story, and calls for a global testing moratorium began almost immediately. at the time of the castle bravo test, all three nuclear nations   the united states, the soviet union and britain   were actively testing their weapons above ground. within 10 years, the three superpowers signed the 1963 limited test ban treaty, which officially confined them to testing underground. france continued atmospheric testing until 1974, and china continued until 1980. in underground tests, the nuclear explosions took place inside a canister placed within a vertical hole drilled more than 1,000 feet into the earth. miles of electrical cables connected to the canister relayed information on the blast to recording stations on the surface. while that process avoided widespread radioactive fallout, it could still contaminate groundwater and cause so called venting incidents, in which radioactive debris leaked from below ground into the air. as a result, in 1996, the world’s largest nuclear powers signed the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty, which banned all nuclear explosions above and below ground and established a global monitoring system to detect any tests that take place. india and pakistan, which did not sign the treaty, both held underground tests in 1998, but only north korea has conducted them since. for years, test survivors across the world have fought for compensation for what these experiments cost them: their homes, their health, their culture and their community. spurred by the inaction among world powers, many individuals from these communities are outspoken activists at the forefront of the global disarmament movement. they helped create the 2021 treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons, signed by 93 countries, which bans the possession, use and testing of nuclear weapons. despite this mobilization, there are only a handful of examples of nuclear weapon nations compensating downwinders for exploding the world’s biggest bombs near their neighborhoods and ancestral homelands. france has acknowledged its “debt” to polynesians over nuclear testing, and it created a commission in 2010 to evaluate nuclear testing victim compensation claims, but it has never apologized. neither has britain, nor has it established means of compensation. the marshallese have had slightly more success than others. while the united states has never issued an apology for displacing thousands of people and rendering parts of the nation uninhabitable, it paid the marshallese $150 million in the 1980s for what the u.s. government calls “a full and final” settlement of all claims related to the testing program. since then, it has allocated hundreds of millions of dollars for education, health care, the environment and infrastructure, according to the u.s. government. but it’s not enough. the marshallese government has claimed roughly $3 billion in uncompensated damages. as part of a 1986 compact, the united states gave control of the islands back to the marshallese, while the u.s. military kept control of a sprawling missile test site on kwajalein atoll. the compact also gave all marshallese permission to live and work in the united states indefinitely without visas. the deal has been a welcome development for the growing number of marshallese who have simply given up on building a life back home, where unemployment and poverty remain pervasive, and good schools and quality health care are scarce. small marshallese communities are now scattered across the united states, including in hawaii, california, washington and oregon. but the largest population of marshallese in the world outside the islands is in a rural area surrounding the northwest corner of arkansas, mainly in a small city called springdale. so many marshallese live in this agricultural industrial heartland   about 20,000 by one count   they call it the springdale atoll. it began in the 1980s when a marshallese man named john moody landed a job in one of the area’s sprawling poultry plants. soon more people started to arrive from the islands as news spread about the jobs, better doctors and schools. today, when you’re in springdale, it doesn’t take long to spot signs of the community: the blue pacific mart convenience store, the kmrw 98.9 marshallese radio station and dozens of homespun marshallese churches. off emma avenue, the city’s main street, in a single story, l shaped building, benetick kabua maddison runs the marshallese educational initiative. mr. maddison, 29, took over the nonprofit in 2022 to raise awareness about the islands’ culture and nuclear testing legacy. his team teaches community members how the tests drove so many people to leave the islands and how the testing program affected their health. the populations of entire islandswere permanently displaced whenamerica decided to test its weaponson the marshall islands, which itcontrolled after world war ii. the testsleft some of the islands, includingbikini atoll, uninhabitable. the populations of entireislands were permanently displaced when americadecided to test its weapons onthe marshall islands, which itcontrolled after world war ii.the tests left some ofthe islands, including bikiniatoll, uninhabitable. benetick kabua maddison’sfamily was among them. he nowlives in arkansas. benetick kabua maddison’sfamily was among them.he now lives in arkansas. diabetes rates among the marshallese globally are now 400 percent as high as for the general u.s. population. when covid 19 came to springdale in 2020, it hit the marshallese community   like other groups across the states with high rates of noncommunicable diseases   disproportionately hard. estimated to represent about 2 percent of the local population in northwest arkansas, the marshallese accounted for 38 percent of the deaths there during the pandemic’s first four months. it was a stark reminder of nuclear testing’s complex and far reaching legacy. “the marshallese are living proof that nuclear weapons must never be used or tested again,” mr. maddison said. few places on earth can still convey the raw power of nuclear weapons like the nevada test site. from a wooden observation platform, you can look out over a crater 320 feet deep and a quarter mile wide created by a 104 kiloton device detonated underground in july 1962. it’s just one of the many man made pits dotting the 1,375 square mile proving grounds that are roughly the size of rhode island. today a sprawling tunnel network under the site, originally excavated in the 1960s for an underground nuclear test, is being transformed into a subterranean research laboratory to host the subcritical nuclear experiments that started again in may. american scientists hope the roughly $2.5 billion investment in new diagnostic, monitoring and computing equipment will help them gain further insights into exactly what happens inside a thermonuclear explosion, beyond what was learned from the live fire tests that ended in the 1990s. knowing the increased activity will raise eyebrows, the biden administration has publicly floated a plan to russia and china to install radiation detection equipment near one another’s subcritical experiments to ensure an atomic chain reaction does not occur. a senior administration official says the united states is even considering inviting international observers or livestreaming the experiments to head off any skepticism of their intentions. mistrust is already running deep. while all nuclear nations that signed the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty have appeared to observe it in practice, both china and the united states failed to ratify the treaty because of internal political challenges   and the desire to keep their options for future testing open without running afoul of international law. in november, russia rescinded its ratification, citing the united states’ failure to ratify the pact. president vladimir putin intimated that if washington tested again, moscow would follow with one of its own. he took another step in that direction on june 7, saying that russia could test a nuclear weapon but that there was no need at the present time. for now in nevada, roughly 1,000 feet above the underground lab, remnants from the last nuclear era   cables, containers and equipment   sit idle in a fenced off area atop the desert flats. they are still stored on site and on standby, upon government mandate, to be ready for use should a president ever issue the order for explosive testing to begin once again. the world can’t afford to restart this dangerous cycle. we are still wrestling with the damage wrought by testing nuclear weapons in our past. it shouldn’t be a part of our future. w.j. hennigan writes about national security issues for opinion from washington, d.c. he has reported from more than two dozen countries, covering war, the arms trade and the lives of u.s. service members. additional reporting by spencer cohen. photographs by ike edeani. top grid of testing survivors and descendants: tamatoa tepuhiarii, aigerim yelgeldy, adiya akhmer, raygon jacklick, benetick kabua maddison, karina lester, hinamoeura morgant cross, kairo langrus, aigerim seitenova, ereti tekabaia, matthew john and mere tuilau. tamatoa tepuhiarii, adiya akhmer, raygon jacklick, benetick kabua maddison, hinamoeura morgant cross, aigerim yelgeldy, aigerim seitenova, matthew john, kairo langrus, karina lester, ereti tekabaia and mere tuilau video produced by amanda su, elliot debruyn and jonah m. kessel. archival videos: établissement de communication et de production audiovisuelle de la défense, grinberg, paramount, pathe newsreels, the associated press, getty images. graphics by gus wezerek. testing locations for the map from reuters and the stockholm international peace research institute. this times opinion series is funded through philanthropic support from the carnegie corporation of new york, outrider foundation and the prospect hill foundation. funders have no control over the selection or focus of articles or the editing process and do not review articles before publication. the times retains full editorial control. video produced by amanda su, elliot debruyn and jonah m. kessel. graphics by gus wezerek. additional reporting by spencer cohen.

by terry gross , dave davies the u.s. used atomic weapons against japan 78 years ago. we listen back to archival interviews with psychiatrist robert jay lifton and journalists lesley m.m. blume and evan thomas about the decision. dave davies, host: this is fresh air. i'm dave davies. this week, as we mark the 78th anniversary of the destruction of the japanese cities of hiroshima and nagasaki, american audiences seeing the film "oppenheimer" are revisiting the fateful decisions made by u.s. military and political leaders to use atomic weapons on a civilian population. estimates of those killed in the two cities range from 150,000 to roughly 225,000. though nine countries now have nuclear weapons, the attacks on hiroshima and nagasaki remain their only use in armed conflict. today we're going to listen back to three fresh air interviews which explore whether the use of atomic weapons against japan was justified and whether the american public was misled about their effects. we begin with robert jay lifton, a psychiatrist who has studied the psychological causes and effects of war and political violence. terry gross spoke to him in 1995 when he published the book "hiroshima in america." he said that americans had been fed a myth about the decision to use atomic weapons. (soundbite of archived npr broadcast) robert jay lifton: the myth is   which is the official american narrative of hiroshima   that we dropped the bomb reluctantly after great reflection only in order to save lives and end the war, and that therefore it was a good and necessary thing and that we should not in any way trouble ourselves over it. terry gross: you trace the beginning of the official version of the story of the atom bomb and why we dropped it on hiroshima to a press release after the bomb was dropped. can you read an excerpt of that press release for us which you reprint in your book, "hiroshima in america"? lifton: probably the most important part of the press release is the first sentence, which reads, 16 hours ago, an american airplane dropped one bomb on hiroshima, an important japanese army base. and then the   it goes on to say, that bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of tnt. it goes on to say, the japanese began the war from the air at pearl harbor. they have been repaid manyfold, and the end is not yet. only in the third paragraph does it say, it is an atomic bomb. it is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. the force from which the sun draws its powers has been loosed against those who brought war to the far east. gross: what is so significant about the first sentence that you read about hiroshima being an important military base? lifton: well, what's significant about that first sentence is that it's a partial truth, and that is   that really matters. because it's true   there was a japanese military base in hiroshima. it was a staging area for southeast asia and an important one. but there was also a city of 300,000 people, and the bomb was aimed at the center of the city. it was targeted on civilians, and it was meant to destroy the city. but the press release presented it as a strictly military action, and it blamed, more or less, the japanese for this particular event. now, again, the japanese bear some blame because they did initiate the war, but it's a way of exonerating america and completely militarized what was really an attack on a whole city. gross: do you have information that leads you to believe that we could have had a peace with japan, that japan would have surrendered had it not been for the atom bombs? lifton: there's a lot of evidence of a very good possibility that japan would have surrendered if an effort at negotiation was initiated by us or responded to by us with the condition that the emperor be maintained. that isn't just an impression that i have, or that such leading historians as barton bernstein and martin sherwin and gar alperovitz have   many others as well. almost any historian who studies these materials comes to that sense of it being at least a very good possibility. and it was stated so among truman's advisers. for instance, joseph grew, who was acting secretary of state during part of that period and who knew japan well, strongly advocated that we look into precisely that kind of negotiation because he thought that maintaining the emperor was the only condition that the japanese were holding to. and by not doing that, we strengthened the hand of the more fanatical japanese who didn't want to surrender under any conditions. and that position won over john mccloy, who was one of stimson's closest advisers and also presented it to president truman. so at the very top of truman's advisory group, there was that advocacy and that position. ironically, one of the things that held them back was waiting for the atomic bomb to be finished and to be ready. gross: why do you think a second weapon was used at nagasaki? lifton: well, a second weapon was really part of the first order. there was   the nagasaki bomb or the second city, whichever was decided upon, was in that first order, which was to use available atomic bombs, or atomic bombs as they became available. so one could have used an endless number of bombs according to that order. and that's the way a military order can be given to have that kind of momentum still in the midst of a bloody war. however, there could have been an order to stop, to interfere and prevent the use of that second bomb. it was not given. and sadly, the second bomb was completed and dropped so quickly that most observers now feel that the japanese hardly had sufficient time to consider a surrender in between the use of those weapons. there was some impulse to use that second bomb because there was also curiosity about what it could do. it was a different kind of bomb from the uranium bomb used on hiroshima. it was a plutonium bomb of a different kind and of one that was considered to be highly important for the military future. and that could well have been a factor in carrying out the use of that second bomb or not interrupting that momentum of its use. gross: president truman is considered the buck stops here president, the president who was very decisive, who felt that the use of the bombs in japan were justified and necessary to end world war ii and save american lives. he, i think, has said that he never lost any sleep over the decision. lifton: he   president truman made many such statements that he never lost any sleep, that he made a clear cut decision. but he made those statements in a very agitated way. he spent 25 years of the remainder of his life after having made that decision constantly defending it. and he said very different things. he sometimes said it was just like an artillery weapon   when you have it, you use it. at other times, he said it was an awesome weapon that should never be used because it kills women and children indiscriminately. he had those dual feelings about the weapon. but you have to weigh all of these elements as you come to some kind of psychological profile of this man who was inherently decent and struggling to carry through his responsibility as a wartime president as well as he could. he was afraid not to make a decision to use the weapon. it was wartime. it was a bloody war. americans were enraged at the japanese. would they have excused him if he didn't use that weapon? as byrnes said, his secretary of state, he might be crucified by the american people and the victim of an overwhelming congressional investigation if the weapon hadn't been used   an investigation of what had happened to that $2 billion used on that project, a really unprecedented sum at that time. so ironically, one can use a weapon like that because one is afraid not to use it. gross: getting back to what you describe as the myth that we've been told and that we've perpetrated about our use of the bombs in hiroshima and nagasaki   so the myth says that we reluctantly, after great reflection, dropped the bombs. you also say that truman's style, the buck stops here style, was a style that really discouraged great reflection. lifton: that's right. it's impossible to undergo great reflection when you're impelled toward quick and immediate decision, often before all of the elements of the problem are clear. that makes it very hard for even one's advisers to lay out all of the considerations that one should look at in making such a decision. there wasn't a lot of reflection about using the weapon. there was intermittent thought and some discussion of the direction of negotiation about the emperor. but there was an obsession very early, even before the bomb appeared, before it was completed, with that weapon. and everybody was waiting for the weapon, so much so that some historians have made, i think, a convincing argument that the bomb probably delayed the end of the war and cost american and japanese lives rather than having saved them, because there was some inclination toward negotiating with the japanese. and truman said that might be a good idea. but then when it was referred to his advisers, stimson would say, well, the timing isn't right. and the timing isn't right meant that one had to wait for the bomb to appear before any such negotiation. and in that way, there were delays about ending the war that were based on waiting for the bomb and the existence of the bomb. it really shows the danger of creating an object like this and how much it can affect those who create it and contemplate its use. davies: robert jay lifton speaking with terry gross in 1995 about his book "hiroshima in america." lifton is now 97, and he has a new book coming out in september titled "surviving our catastrophes: resilience and renewal from hiroshima to the covid 19 pandemic." coming up, writer lesley blume on how americans were misled about the real effects of the atomic bombs dropped on japan. this is fresh air. (soundbite of avishai cohen song, "gbede temin") davies: this is fresh air. next, what americans didn't know about the bombs dropped on hiroshima and nagasaki. the deadly effects of radiation poisoning are widely recognized. but journalist lesley blume says that in the year following the atomic attacks, americans knew little about conditions in the two japanese cities, which, like the rest of japan, were under u.s. occupation and military censorship. i spoke to blume in 2020 about her book "fallout: the hiroshima cover up and the reporter who revealed it to the world." so a second bomb was dropped on nagasaki. japan surrendered. and after years of war, americans were, of course, deliriously happy that it was over. what did they know about the destruction and death that the weapon had visited on hiroshima? lesley blume: well, i mean, at first, it appeared that the u.s. government was being almost ecstatically forthright about the new weapon. and when, you know, president truman announces the bombing, he says, look; this is the biggest bomb that's ever been used in the history of warfare. and the japanese should surrender or they can expect a reign of fire and ruin from the sky unlike, you know, anybody's ever seen before. we've unleashed the power of the sun. i mean, it was almost biblical language. so they knew   everybody who heard the announcement knew that they were dealing with something totally unprecedented, not just in the war but in the history of human warfare. what was not stated was, you know, the fact that this bomb had radiological qualities and that even blast survivors on the ground would be   you know, would die in an agonizing way for the days and the weeks and the months and years that followed. davies: right. and so in the weeks and months that followed, what was being said about radiation and its effects? i mean, american generals had testified before congress on this. how did they characterize the risk? blume: well, very   yeah. in the immediate weeks, you know, very little   i mean, a lot of it was really painted in, you know, landscape devastation. you know, photographs   landscape photographs were released to newspapers showing, you know, the decimation of hiroshima and nagasaki. and i mean, they were rubble pictures. and also, you know, obviously, people are seeing the mushroom cloud photos taken from the bombers themselves or from recon missions. and   but in terms of the radiation, you know, even in the announcement, truman's announcement of the bomb, he's painting the bombs in conventional terms. he says, you know, these bombs are the equivalent to 20,000 tons of tnt. and so americans, you know, they don't understand   they know that it's a mega weapon, but they don't understand the full nature of the weapons yet. you know, the radiological effects are not in any way highlighted to the american public. and in the meantime, you know, the u.s. military is scrambling to find out how, you know, the radiation of the bombs is affecting the physical landscape, how it's affecting human beings   because they're about to send tens of thousands occupation troops into japan. so they   you know, they're sending their own recon missions in late august of 1945 onto the ground, to hiroshima and nagasaki, to see if they can, in good conscience, clear the atomic cities for occupation. and they do declare, you know, privately, you know, amongst themselves that the radiation has dwindled to nothing. because of the height at which the bomb had been detonated, they said that much of it had been reabsorbed back into the atmosphere. but they would also, you know, start to study the blast survivors who had taken in radiation to their bodies, you know, when the blast went off and look at how it affected them. the fact is that the people who created the bombs didn't have a full understanding of what the bombs were going to wreak on landscape and humans and were going to be studying that for years while they were on the ground occupying japan. davies: you mentioned lieutenant general leslie groves. i think he was actually involved in the manhattan project, right? blume: rather involved, yes, the spearheader of said project. he was charged with building the bomb for wartime use and managed to do it in three years, which is quite miraculous. and in his mind   i mean, he   leslie groves, never had any moral qualms whatsoever about the decimation or, you know, the radiation agonies. afterwards, he had been told, get this bomb ready for wartime use. and he did that. and, you know, that was, in, you know, his eyes, a huge triumph. davies: right. and he was   i think he was the one who said that you could live there forever of hiroshima and nagasaki   right?   no problem. blume: yeah. so, well, you know, again, as news started to filter over from japanese reports about what it was like on hiroshima and nagasaki and the aftermath, wire reports started picking up, you know, really disturbing information about, you know, the totality of the decimation and, you know, this sinister, what they called, you know, a disease x that was ravaging blast survivors. you know, so this news was starting to trickle over early in august of 1945 to americans. and so the u.s. realized that not only were they going to have to really try to study very quickly how radioactive the atomic cities might have been, you know, as they were bringing in their own occupation troops, but they realized that they had a potential pr disaster on their hands, you know, because the u.s. had just won this horribly hard earned military victory and were on the moral high ground they felt in defeating the axis powers. and, you know, they had avenged pearl harbor. they had avenged japanese atrocities throughout the pacific theater in asia. but then, you know, reports that they had decimated, you know, a largely civilian population in this excruciating way with an experimental weapon   you know, it was concerning because it might have deprived the u.s. government of their moral high ground. davies: you know, there were reports from japan about the level of destruction and also about lasting effects from radiation poisoning. how did u.s.   the u.s. military respond to these reports? blume: well, they went they went on a pr   they created a pr campaign to really combat the notion that, you know the u.s. had decimated these populations with a really destructive radiological weapon. and, you know, they dispatched leslie groves and robert oppenheimer themselves went to the to the trinity site of testing to   and brought a junket of reporters so they could, you know, show off the area. and they said, you know, that there was no residual radiation whatsoever and that, therefore, any news that was filtering over from japan were, quote, "tokyo tales." so right away, they went into overdrive to contain that narrative. davies: so i understand, you're saying they took them to a site in the united states where a weapon had been tested and showed them that there was no residual radiation? blume: yes, they did. they went to the trinity site, which is in new mexico, where the first atomic bomb had been tested   successfully tested   on july 16 of 1945. and, you know, meanwhile, you know, this junket of, you know, two dozen reporters gets there, and around the detonation site, you know, the sand and the desert has been turned to green glass because of the impact of the bomb. and they're all wearing booties, but   you know, to cover their shoes from possible radiological particles. but, you know, leslie groves is there to give a junket saying that, you know, hey; everything's ok here, and, you know, you could live here forever. you could live in hiroshima and nagasaki forever, too. there's nothing to see here, folks. davies: so the u.s. military was saying these reports of terrible suffering and lingering radiation effects were japanese propaganda. this also happened in the context of, you know, the moral judgments that might   people might make about such a weapon. and the military was putting it in the context of the way the war had begun and the way the japanese had behaved. how did all that set the context for the american response? blume: look. americans were still enraged by pearl harbor, and they, you know, had had a horrific time fighting in the pacific theater. and, you know, casualties were enormous. you know, japanese tenacity in battles was unlike anything americans had encountered before. you know, americans were horrified by japanese atrocities in china and throughout asia. and the feeling of righteousness, of righteous rage and vengeance in dropping the bombs was near total. and, you know, harry truman himself articulated that in his speech when he announced the bombing. he said the japanese have now been repaid many fold. and just, you know, one quick stat really illustrates the mindset of the americans towards the bombings at that time. in august of 1945, a poll was taken, and nearly a quarter of the americans surveyed said that they wished that they could have dropped many more atomic bombs on japan before the country had surrendered. so that's a pretty strong indication of how high the support was. davies: lesley blume's book is "fallout: the hiroshima cover up and the reporter who revealed it to the world." we'll hear more of our interview after a short break. and we'll hear from evan thomas, whose new book explores the actions of key american and japanese leaders in the closing months of world war ii. i'm dave davies, and this is fresh air. (soundbite of music) davies: this is fresh air. i'm dave davies. as we observe the 78th anniversary of the destruction of hiroshima and nagasaki, we're listening to three interviews about the use of atomic weapons on the cities. when we left off, we were listening to my 2020 interview with writer lesley blume. her book "fallout" tells the story of john hersey, the young american reporter who brought the first widely read account of the destruction and suffering in hiroshima and nagasaki to the american public a year after the atom bombs were dropped. blume writes that japan was under military occupation and censorship, so firsthand accounts from the bombed cities were hard to come by. there were clearly reporters in the pacific theater who wanted to get the story about the effects of atomic weapons. and there was some reporting. on the whole, did it capture and convey what was happening to the american people? blume: yeah. i mean, many of the reporters who were coming in with the occupied forces, for them, getting in on the ground to hiroshima and nagasaki was a huge scoop. and a few of them did make it in there. and a few of them were able to get out really alarming initial reports that were, you know, heavy on facts about devastation and the fact that there was some kind of a terrible affliction still killing off blast survivors, but light on details 'cause nobody knew what on earth, you know, was in reality happening in the aftermath of the bombings. however, they didn't   you know, these reports, some of them appeared only in truncated form in american press. and after they came out, general macarthur's occupation forces were able to quickly organize to suppress additional such reporting. davies: right, so people   so reporters couldn't get in. and meanwhile, you had the american government saying, you know, you're hearing a lot of japanese propaganda that you should be skeptical of. blume: yeah, absolutely. i mean, the american officials were saying for the most part, you know, this is just   you know, these are   the defeated japanese is trying to create international sympathy to create better terms for themselves in the occupation. ignore them. davies: so there was a lot that people didn't know about what had happened in hiroshima and nagasaki. and it was john hersey that ultimately kind of changed that. so john hersey manages to get to hiroshima. and he, of course, had covered the war in europe and had seen horrific damage from allied bombing of german cities. what did hiroshima look like then and how did it compare to hershey's expectations? blume: i mean, hersey had seen everything from that point, from combat to concentration camps. but he   and let's not forget, he came in through tokyo, which had been decimated. but he later said that nothing prepared him for what he saw in hiroshima. i mean, the devastation was just so total. and even though he and, you know, people around the world had seen devastated cities for years at that point, the thing that terrified him the most was that this had been done by one single 10,000 pound primitive bomb. one weapon had created all of this destruction and misery. and, you know, even though it was nearly a year later, i mean, it was still just a sort of smoldering wreck. you know, many people had returned to hiroshima to try to start rebuilding their lives on the ruins. but, i mean, that really amounted to living in these rusted shanties on top of, again, what is essentially a graveyard. davies: right. now, he had to find people who had experienced the explosion, survived it and were willing to talk about it. and he didn't have a lot of time. how did he do it? blume: well, he was lucky. he   but he was also strategic. he had read an article before he got in about some german priests who had been in hiroshima and survived and had given a survival testimony to   that had run in time magazine. and so he knew that they had returned to hiroshima, so he sought them out. and fortunately, a couple of them spoke english. and hersey won over their trust. they gave him their testimonies about what it had been like for them on august 6, 1945. and then not only did they agree to be his translator   because they spoke japanese, hersey did not   they also began to make introductions for him within the blast survivor community. davies: well, lesley blume, thank you so much for speaking with us. blume: it was my pleasure. thank you for having me on. davies: lesley blume's book is "fallout: the hiroshima cover up and the reporter who revealed it to the world." coming up, writer evan thomas on the actions of key u.s. and japanese leaders in the closing months of world war ii. this is fresh air. (soundbite of aaron parks' "small planet") davies: this is fresh air. as we mark the anniversary of the destruction of hiroshima and nagasaki, we're listening to interviews about the american decision to use the only atomic weapons ever employed in armed conflict. veteran journalist evan thomas' book, "the road to surrender," profiles three leaders   two american and one japanese   involved in critical decisions leading up to the end of world war ii. in the summer of 1945, germany had surrendered to the allies while japan, largely defeated, was defiant and still capable of inflicting horrific casualties on any force that might try and invade the japanese mainland. so in the summer of 1945, the efforts to develop an atomic bomb are coming to fruition. the secretary of war, stimson, knew about this. and there was discussion of, if it was to be used, what kind of target would it be? should you drop it in the ocean? should you drop it in an uninhabited area, you know, to demonstrate its power? give us a sense of   there was a targeting committee   what its deliberations were like. evan thomas: there was a targeting committee of military people, largely, and some scientists. and their big issue was to make sure that they hit the target at all. it would be nice if we could hit a port or some factories or a military base. but if you're dropping a bomb from 30,000 feet, it just wasn't that accurate. and the targeting committee decided that the best thing to do was to pick a target smack in the middle of a city. in hiroshima, it was a bridge in the middle of hiroshima. and, yes, hiroshima was a military city in the sense that it had military forces there. it had ports on the outside. there was a military base there. it was still basically a civilian city. it was full of civilians. and so the target committee decided not to take the chance of going after a military target but to drop the bomb right in the middle of the city, where they were sure they would strike it and it would set off a heck of a big bang. they did not have many regrets about that. there's no evidence of them saying, oh, my god, we're going to kill a lot of civilians. there were some civilians who worried about it. but the military, the people on the target committee   they wanted to drop that bomb, and they wanted to make sure it hit its target. davies: there was discussion of trying to convince the japanese to surrender. and one of the things was, what would happen with the emperor hirohito? the presence of the emperor presented a special problem. what was it? what was his status? thomas: well, he was divine in japanese shinto religion. he was the man in charge. but he wasn't really. his legitimacy depended on the military. they propped him up. the idea was that the emperor should be above politics, not dragged into politics. as a practical matter, it made him a tool of the military, and the japanese government was just determined to preserve the emperor. their existence in the government depended on there being an emperor   if not this emperor, at least some other emperor. but they wanted to keep the imperial system. they were completely wedded to this idea that there had to be an emperor. after all, he was divine. davies: so let's look at what's happening in japan here. there were a lot of military leaders who were determined to fight to the end. but one person that you focus on was the foreign minister, shigenori togo, who had a different take on this. he wanted peace. tell us about him. thomas: togo was the one civilian on the supreme war council. the rest were the war minister, army, navy, chiefs of staff, the prime minister. they're all in uniform. togo is the one civilian, and he's the only one who wants to surrender, who wants to save his country by surrendering. all the others want to fight to the bitter end. they believe that for two reasons. one is there is something almost mystical and grand about national suicide. and they talk this way. the hundred million, they say, will die for the emperor. the other piece, though, is they believed that if they could make the americans bleed enough, suffer enough, take enough casualties, then the americans would give them terms that they wanted. they knew they were defeated. they knew their fleet was sunk and their army was was about to be defeated. but they hoped that if they could make us bleed, we would give them the terms they wanted, which were no occupation, no american troops on japan, no war crimes trials because they knew that as leaders of japan, they were going to be tried for war crimes. so they didn't want that. and lastly, they wanted to keep their emperor. davies: so shigenori togo, the foreign minister   he tries to get the soviet   reach out to the soviet union to have them negotiate, approach the allies on behalf of japan. that kind of doesn't really go anywhere. but then he also tries to work the others on the supreme council, this body that's running the country at the time, to sort of massage them and get them to see reality. and let's end this thing. and then you write that in june, six weeks before the atomic bombs were dropped, he met with the emperor and that the emperor said, please terminate the war as quickly as possible. and when i read that, i thought, well, gosh, why didn't that settle the question if the emperor had the authority? thomas: the emperor has the authority in theory, but in practice, he doesn't have that authority. he's too dependent on the military himself. for one thing, the emperor hirohito is somewhat of a meek seeming figure. he has a reedy voice. he likes marine biology. he's not a warrior type at all. and he exists at the sufferance of the military. in june, the emperor hears that the military is thinking of removing him from tokyo and taking him up to their mountain redoubt and, in effect, making him their prisoner. he refuses. he shows some backbone. for once, he stands up to them. but he knows that he's very much a tool of the military. he doesn't like to admit it, but that is the practical reality. davies: in july in the united states, the atom bomb is successfully tested. so it's clear that the united states is going to have an operable weapon to drop on japan. and the idea emerged among stimson and the secretary of war and others of rather than dropping the bomb to give the japanese a warning, saying, we have this terrible weapon, and we will not drop it if you will surrender. and perhaps even we'll let you keep your emperor, at least in some kind of ceremonial role. how does harry truman regard this idea? thomas: truman and his new secretary of state, jimmy byrnes, do not want to give the japanese an out. byrnes and truman regard the japanese as being duplicitous. and if you give them an inch, they'll take a mile. and they are afraid that if you say to the japanese, you can keep their emperor, that will just be an excuse for them to fight on. in that judgment, the president actually has some backing from the military community that also worries about that. they have fresh memories of pearl harbor, when the japanese continued to negotiate even as they were getting ready to strike pearl harbor militarily. so they just don't trust the japanese. and the proof of that, i think, is in the debates in the supreme war council. after we had dropped two atom bombs on japan, the militarists still wanted to fight on. the most revealing moment is at a meeting of the supreme war council on august 9. their bomb has dropped on hiroshima. they're talking about what to do. word comes that another hiroshima style bomb has just taken out nagasaki. and the supreme war council, the six of them, are now divided. they're stalemated. and it takes   in japan, it takes a consensus to make a decision. they're stalemated on whether to surrender. that's after we had dropped two atom bombs. davies: evan thomas' book is "the road to surrender: three men and the countdown to end world war ii." you'll hear more of our conversation after a break. this is fresh air. (soundbite of explosions in the sky's "remember me as a time of day") davies: this is fresh air, and we're listening to the interview i recorded earlier this year with evan thomas, whose new book, "the road to surrender," is about three leaders   two american and one japanese   in the closing months of world war ii. just after the u.s. successfully tested an atomic bomb in july 1945, allied leaders, including winston churchill, joseph stalin and harry truman, met in a summit known as the potsdam conference. before the bomb is dropped, there is there is a meeting at potsdam, which is a suburb of berlin, right? it's in germany   defeated germany. and out of that comes a lot of things, including a message to japan. what was the message from the allied leaders then? thomas: the message was called the potsdam declaration. and it basically said, you have to surrender, or we'll destroy you, period. it didn't have a lot of particulars in it. and the japanese got that message and rejected it summarily. they   there's a word for it, they   in japanese. it means to treat with silent contempt. davies: right. so the united states decides to proceed with dropping the first weapon. you note that the commander, general carl spaatz, insisted on a written order for this. he wasn't going to do this on some verbal command. and it's a long flight from the marianas where this b 29 left, and it dropped the bomb over hiroshima. it was devastating, of course. and, you know, this is a time   you know, we kind of   we're used to instant communication in our age. but in fact, it took a long   some time for the perception of this disaster, this kind of carnage, to make its way around the world and even in japan. it's interesting where truman hears news that the bomb had been dropped. tell us that story. thomas: truman is on a ship coming back from the potsdam conference when he first learns that the bomb has been dropped on hiroshima. and he says, this is the greatest thing in history. he's excited about it. he   at least in the mess hall with the sailors, he is enthusiastic. and he gives a pretty strong speech warning the japanese that another one is coming their way if they don't surrender. now, what is truman really thinking? that is a harder question. and i think the most interesting evidence of it   this is indirect. but on the day that truman gives the order to drop the atom bomb, july 25, 1945, that evening he writes in his diary, i have ordered the secretary of war, henry stimson, and we are in agreement that the target should be purely military, not civilian   that we should kill soldiers and sailors, not women and children. well, what is he thinking? because as we've mentioned earlier, the aim point of the bomb was a bridge in the middle of hiroshima. of course it was going to kill women and children. it did. as it happened, it killed about 10, maybe 20,000 soldiers, but 50 or 60,000 civilians   right away, instantly, including most of them women and children, because the men were off at war. so what was truman thinking? well, he may have been badly briefed. that's possible. we don't really have a good record of that. but more likely, he and stimson had decided that day to remove another city, kyoto, from the target list, that had been on the target list. and i think that they were feeling that they had done the right thing by sparing the ancient cultural capital of japan, therefore saving a beautiful and magnificent city. and they were, i think, in a way congratulating themselves on that. and so they chose to view hiroshima as a military target, even though it wasn't. this is human denial. it's kind of incredible to think that the president and the secretary of war didn't really know what they were doing. but i think under the pressure of this kind of thing, maybe we shouldn't be so surprised that the information is murky, that human denial kicks in. still, it's hard to explain. davies: all right. so when the bomb is dropped on hiroshima and this incredible destruction   the japanese military leaders are some distance away in tokyo. do they understand what's happened? thomas: the japanese military leaders have been working on building an atom bomb for japan for years, and they failed at it. so they are aware that it is possible to build an atom bomb. they know that. they don't want to believe that the americans have done it. but the evidence is considerable that they have. they stall. they hem. they haw. they send a plane down of scientists to look at it. it takes a day or two for the plane to get there and the scientists to get back. they are also in denial. they don't want to believe what's happening. and when they finally do accede that, well, it's an atom bomb, they think, well, they must only have one atom bomb because they must not have enough uranium material to build more than one. and then, of course, there's a second, and that   there goes that argument. and then they are just in a kind of a suicidal fugue state. some of them realize, we've got to surrender. others want to fight on. davies: and what you see is, in effect   i mean, some of the military commanders attempt to stage a coup. shigenori togo, the foreign minister, goes to see the emperor hirohito, and he actually declares that we have to end this, right? he issues a sacred decision   a seidan. am i pronouncing that correctly? thomas: yes. davies: yeah. thomas: there is this little tiny peace party under togo that is working the emperor, working the palace. and the emperor, by august 9, is worried about a couple of things. he doesn't really trust his own military. he's afraid maybe they're going to kidnap him, take him up into the mountains. but he's also worried that a third atom bomb may come for him, may come for tokyo. he's not wrong to be worried about this. his own palace was largely burned at the end of may by american firebombs. he's basically living in a shelter underneath his library. and finally, he declares a seidan, a sacred decision, that   and he says   he gathers together his military advisers in his shelter. and he says, i agree with togo, with foreign minister togo. we have to surrender. now, it's not the end of the story because although they accept the american demand for a surrender, the japanese insist that the emperor must remain and be sovereign. well, back in washington, they're not going to buy that. truman and stimson and byrnes   they're not going to allow the emperor to remain sovereign. they want the emperor not to be reporting to god but to douglas macarthur, to the supreme allied commander who is going to take over when the americans arrive. so the americans reject that term, and we're back at square one. the military wants to keep on fighting, and the stalemate goes on for another four or five days. and it's not clear that the japanese are ever going to surrender. and truman, president truman, starts thinking about using a third bomb, a third nuclear bomb, a third atomic bomb. he tells the british government that sadly, he's preparing to drop a third atom bomb on tokyo. davies: so in the end, the atomic bombs did convince the japanese, with some difficulty, to surrender. but for a long time, you know, the details of what it was like in hiroshima and nagasaki were not really known to the american public. and about a year later, there was a full issue of the new yorker dedicated to it, written by john hersey, who had spent an awful lot of time in hiroshima gathering information. and it was shocking. it was widely quoted. it was read in full on radio broadcasts. and questions were raised about the use of such a horrific weapon. were we war criminals for having done this? and henry stimson, the war secretary at the time, the man who had a lot of moral qualms himself, was engaged to write a response, which he did, saying dropping the bomb was the right thing to do. it saved lives. what was his case? thomas: he argued that it was the least abhorrent alternative. it was abhorrent, but the alternative was an invasion of japan that would have cost the lives of millions of americans. now, personally, he felt guilty that we didn't try hard enough to get the japanese to surrender beforehand by letting them keep their emperor. i ask in the book, should he have felt guilty? and my answer is no because the japanese   i think the record is pretty clear now. the japanese just were not going to surrender even if we offered them to keep their emperor. the other piece of this puzzle that is important here to recognize   it's not just americans that we saved by not invading japan. it's japanese because if we hadn't invaded japan, we would have blockaded japan, and we would have starved them. they were already down to 1,500 calories a day per person, roughly. and they, by, say, the winter of '45, '46, would have suffered a famine. we had figured out how to cut their rail lines into the plain of tokyo. we were going to be able to squeeze off their rice. their rice crop was already the worst they'd had in years. and they were going to start dying, and they were going to have civil war. who knows what would have happened not just in japan but also in asia? the japanese   the brutal japanese occupation of china and southeast asia was killing people at the rate of roughly 250,000 a month, and that was just going to go on and on. so by ending the war in august, we not only saved japanese lives. we've saved a great number of asian lives. there's a lot of research on this that shows that the death tolls, had we not bombed hiroshima and nagasaki, would have been many multiples of the death tolls in hiroshima and nagasaki. it's a brutal equation. you know, it's just   the point here is that wars are easy to get into, but they are hard to get out of. and there was no way out. davies: well, evan thomas, thanks so much for speaking with us. thomas: thanks, dave. davies: evan thomas' book is "the road to surrender: three men and the countdown to end world war ii." (soundbite of ludwig goransson's "can you hear the music") davies: on monday's show, terry speaks with christopher nolan, director of the new film "oppenheimer," about robert oppenheimer, the man known as the father of the atom bomb. nolan also directed the "batman" trilogy, "dunkirk," "inception" and "insomnia." i hope you can join us. (soundbite of ludwig goransson's "can you hear the music") davies: fresh air's executive producer is danny miller. our senior producer today is roberta shorrock. our technical director and engineer is audrey bentham, with additional engineering support by joyce lieberman and julian herzfeld. for terry gross and tonya mosley, i'm dave davies. (soundbite of ludwig goransson's "can you hear the music") copyright © 2023 npr. all rights reserved. visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. npr transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an npr contractor. this text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. accuracy and availability may vary. the authoritative record of npr’s programming is the audio record. sponsor message become an npr sponsor

second sino japanese war on 6 and 9 august 1945, the united states detonated two atomic bombs over the japanese cities of hiroshima and nagasaki, respectively. the bombings killed between 150,000 and 246,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and they remain the only use of nuclear weapons in an armed conflict. japan surrendered to the allies on 15 august, six days after the bombing of nagasaki and the soviet union's declaration of war against japan and invasion of japanese occupied manchuria. the japanese government signed the instrument of surrender on 2 september, effectively ending the war. in the final year of world war ii, the allies prepared for a costly invasion of the japanese mainland. this undertaking was preceded by a conventional bombing and firebombing campaign that devastated 64 japanese cities, including an operation on tokyo. the war in the european theatre concluded when germany surrendered on 8 may 1945, and the allies turned their full attention to the pacific war. by july 1945, the allies' manhattan project had produced two types of atomic bombs: "little boy", an enriched uranium gun type fission weapon, and "fat man", a plutonium implosion type nuclear weapon. the 509th composite group of the united states army air forces was trained and equipped with the specialized silverplate version of the boeing b 29 superfortress, and deployed to tinian in the mariana islands. the allies called for the unconditional surrender of the imperial japanese armed forces in the potsdam declaration on 26 july 1945, the alternative being "prompt and utter destruction". the japanese government ignored the ultimatum. the consent of the united kingdom was obtained for the bombing, as was required by the quebec agreement, and orders were issued on 25 july by general thomas t. handy, the acting chief of staff of the united states army, for atomic bombs to be used against hiroshima, kokura, niigata, and nagasaki. these targets were chosen because they were large urban areas that also held militarily significant facilities. [citation needed] on 6 august, a little boy was dropped on hiroshima. three days later, a fat man was dropped on nagasaki. over the next two to four months, the effects of the atomic bombings killed 90,000 to 166,000 people in hiroshima and 60,000 to 80,000 people in nagasaki; roughly half occurred on the first day. for months afterward, many people continued to die from the effects of burns, radiation sickness, and other injuries, compounded by illness and malnutrition. despite hiroshima's sizable military garrison, most of the dead were civilians. scholars have extensively studied the effects of the bombings on the social and political character of subsequent world history and popular culture, and there is still much debate concerning the ethical and legal justification for the bombings. according to supporters, the atomic bombings were necessary to bring an end to the war with minimal casualties and ultimately prevented a greater loss of life on both sides; according to critics, the bombings were unnecessary for the war's end and were a war crime, raising moral and ethical implications. in 1945, the pacific war between the empire of japan and the allies entered its fourth year. most japanese military units fought fiercely, ensuring that the allied victory would come at an enormous cost. the 1.25 million battle casualties incurred in total by the united states in world war ii included both military personnel killed in action and wounded in action. nearly one million of the casualties occurred during the last year of the war, from june 1944 to june 1945. in december 1944, american battle casualties hit an all time monthly high of 88,000 as a result of the german ardennes offensive. worried by the losses sustained, president franklin d. roosevelt suggested the use of atomic bombs on germany as soon as possible, but was informed the first usable atomic weapons were still months away.[1] america's reserves of manpower were running out. deferments for groups such as agricultural workers were tightened, and there was consideration of drafting women. at the same time, the public was becoming war weary, and demanding that long serving servicemen be sent home.[2] in the pacific, the allies returned to the philippines,[3] recaptured burma,[4] and invaded borneo.[5] offensives were undertaken to reduce the japanese forces remaining in bougainville, new guinea and the philippines.[6] in april 1945, american forces landed on okinawa, where heavy fighting continued until june. along the way, the ratio of japanese to american casualties dropped from five to one in the philippines to two to one on okinawa.[2] although some japanese soldiers were taken prisoner, most fought until they were killed or committed suicide. nearly 99 percent of the 21,000 defenders of iwo jima were killed. of the 117,000 okinawan and japanese troops defending okinawa in april to june 1945, 94 percent were killed;[7] 7,401 japanese soldiers surrendered, an unprecedentedly large number.[8] as the allies advanced towards japan, conditions became steadily worse for the japanese people. japan's merchant fleet declined from 5,250,000 gross register tons in 1941 to 1,560,000 tons in march 1945, and 557,000 tons in august 1945. the lack of raw materials forced the japanese war economy into a steep decline after the middle of 1944. the civilian economy, which had slowly deteriorated throughout the war, reached disastrous levels by the middle of 1945. the loss of shipping also affected the fishing fleet, and the 1945 catch was only 22 percent of that in 1941. the 1945 rice harvest was the worst since 1909, and hunger and malnutrition became widespread. u.s. industrial production was overwhelmingly superior to japan's. by 1943, the u.s. produced almost 100,000 aircraft a year, compared to japan's production of 70,000 for the entire war. in february 1945, prince fumimaro konoe advised emperor hirohito that defeat was inevitable, and urged him to abdicate.[9] even before the surrender of nazi germany on 8 may 1945, plans were underway for the largest operation of the pacific war, operation downfall, the allied invasion of japan.[10] the operation had two parts: set to begin in october 1945, operation olympic involved a series of landings by the u.s. sixth army intended to capture the southern third of the southernmost main japanese island, kyūshū.[11] this was to be followed in march 1946 by operation coronet, the capture of the kantō plain, near tokyo on the main japanese island of honshu by the u.s. first, eighth and tenth armies, as well as a commonwealth corps made up of australian, british and canadian divisions. the target date was chosen to allow for olympic to complete its objectives, for troops to be redeployed from europe, and the japanese winter to pass.[12] japan's geography made this invasion plan obvious to the japanese; they were able to predict the allied invasion plans accurately and thus adjust their defensive plan, operation ketsugō, accordingly. the japanese planned an all out defense of kyūshū, with little left in reserve.[13] in all, there were 2.3 million japanese army troops prepared to defend the home islands, backed by a civilian militia of 28 million. casualty predictions varied widely, but were extremely high. the vice chief of the imperial japanese navy general staff, vice admiral takijirō ōnishi, predicted up to 20 million japanese deaths.[14] the americans were alarmed by the japanese buildup, which was accurately tracked through ultra intelligence.[15] on 15 june 1945, a study by the joint war plans committee,[16] drawing on the experience of the battle of leyte, estimated that downfall would result in 132,500 to 220,000 u.s. casualties, with u.s. dead and missing in the range from 27,500 to 50,000.[17] secretary of war henry l. stimson commissioned his own study by quincy wright and william shockley, who estimated the invading allies would suffer between 1.7 and 4 million casualties, of whom between 400,000 and 800,000 would be dead, while japanese fatalities would have been around 5 to 10 million.[18][19] in a meeting with the president and commanders on 18 june 1945, general george c. marshall stated that "there was reason to believe" casualties for the first 30 days would not exceed the price paid for luzon. additionally, with the japanese position rendered "hopeless" by an invasion of their mainland, marshall speculated that soviet entry into the war might be "the decisive action" needed to finally "[leverage] them into capitulation."[20] marshall began contemplating the use of a weapon that was "readily available and which assuredly can decrease the cost in american lives": poison gas.[21] quantities of phosgene, mustard gas, tear gas and cyanogen chloride were moved to luzon from stockpiles in australia and new guinea in preparation for operation olympic, and macarthur ensured that chemical warfare service units were trained in their use.[21] consideration was also given to using biological weapons.[22] while the united states had developed plans for an air campaign against japan prior to the pacific war, the capture of allied bases in the western pacific in the first weeks of the conflict meant that this offensive did not begin until mid 1944 when the long ranged boeing b 29 superfortress became ready for use in combat.[23] operation matterhorn involved india based b 29s staging through bases around chengdu in china to make a series of raids on strategic targets in japan.[24] this effort failed to achieve the strategic objectives that its planners had intended, largely because of logistical problems, the bomber's mechanical difficulties, the vulnerability of chinese staging bases, and the extreme range required to reach key japanese cities.[25] brigadier general haywood s. hansell determined that guam, tinian, and saipan in the mariana islands would better serve as b 29 bases, but they were in japanese hands.[26] strategies were shifted to accommodate the air war,[27] and the islands were captured between june and august 1944. air bases were developed,[28] and b 29 operations commenced from the marianas in october 1944.[29] the xxi bomber command began missions against japan on 18 november 1944.[30] the early attempts to bomb japan from the marianas proved just as ineffective as the china based b 29s had been. hansell continued the practice of conducting so called high altitude precision bombing, aimed at key industries and transportation networks, even after these tactics had not produced acceptable results.[31] these efforts proved unsuccessful due to logistical difficulties with the remote location, technical problems with the new and advanced aircraft, unfavorable weather conditions, and enemy action.[32][33] hansell's successor, major general curtis lemay, assumed command in january 1945 and initially continued to use the same precision bombing tactics, with equally unsatisfactory results. the attacks initially targeted key industrial facilities but much of the japanese manufacturing process was carried out in small workshops and private homes.[37] under pressure from united states army air forces (usaaf) headquarters in washington, lemay changed tactics and decided that low level incendiary raids against japanese cities were the only way to destroy their production capabilities, shifting from precision bombing to area bombardment with incendiaries.[38] like most strategic bombing during world war ii, the aim of the air offensive against japan was to destroy the enemy's war industries, kill or disable civilian employees of these industries, and undermine civilian morale.[39][40] over the next six months, the xxi bomber command under lemay firebombed 64 japanese cities.[41] the firebombing of tokyo, codenamed operation meetinghouse, on 9 10 march, killed an estimated 100,000 people and destroyed 41 km2 (16 sq mi) of the city and 267,000 buildings in a single night. it was the deadliest bombing raid of the war, at a cost of 20 b 29s shot down by flak and fighters.[42] by may, 75 percent of bombs dropped were incendiaries designed to burn down japan's "paper cities". by mid june, japan's six largest cities had been devastated.[43] the end of the fighting on okinawa that month provided airfields even closer to the japanese mainland, allowing the bombing campaign to be further escalated. aircraft flying from allied aircraft carriers and the ryukyu islands also regularly struck targets in japan during 1945 in preparation for operation downfall.[44] firebombing switched to smaller cities, with populations ranging from 60,000 to 350,000. according to yuki tanaka, the u.s. fire bombed over a hundred japanese towns and cities.[45] the japanese military was unable to stop the allied attacks and the country's civil defense preparations proved inadequate. japanese fighters and anti aircraft guns had difficulty engaging bombers flying at high altitude.[46] from april 1945, the japanese interceptors also had to face american fighter escorts based on iwo jima and okinawa.[47] that month, the imperial japanese army air service and imperial japanese navy air service stopped attempting to intercept the air raids to preserve fighter aircraft to counter the expected invasion.[48] by mid 1945 the japanese only occasionally scrambled aircraft to intercept individual b 29s conducting reconnaissance sorties over the country, to conserve supplies of fuel.[49] in july 1945, the japanese had 137,800,000 litres (1,156,000 us bbl) of avgas stockpiled for the invasion of japan. about 72,000,000 litres (604,000 us bbl) had been consumed in the home islands area in april, may and june 1945.[50] while the japanese military decided to resume attacks on allied bombers from late june, by this time there were too few operational fighters available for this change of tactics to hinder the allied air raids.[51] the discovery of nuclear fission in 1938 made the development of an atomic bomb a theoretical possibility.[52] fears that a german atomic bomb project would develop atomic weapons first, especially among scientists who were refugees from nazi germany and other fascist countries, were expressed in the einstein szilard letter to roosevelt in 1939. this prompted preliminary research in the united states in late 1939.[53] progress was slow until the arrival of the british maud committee report in late 1941, which indicated that only 5 to 10 kilograms of isotopically pure uranium 235 were needed for a bomb instead of tons of natural uranium and a neutron moderator like heavy water.[54] consequently, the work was accelerated, first as a pilot program, and finally in the agreement by roosevelt to turn the work over to the u.s. army corps of engineers to construct the production facilities necessary to produce uranium 235 and plutonium 239. this work was consolidated within the newly created manhattan engineer district, which became better known as the manhattan project, eventually under the direction of major general leslie r. groves, jr..[55] the work of the manhattan project took place at dozens of sites across the united states, and even some outside of its borders. it would ultimately cost over us$2 billion (equivalent to about $27 billion in 2023)[56] and employ over 125,000 people simultaneously at its peak. groves appointed j. robert oppenheimer to organize and head the project's los alamos laboratory in new mexico, where bomb design work was carried out.[57] two different types of bombs were eventually developed: a gun type fission weapon that used uranium 235, called little boy, and a more complex implosion type nuclear weapon that used plutonium 239, called fat man.[58] there was a japanese nuclear weapon program, but it lacked the human, mineral, and financial resources of the manhattan project, and never made much progress towards developing an atomic bomb.[59] the 509th composite group was constituted on 9 december 1944, and activated on 17 december 1944, at wendover army air field, utah, commanded by colonel paul tibbets.[60] tibbets was assigned to organize and command a combat group to develop the means of delivering an atomic weapon against targets in germany and japan. because the flying squadrons of the group consisted of both bomber and transport aircraft, the group was designated as a "composite" rather than a "bombardment" unit.[61] due to its remoteness, tibbets selected wendover for his training base over great bend, kansas and mountain home, idaho.[62] each bombardier completed at least 50 practice drops of inert or conventional explosive pumpkin bombs, targeting islands around tinian and later the japanese home islands, until as late as 14 august 1945.[63][64] some of the missions over japan were flown by single unescorted bombers with a single payload to accustom the japanese to this pattern. they also simulated actual atomic bombing runs, including the directions of ingress and egress with respect to the wind. tibbets himself was barred from flying most missions over japan for fear that he might be captured and interrogated.[64] on 5 april 1945, the code name operation centerboard was assigned. the officer responsible for its allocation in the war department's operations division was not cleared to know any details of it. the first bombing was later codenamed operation centerboard i, and the second, operation centerboard ii.[65] the 509th composite group had an authorized strength of 225 officers and 1,542 enlisted men, almost all of whom eventually deployed to tinian. in addition to its authorized strength, the 509th had attached to it on tinian 51 civilian and military personnel from project alberta,[66] known as the 1st technical detachment.[67] the 509th composite group's 393rd bombardment squadron was equipped with 15 silverplate b 29s. these aircraft were specially adapted to carry nuclear weapons, and were equipped with fuel injected engines, curtiss electric reversible pitch propellers, pneumatic actuators for rapid opening and closing of bomb bay doors and other improvements.[68] the ground support echelon of the 509th composite group moved by rail on 26 april 1945, to its port of embarkation at seattle, washington. on 6 may the support elements sailed on the ss cape victory for the marianas, while group materiel was shipped on the ss emile berliner. the cape victory made brief port calls at honolulu and eniwetok but the passengers were not permitted to leave the dock area. an advance party of the air echelon, consisting of 29 officers and 61 enlisted men, flew by c 54 to north field on tinian, between 15 and 22 may.[69] there were also two representatives from washington, d.c., brigadier general thomas farrell, the deputy commander of the manhattan project, and rear admiral william r. purnell of the military policy committee,[70] who were on hand to decide higher policy matters on the spot. along with captain william s. parsons, the commander of project alberta, they became known as the "tinian joint chiefs".[71] in april 1945, marshall asked groves to nominate specific targets for bombing for final approval by himself and stimson. groves formed a target committee, chaired by himself, that included farrell, major john a. derry, colonel william p. fisher, joyce c. stearns and david m. dennison from the usaaf; and scientists john von neumann, robert r. wilson and william penney from the manhattan project. the target committee met in washington on 27 april; at los alamos on 10 may, where it was able to talk to the scientists and technicians there; and finally in washington on 28 may, where it was briefed by tibbets and commander frederick ashworth from project alberta, and the manhattan project's scientific advisor, richard c. tolman.[72] the target committee nominated five targets: kokura (now kitakyushu), the site of one of japan's largest munitions plants; hiroshima, an embarkation port and industrial center that was the site of a major military headquarters; yokohama, an urban center for aircraft manufacture, machine tools, docks, electrical equipment and oil refineries; niigata, a port with industrial facilities including steel and aluminum plants and an oil refinery; and kyoto, a major industrial center. the target selection was subject to the following criteria: these cities were largely untouched during the nightly bombing raids, and the army air forces agreed to leave them off the target list so accurate assessment of the damage caused by the atomic bombs could be made. hiroshima was described as "an important army depot and port of embarkation in the middle of an urban industrial area. it is a good radar target and it is such a size that a large part of the city could be extensively damaged. there are adjacent hills which are likely to produce a focusing effect which would considerably increase the blast damage. due to rivers it is not a good incendiary target."[73] the target committee stated that "it was agreed that psychological factors in the target selection were of great importance. two aspects of this are (1) obtaining the greatest psychological effect against japan and (2) making the initial use sufficiently spectacular for the importance of the weapon to be internationally recognized when publicity on it is released. ... kyoto has the advantage of the people being more highly intelligent and hence better able to appreciate the significance of the weapon. hiroshima has the advantage of being such a size and with possible focussing from nearby mountains that a large fraction of the city may be destroyed. the emperor's palace in tokyo has a greater fame than any other target but is of least strategic value."[73] edwin o. reischauer, a japan expert for the u.s. army intelligence service, was incorrectly said to have prevented the bombing of kyoto.[73] in his autobiography, reischauer specifically refuted this claim: ... the only person deserving credit for saving kyoto from destruction is henry l. stimson, the secretary of war at the time, who had known and admired kyoto ever since his honeymoon there several decades earlier.[74][75] extant sources show that while stimson was personally familiar with kyoto, this was the result of a visit decades after his marriage, not because he honeymooned there.[76][77] on 30 may, stimson asked groves to remove kyoto from the target list due to its historical, religious and cultural significance, but groves pointed to its military and industrial significance.[78] stimson then approached president harry s. truman about the matter. truman agreed with stimson, and kyoto was temporarily removed from the target list.[79] groves attempted to restore kyoto to the target list in july, but stimson remained adamant.[80][81] on 25 july, nagasaki was put on the target list in place of kyoto. it was a major military port, one of japan's largest shipbuilding and repair centers, and an important producer of naval ordnance.[81] in early may 1945, the interim committee was created by stimson at the urging of leaders of the manhattan project and with the approval of truman to advise on matters pertaining to nuclear technology.[82] they agreed that the atomic bomb was to be used (1) against japan at the earliest opportunity, (2) without special warning, and (3) on a "dual target" of military installation surrounded by other buildings susceptible to damage.[64] during the meetings on 31 may and 1 june, scientist ernest lawrence had suggested giving the japanese a non combat demonstration.[83] arthur compton later recalled that: it was evident that everyone would suspect trickery. if a bomb were exploded in japan with previous notice, the japanese air power was still adequate to give serious interference. an atomic bomb was an intricate device, still in the developmental stage. its operation would be far from routine. if during the final adjustments of the bomb the japanese defenders should attack, a faulty move might easily result in some kind of failure. such an end to an advertised demonstration of power would be much worse than if the attempt had not been made. it was now evident that when the time came for the bombs to be used we should have only one of them available, followed afterwards by others at all too long intervals. we could not afford the chance that one of them might be a dud. if the test were made on some neutral territory, it was hard to believe that japan's determined and fanatical military men would be impressed. if such an open test were made first and failed to bring surrender, the chance would be gone to give the shock of surprise that proved so effective. on the contrary, it would make the japanese ready to interfere with an atomic attack if they could. though the possibility of a demonstration that would not destroy human lives was attractive, no one could suggest a way in which it could be made so convincing that it would be likely to stop the war.[84] the possibility of a demonstration was raised again in the franck report issued by physicist james franck on 11 june and the scientific advisory panel rejected his report on 16 june, saying that "we can propose no technical demonstration likely to bring an end to the war; we see no acceptable alternative to direct military use." franck then took the report to washington, d.c., where the interim committee met on 21 june to re examine its earlier conclusions; but it reaffirmed that there was no alternative to the use of the bomb on a military target.[85] like compton, many u.s. officials and scientists argued that a demonstration would sacrifice the shock value of the atomic attack, and the japanese could deny the atomic bomb was lethal, making the mission less likely to produce surrender. allied prisoners of war might be moved to the demonstration site and be killed by the bomb. they also worried that the bomb might be a failure, as the trinity test was that of a stationary device, not an air dropped bomb. in addition, although more bombs were in production, only two would be available at the start of august, and they cost billions of dollars, so using one for a demonstration would be expensive.[86][87] for several months, the u.s. had warned civilians of potential air raids by dropping more than 63 million leaflets across japan. many japanese cities suffered terrible damage from aerial bombings; some were as much as 97 percent destroyed. lemay thought that leaflets would increase the psychological impact of bombing, and reduce the international stigma of area bombing cities. even with the warnings, japanese opposition to the war remained ineffective. in general, the japanese regarded the leaflet messages as truthful, with many japanese choosing to leave major cities. the leaflets caused such concern that the government ordered the arrest of anyone caught in possession of a leaflet.[88][89] leaflet texts were prepared by recent japanese prisoners of war because they were thought to be the best choice "to appeal to their compatriots".[90] in preparation for dropping an atomic bomb on hiroshima, the oppenheimer led scientific panel of the interim committee decided against a demonstration bomb and against a special leaflet warning. those decisions were implemented because of the uncertainty of a successful detonation and also because of the wish to maximize shock in the leadership.[91] no warning was given to hiroshima that a new and much more destructive bomb was going to be dropped.[92] various sources gave conflicting information about when the last leaflets were dropped on hiroshima prior to the atomic bomb. robert jay lifton wrote that it was 27 july,[92] and theodore h. mcnelly wrote that it was 30 july.[91] the usaaf history noted that eleven cities were targeted with leaflets on 27 july, but hiroshima was not one of them, and there were no leaflet sorties on 30 july.[89] leaflet sorties were undertaken on 1 and 4 august. hiroshima may have been leafleted in late july or early august, as survivor accounts talk about a delivery of leaflets a few days before the atomic bomb was dropped.[92] three versions were printed of a leaflet listing 11 or 12 cities targeted for firebombing; a total of 33 cities listed. with the text of this leaflet reading in japanese "... we cannot promise that only these cities will be among those attacked ..."[88] hiroshima was not listed.[93][94] in 1943, the united states and the united kingdom signed the quebec agreement, which stipulated that nuclear weapons would not be used against another country without mutual consent. stimson therefore had to obtain british permission. a meeting of the combined policy committee, which included one canadian representative, was held at the pentagon on 4 july 1945.[95] field marshal sir henry maitland wilson announced that the british government concurred with the use of nuclear weapons against japan, which would be officially recorded as a decision of the combined policy committee.[95][96][97] as the release of information to third parties was also controlled by the quebec agreement, discussion then turned to what scientific details would be revealed in the press announcement of the bombing. the meeting also considered what truman could reveal to joseph stalin, the leader of the soviet union, at the upcoming potsdam conference, as this also required british concurrence.[95] orders for the attack were issued to general carl spaatz on 25 july under the signature of general thomas t. handy, the acting chief of staff, since marshall was at the potsdam conference with truman.[98] it read in part: that day, truman noted in his diary that: this weapon is to be used against japan between now and august 10th. i have told the sec. of war, mr. stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. even if the japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital [kyoto] or the new [tokyo]. he and i are in accord. the target will be a purely military one.[100] the 16 july success of the trinity test in the new mexico desert exceeded expectations.[101] on 26 july, allied leaders issued the potsdam declaration, which outlined the terms of surrender for japan. the declaration was presented as an ultimatum and stated that without a surrender, the allies would attack japan, resulting in "the inevitable and complete destruction of the japanese armed forces and just as inevitably the utter devastation of the japanese homeland". the atomic bomb was not mentioned in the communiqué.[102] on 28 july, japanese papers reported that the declaration had been rejected by the japanese government. that afternoon, prime minister kantarō suzuki declared at a press conference that the potsdam declaration was no more than a rehash (yakinaoshi) of the cairo declaration, that the government intended to ignore it (mokusatsu, "kill by silence"), and that japan would fight to the end.[103] the statement was taken by both japanese and foreign papers as a clear rejection of the declaration. emperor hirohito, who was waiting for a soviet reply to non committal japanese peace feelers, made no move to change the government position.[104] japan's willingness to surrender remained conditional on the preservation of the kokutai (imperial institution and national polity), assumption by the imperial headquarters of responsibility for disarmament and demobilization, no occupation of the japanese home islands, korea or formosa, and delegation of the punishment of war criminals to the japanese government.[105] at potsdam, truman agreed to a request from winston churchill that britain be represented when the atomic bomb was dropped. william penney and group captain leonard cheshire were sent to tinian, but lemay would not let them accompany the mission.[106] the little boy bomb, except for the uranium payload, was ready at the beginning of may 1945.[107] there were two uranium 235 components, a hollow cylindrical projectile and a cylindrical target insert. the projectile was completed on 15 june, and the target insert on 24 july.[108] the projectile and eight bomb pre assemblies (partly assembled bombs without the powder charge and fissile components) left hunters point naval shipyard, california, on 16 july aboard the cruiser uss indianapolis, and arrived on tinian on 26 july.[109] the target insert followed by air on 30 july, accompanied by commander francis birch from project alberta.[108] responding to concerns expressed by the 509th composite group about the possibility of a b 29 crashing on takeoff, birch had modified the little boy design to incorporate a removable breech plug that would permit the bomb to be armed in flight.[107] the first plutonium core, along with its polonium beryllium urchin initiator, was transported in the custody of project alberta courier raemer schreiber in a magnesium field carrying case designed for the purpose by philip morrison. magnesium was chosen because it does not act as a neutron reflector.[110] the core departed from kirtland army air field on a c 54 transport aircraft of the 509th composite group's 320th troop carrier squadron on 26 july, and arrived at north field 28 july. three fat man high explosive pre assemblies, designated f31, f32, and f33, were picked up at kirtland on 28 july by three b 29s, two from the 393rd bombardment squadron plus one from the 216th army air force base unit, and transported to north field, arriving on 2 august.[111] at the time of its bombing, hiroshima was a city of industrial and military significance. a number of military units were located nearby, the most important of which was the headquarters of field marshal shunroku hata's second general army, which commanded the defense of all of southern japan,[112] and was located in hiroshima castle. hata's command consisted of some 400,000 men, most of whom were on kyushu where an allied invasion was correctly anticipated.[113] also present in hiroshima were the headquarters of the 59th army, the 5th division and the 224th division, a recently formed mobile unit.[114] the city was defended by five batteries of 70 mm and 80 mm (2.8 and 3.1 inch) anti aircraft guns of the 3rd anti aircraft division, including units from the 121st and 122nd anti aircraft regiments and the 22nd and 45th separate anti aircraft battalions. in total, an estimated 40,000 japanese military personnel were stationed in the city.[115] hiroshima was a supply and logistics base for the japanese military.[116] the city was a communications center, a key port for shipping, and an assembly area for troops.[78] it supported a large war industry, manufacturing parts for planes and boats, for bombs, rifles, and handguns.[117] the center of the city contained several reinforced concrete buildings. outside the center, the area was congested by a dense collection of small timber workshops set among japanese houses. a few larger industrial plants lay near the outskirts of the city. the houses were constructed of timber with tile roofs, and many of the industrial buildings were also built around timber frames. the city as a whole was highly susceptible to fire damage.[118] it was the second largest city in japan after kyoto that was still undamaged by air raids,[119] primarily because it lacked the aircraft manufacturing industry that was the xxi bomber command's priority target. on 3 july, the joint chiefs of staff placed it off limits to bombers, along with kokura, niigata and kyoto.[120] the population of hiroshima had reached a peak of over 381,000 earlier in the war but prior to the atomic bombing, the population had steadily decreased because of a systematic evacuation ordered by the japanese government. at the time of the attack, the population was approximately 340,000 350,000.[121] residents wondered why hiroshima had been spared destruction by firebombing.[122] some speculated that the city was to be saved for u.s. occupation headquarters, others thought perhaps their relatives in hawaii and california had petitioned the u.s. government to avoid bombing hiroshima.[123] more realistic city officials had ordered buildings torn down to create long, straight firebreaks.[124] these continued to be expanded and extended up to the morning of 6 august 1945.[125] hiroshima was the primary target of the first atomic bombing mission on 6 august, with kokura and nagasaki as alternative targets. the 393rd bombardment squadron b 29 enola gay, named after tibbets's mother and piloted by tibbets, took off from north field, tinian, about six hours' flight time from japan,[126] at 02:45 local time.[127] enola gay was accompanied by two other b 29s: the great artiste, commanded by major charles sweeney, which carried instrumentation, and a then nameless aircraft later called necessary evil, commanded by captain george marquardt. necessary evil was the photography aircraft.[128] after leaving tinian, the aircraft made their way separately to iwo jima to rendezvous with sweeney and marquardt at 05:55 at 2,800 meters (9,200 ft),[130] and set course for japan. the aircraft arrived over hiroshima in clear visibility at 9,470 meters (31,060 ft).[131] parsons, who was in command of the mission, armed the bomb in flight to minimize the risks during takeoff. he had witnessed four b 29s crash and burn at takeoff, and feared that a nuclear explosion would occur if a b 29 crashed with an armed little boy on board.[132] his assistant, second lieutenant morris r. jeppson, removed the safety devices 30 minutes before reaching the target area.[133] during the night of 5 6 august, japanese early warning radar detected the approach of numerous american aircraft headed for the southern part of japan. radar detected 65 bombers headed for saga, 102 bound for maebashi, 261 en route to nishinomiya, 111 headed for ube and 66 bound for imabari. an alert was given and radio broadcasting stopped in many cities, among them hiroshima. the all clear was sounded in hiroshima at 00:05.[135] about an hour before the bombing, the air raid alert was sounded again, as straight flush flew over the city. it broadcast a short message which was picked up by enola gay. it read: "cloud cover less than 3/10th at all altitudes. advice: bomb primary."[136] the all clear was sounded over hiroshima again at 07:09.[137] at 08:09, tibbets started his bomb run and handed control over to his bombardier, major thomas ferebee.[138] the release at 08:15 (hiroshima time) went as planned, and the little boy containing about 64 kg (141 lb) of uranium 235 took 44.4 seconds to fall from the aircraft flying at about 9,400 meters (31,000 ft) to a detonation height of about 580 meters (1,900 ft) above the city.[139][140] enola gay was 18.5 km (11.5 mi) away before it felt the shock waves from the blast.[141] due to crosswind, the bomb missed the aiming point, the aioi bridge, by approximately 240 m (800 ft) and detonated directly over shima surgical clinic.[142] it released the equivalent energy of 16 ± 2 kilotons of tnt (66.9 ± 8.4 tj).[139] the weapon was considered very inefficient, with only 1.7 percent of its material fissioning.[143] the radius of total destruction was about 1.6 kilometers (1 mi), with resulting fires across 11 km2 (4.4 sq mi).[144] enola gay stayed over the target area for two minutes and was 16 kilometers (10 mi) away when the bomb detonated. only tibbets, parsons, and ferebee knew of the nature of the weapon; the others on the bomber were only told to expect a blinding flash and given protective goggles. "it was hard to believe what we saw", tibbets told reporters, while parsons said "the whole thing was tremendous and awe inspiring ... the men aboard with me gasped 'my god'." he and tibbets compared the shockwave to "a close burst of ack ack fire".[145] people on the ground reported a pika (ピカ) a brilliant flash of light followed by a don (ドン) a loud booming sound.[146] the experiences of survivors in the city varied depending on their location and circumstances, but a common factor in survivor accounts was a sense that a conventional weapon (sometimes cited as a magnesium bomb, which has a distinctively bright white flash) had happened to go off immediately in their vicinity, causing tremendous damage (throwing people across rooms, breaking glass, crushing buildings). after emerging from the ruins the survivors gradually understood that the entire city had been attacked at the same instant. survivor accounts frequently feature walking through the ruins of the city without a clear sense of where to go, and encountering the cries of people trapped within crushed structures, or people with horrific burns. as the numerous small fires created by the blast began to grow, they merged into a firestorm that moved quickly throughout the ruins, killing many who had been trapped, and causing people to jump into hiroshima's rivers in search of sanctuary (many of whom drowned).[147][148] the photographer yoshito matsushige took the only photographs of hiroshima immediately after the bombing. he described in a later interview that, immediately after the bombing, "everywhere there was dust; it made a grayish darkness over everything." he took five photographs in total before he could not continue: "it was really a terrible scene. it was just like something out of hell."[149] survivor accounts also prominently feature cases of survivors who appeared uninjured, but who would succumb within hours or days to what would later be identified as radiation sickness. estimating the number of people killed by the blast, firestorm, and radiation effects of the bombing has been hampered by imprecise record keeping during the war, the chaos caused by the attack, uncertainty about the number of people in the city on the morning of the attack, and variations in methodology. reports by the manhattan project in 1946 and the u.s. occupation led joint commission for the investigation of the atomic bomb in japan in 1951 estimated 66,000 dead and 69,000 injured, and 64,500 dead and 72,000 injured, respectively, while japanese led reconsiderations of the death toll in the 1970s estimated 140,000 dead in hiroshima by the end of the year.[150] estimates also vary on the number of japanese military personnel killed. the united states strategic bombing survey estimated in 1946 that there were 24,158 soldiers present in hiroshima at the time of the attack, and that 6,789 were killed or missing as a result; the 1970s reconsiderations estimated about 10,000 military dead.[150] a modern estimate by the radiation effects research foundation (rerf) estimates a city population of 340,000 to 350,000 at the time of the bombing, of which 90,000 to 166,000 died by the end of the year.[121] u.s. surveys estimated that 12 km2 (4.7 sq mi) of the city were destroyed. japanese officials determined that 69 percent of hiroshima's buildings were destroyed and another 6 to 7 percent damaged.[151] some of the reinforced concrete buildings in hiroshima had been very strongly constructed because of the earthquake danger in japan, and their framework did not collapse even though they were fairly close to the blast center. since the bomb detonated in the air, the blast was directed more downward than sideways, which was largely responsible for the survival of the prefectural industrial promotional hall, now commonly known as the genbaku (a bomb) dome, which was only 150 m (490 ft) from ground zero (the hypocenter). the ruin was named hiroshima peace memorial and was made a unesco world heritage site in 1996 over the objections of the united states and china, which expressed reservations on the grounds that other asian nations were the ones who suffered the greatest loss of life and property, and a focus on japan lacked historical perspective.[152] the air raid warning had been cleared at 07:31, and many people were outside, going about their activities.[156] eizō nomura was the closest known survivor, being in the basement of a reinforced concrete building (it remained as the rest house after the war) only 170 meters (560 ft) from ground zero at the time of the attack.[157][158] he died in 1982, aged 84.[159] akiko takakura was among the closest survivors to the hypocenter of the blast. she was in the solidly built bank of hiroshima only 300 meters (980 ft) from ground zero at the time of the attack.[160] over 90 percent of the doctors and 93 percent of the nurses in hiroshima were killed or injured most had been in the downtown area which received the greatest damage.[161] the hospitals were destroyed or heavily damaged. only one doctor, terufumi sasaki, remained on duty at the red cross hospital.[162] nonetheless, by early afternoon the police and volunteers had established evacuation center at hospitals, schools and tram stations, and a morgue was established in the asano library.[163] survivors of the blast gathered for medical treatment, but many would die before receiving any help, leaving behind rings of corpses around hospitals.[164] most elements of the japanese second general army headquarters were undergoing physical training on the grounds of hiroshima castle, barely 820 meters (900 yd) from the hypocenter. the attack killed 3,243 troops on the parade ground.[165] the communications room of chugoku military district headquarters that was responsible for issuing and lifting air raid warnings was located in a semi basement in the castle. yoshie oka, a hijiyama girls high school student who had been mobilized to serve as a communications officer, had just sent a message that the alarm had been issued for hiroshima and neighboring yamaguchi, when the bomb exploded. she used a special phone to inform fukuyama headquarters (some 100 kilometers (62 mi) away) that "hiroshima has been attacked by a new type of bomb. the city is in a state of near total destruction."[166] since mayor senkichi awaya had been killed at the mayoral residence, field marshal shunroku hata, who was only slightly wounded, took over the administration of the city, and coordinated relief efforts. many of his staff had been killed or fatally wounded, including lieutenant colonel yi u, a prince of the korean imperial family who was serving as a general staff officer.[167][168] hata's senior surviving staff officer was the wounded colonel kumao imoto, who acted as his chief of staff. soldiers from the undamaged hiroshima ujina harbor used shin'yō class suicide motorboats, intended to repel the american invasion, to collect the wounded and take them down the rivers to the military hospital at ujina.[167] trucks and trains brought in relief supplies and evacuated survivors from the city.[169] twelve american airmen were imprisoned at the chugoku military police headquarters, about 400 meters (1,300 ft) from the hypocenter of the blast.[170] most died instantly, although two were reported to have been executed by their captors, and two prisoners badly injured by the bombing were left next to the aioi bridge by the kempei tai, where they were stoned to death.[171][172] eight u.s. prisoners of war killed as part of the medical experiments program at kyushu university were falsely reported by japanese authorities as having been killed in the atomic blast as part of an attempted cover up.[173] the fires created by the atomic bomb detonation carried large amounts of ash into the clouds in the atmosphere. one to two hours after the explosion, a "black rain" fell as a tarry combination of ash, radioactive fallout, and water, causing severe radiation burns in some cases.[174][175] the tokyo control operator of the japan broadcasting corporation noticed that the hiroshima station had gone off the air. he tried to re establish his program by using another telephone line, but it too had failed.[176] about 20 minutes later the tokyo railroad telegraph center realized that the main line telegraph had stopped working just north of hiroshima. from some small railway stops within 16 km (10 mi) of the city came unofficial and confused reports of a terrible explosion in hiroshima. all these reports were transmitted to the headquarters of the imperial japanese army general staff.[177] military bases repeatedly tried to call the army control station in hiroshima. the complete silence from that city puzzled the general staff; they knew that no large enemy raid had occurred and that no sizable store of explosives was in hiroshima at that time. a young officer was instructed to fly immediately to hiroshima, to land, survey the damage, and return to tokyo with reliable information for the staff. it was felt that nothing serious had taken place and that the explosion was just a rumor.[177] the staff officer went to the airport and took off for the southwest. after flying for about three hours, while still nearly 160 km (100 mi) from hiroshima, he and his pilot saw a great cloud of smoke from the firestorm created by the bomb. after circling the city to survey the damage they landed south of the city, where the staff officer, after reporting to tokyo, began to organize relief measures. tokyo learned that the city had been destroyed by a new type of bomb from president truman's announcement of the strike, sixteen hours later.[177] after the hiroshima bombing, truman issued a statement announcing the use of the new weapon. he stated, "we may be grateful to providence" that the german atomic bomb project had failed, and that the united states and its allies had "spent two billion dollars on the greatest scientific gamble in history and won". truman then warned japan: "if they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth. behind this air attack will follow sea and land forces in such numbers and power as they have not yet seen and with the fighting skill of which they are already well aware."[178] this was a widely broadcast speech picked up by japanese news agencies.[179] the 50,000 watt standard wave station on saipan, the owi radio station, broadcast a similar message to japan every 15 minutes about hiroshima, stating that more japanese cities would face a similar fate in the absence of immediate acceptance of the terms of the potsdam declaration and emphatically urged civilians to evacuate major cities. radio japan, which continued to extoll victory for japan by never surrendering[88] had informed the japanese of the destruction of hiroshima by a single bomb.[180] soviet foreign minister vyacheslav molotov had informed tokyo of the soviet union's unilateral abrogation of the soviet japanese neutrality pact on 5 april.[181] at two minutes past midnight on 9 august, tokyo time, soviet infantry, armor, and air forces had launched the manchurian strategic offensive operation.[182] four hours later, word reached tokyo of the soviet union's official declaration of war. the senior leadership of the japanese army began preparations to impose martial law on the nation, with the support of minister of war korechika anami, to stop anyone attempting to make peace.[183] on 7 august, a day after hiroshima was destroyed, yoshio nishina and other atomic physicists arrived at the city, and carefully examined the damage. they then went back to tokyo and told the cabinet that hiroshima was indeed destroyed by a nuclear weapon. admiral soemu toyoda, the chief of the naval general staff, estimated that no more than one or two additional bombs could be readied, so they decided to endure the remaining attacks, acknowledging "there would be more destruction but the war would go on".[184] american magic codebreakers intercepted the cabinet's messages.[185] purnell, parsons, tibbets, spaatz, and lemay met on guam that same day to discuss what should be done next.[186] since there was no indication of japan surrendering,[185] they decided to proceed with dropping another bomb. parsons said that project alberta would have it ready by 11 august, but tibbets pointed to weather reports indicating poor flying conditions on that day due to a storm, and asked if the bomb could be readied by 9 august. parsons agreed to try to do so.[187][186] the city of nagasaki had been one of the largest seaports in southern japan, and was of great wartime importance because of its wide ranging industrial activity, including the production of ordnance, ships, military equipment, and other war materials. the four largest companies in the city were mitsubishi shipyards, electrical shipyards, arms plant, and steel and arms works, which employed about 90 percent of the city's labor force, and accounted for 90 percent of the city's industry.[188] although an important industrial city, nagasaki had been spared from firebombing because its geography made it difficult to locate at night with an/apq 13 radar.[120] unlike the other target cities, nagasaki had not been placed off limits to bombers by the joint chiefs of staff's 3 july directive,[120][189] and was bombed on a small scale five times. during one of these raids on 1 august, a number of conventional high explosive bombs were dropped on the city. a few hit the shipyards and dock areas in the southwest portion of the city, and several hit the mitsubishi steel and arms works.[188] by early august, the city was defended by the 134th anti aircraft regiment of the 4th anti aircraft division with four batteries of 7 cm (2.8 in) anti aircraft guns and two searchlight batteries.[115] in contrast to hiroshima, almost all of the buildings were of old fashioned japanese construction, consisting of timber or timber framed buildings with timber walls (with or without plaster) and tile roofs. many of the smaller industries and business establishments were also situated in buildings of timber or other materials not designed to withstand explosions. nagasaki had been permitted to grow for many years without conforming to any definite city zoning plan; residences were erected adjacent to factory buildings and to each other almost as closely as possible throughout the entire industrial valley. on the day of the bombing, an estimated 263,000 people were in nagasaki, including 240,000 japanese residents, 10,000 korean residents, 2,500 conscripted korean workers, 9,000 japanese soldiers, 600 conscripted chinese workers, and 400 allied prisoners of war in a camp to the north of nagasaki.[190] responsibility for the timing of the second bombing was delegated to tibbets. scheduled for 11 august, the raid was moved earlier by two days to avoid a five day period of bad weather forecast to begin on 10 august.[191] three bomb pre assemblies had been transported to tinian, labeled f 31, f 32, and f 33 on their exteriors. on 8 august, a dress rehearsal was conducted off tinian by sweeney using bockscar as the drop airplane. assembly f 33 was expended testing the components and f 31 was designated for the 9 august mission.[192] at 03:47 tinian time (gmt+10), 02:47 japanese time,[127] on the morning of 9 august 1945, bockscar, flown by sweeney's crew, lifted off from tinian island with the fat man, with kokura as the primary target and nagasaki the secondary target. the mission plan for the second attack was nearly identical to that of the hiroshima mission, with two b 29s flying an hour ahead as weather scouts and two additional b 29s in sweeney's flight for instrumentation and photographic support of the mission. sweeney took off with his weapon already armed but with the electrical safety plugs still engaged.[194] during pre flight inspection of bockscar, the flight engineer notified sweeney that an inoperative fuel transfer pump made it impossible to use 2,400 liters (640 u.s. gal) of fuel carried in a reserve tank. this fuel would still have to be carried all the way to japan and back, consuming still more fuel. replacing the pump would take hours; moving the fat man to another aircraft might take just as long and was dangerous as well, as the bomb was live. tibbets and sweeney therefore elected to have bockscar continue the mission.[195][196] this time penney and cheshire were allowed to accompany the mission, flying as observers on the third plane, big stink, flown by the group's operations officer, major james i. hopkins, jr. observers aboard the weather planes reported both targets clear. when sweeney's aircraft arrived at the assembly point for his flight off the coast of japan, big stink failed to make the rendezvous.[194] according to cheshire, hopkins was at varying heights including 2,700 meters (9,000 ft) higher than he should have been, and was not flying tight circles over yakushima as previously agreed with sweeney and captain frederick c. bock, who was piloting the support b 29 the great artiste. instead, hopkins was flying 64 kilometer (40 mi) dogleg patterns.[197] though ordered not to circle longer than fifteen minutes, sweeney continued to wait for big stink for forty minutes. before leaving the rendezvous point, sweeney consulted ashworth, who was in charge of the bomb. as commander of the aircraft, sweeney made the decision to proceed to the primary, the city of kokura.[198] after exceeding the original departure time limit by nearly a half hour, bockscar, accompanied by the great artiste, proceeded to kokura, thirty minutes away. the delay at the rendezvous had resulted in clouds and drifting smoke over kokura from fires started by a major firebombing raid by 224 b 29s on nearby yahata the previous day.[199] additionally, the yahata steel works intentionally burned coal tar, to produce black smoke.[200] the clouds and smoke resulted in 70 percent of the area over kokura being covered, obscuring the aiming point. three bomb runs were made over the next 50 minutes, burning fuel and exposing the aircraft repeatedly to the heavy defenses around kokura, but the bombardier was unable to drop visually. by the time of the third bomb run, japanese anti aircraft fire was getting close, and second lieutenant jacob beser, who was monitoring japanese communications, reported activity on the japanese fighter direction radio bands.[201] with fuel running low because of the failed fuel pump, bockscar and the great artiste headed for their secondary target, nagasaki.[194] fuel consumption calculations made en route indicated that bockscar had insufficient fuel to reach iwo jima and would be forced to divert to okinawa, which had become entirely allied occupied territory only six weeks earlier. after initially deciding that if nagasaki were obscured on their arrival the crew would carry the bomb to okinawa and dispose of it in the ocean if necessary, ashworth agreed with sweeney's suggestion that a radar approach would be used if the target was obscured.[202][203] at about 07:50 japanese time, an air raid alert was sounded in nagasaki, but the "all clear" signal was given at 08:30. when only two b 29 superfortresses were sighted at 10:53 japanese time (gmt+9), the japanese apparently assumed that the planes were only on reconnaissance and no further alarm was given.[204] a few minutes later at 11:00 japanese time, the great artiste dropped instruments attached to three parachutes. these instruments also contained an unsigned letter to professor ryokichi sagane, a physicist at the university of tokyo who studied with three of the scientists responsible for the atomic bomb at the university of california, berkeley, urging him to tell the public about the danger involved with these weapons of mass destruction. the messages were found by military authorities but not turned over to sagane until a month later.[205] in 1949, one of the authors of the letter, luis alvarez, met with sagane and signed the letter.[206] at 11:01 japanese time, a last minute break in the clouds over nagasaki allowed bockscar's bombardier, captain kermit beahan, to visually sight the target as ordered. the fat man weapon, containing a core of about 5 kg (11 lb) of plutonium, was dropped over the city's industrial valley. it exploded 47 seconds later at 11:02 japanese time[127] at 503 ± 10 m (1,650 ± 33 ft), above a tennis court,[207] halfway between the mitsubishi steel and arms works in the south and the nagasaki arsenal in the north. this was nearly 3 km (1.9 mi) northwest of the planned hypocenter; the blast was confined to the urakami valley and a major portion of the city was protected by the intervening hills.[208] the resulting explosion released the equivalent energy of 21 ± 2 kt (87.9 ± 8.4 tj).[139] big stink spotted the explosion from 160 kilometers (100 mi) away, and flew over to observe.[209] bockscar flew on to okinawa, arriving with only sufficient fuel for a single approach. sweeney tried repeatedly to contact the control tower for landing clearance, but received no answer. he could see heavy air traffic landing and taking off from yontan airfield. firing off every flare on board to alert the field to his emergency landing, the bockscar came in fast, landing at 230 km/h (140 mph) instead of the normal 190 kilometers per hour (120 mph). the number two engine died from fuel starvation as he began the final approach. touching down on only three engines midway down the landing strip, bockscar bounced up into the air again for about 7.6 meters (25 ft) before slamming back down hard. the heavy b 29 slewed left and towards a row of parked b 24 bombers before the pilots managed to regain control. its reversible propellers were insufficient to slow the aircraft adequately, and with both pilots standing on the brakes, bockscar made a swerving 90 degree turn at the end of the runway to avoid running off it. a second engine died from fuel exhaustion before the plane came to a stop.[210] following the mission, there was confusion over the identification of the plane. the first eyewitness account by war correspondent william l. laurence of the new york times, who accompanied the mission aboard the aircraft piloted by bock, reported that sweeney was leading the mission in the great artiste. he also noted its "victor" number as 77, which was that of bockscar.[211] laurence had interviewed sweeney and his crew, and was aware that they referred to their airplane as the great artiste. except for enola gay, none of the 393rd's b 29s had yet had names painted on the noses, a fact which laurence himself noted in his account. unaware of the switch in aircraft, laurence assumed victor 77 was the great artiste,[212] which was in fact, victor 89.[213] although the bomb was more powerful than the one used on hiroshima, its effects were confined by hillsides to the narrow urakami valley.[214] of 7,500 japanese employees who worked inside the mitsubishi munitions plant, including "mobilized" students and regular workers, 6,200 were killed. some 17,000 22,000 others who worked in other war plants and factories in the city died as well.[215] the 1946 manhattan project report estimated 39,000 dead and 25,000 injured, and the 1951 u.s. led joint commission report estimated 39,214 dead and 25,153 injured; japanese led reconsiderations in the 1970s estimated 70,000 dead in nagasaki by the end of the year.[150] a modern estimate by the radiation effects research foundation (rerf) estimates a city population of 250,000 to 270,000 at the time of the bombing, of which 60,000 to 80,000 died by the end of the year.[121] unlike hiroshima's military death toll, only 150 japanese soldiers were killed instantly, including 36 from the 134th aaa regiment of the 4th aaa division.[115] at least eight allied prisoners of war (pows) died from the bombing, and as many as thirteen may have died. the eight confirmed deaths included a british pow, royal air force corporal ronald shaw,[218] and seven dutch pows.[219] one american pow, joe kieyoomia, was in nagasaki at the time of the bombing but survived, reportedly having been shielded from the effects of the bomb by the concrete walls of his cell.[220] there were 24 australian pows in nagasaki, all of whom survived.[221] the radius of total destruction was about 1.6 km (1 mi), followed by fires across the northern portion of the city to 3.2 km (2 mi) south of the bomb.[144][222] about 58 percent of the mitsubishi arms plant was damaged, and about 78 percent of the mitsubishi steel works. the mitsubishi electric works suffered only 10 percent structural damage as it was on the border of the main destruction zone. the nagasaki arsenal was destroyed in the blast.[223] although many fires likewise burnt following the bombing, in contrast to hiroshima where sufficient fuel density was available, no firestorm developed in nagasaki as the damaged areas did not furnish enough fuel to generate the phenomenon. instead, ambient wind pushed the fire spread along the valley.[224] had the bomb been dropped more precisely at the intended aiming point, which was downtown nagasaki at the heart of the historic district, the destruction to medical and administrative infrastructure would have been even greater.[64] as in hiroshima, the bombing badly dislocated the city's medical facilities. a makeshift hospital was established at the shinkozen primary school, which served as the main medical center. the trains were still running, and evacuated many victims to hospitals in nearby towns. a medical team from a naval hospital reached the city in the evening, and fire fighting brigades from the neighboring towns assisted in fighting the fires.[225] takashi nagai was a doctor working in the radiology department of nagasaki medical college hospital. he received a serious injury that severed his right temporal artery, but joined the rest of the surviving medical staff in treating bombing victims.[226] the atomic bomb explosion generated a windstorm several kilometers wide that carried ash, dust, and debris over the mountain ranges surrounding nagasaki. approximately 20 minutes after the bombing, a black rain with the consistency of mud or oil came down carrying radioactive material for one to two hours before turning clear.[227] there were plans for further attacks on japan following hiroshima and nagasaki. groves expected to have another "fat man" atomic bomb ready for use on 19 august, with three more in september and a further three in october.[87] a second little boy bomb (using u 235) would not be available until december 1945.[228][229] on 10 august, he sent a memorandum to marshall in which he wrote that "the next bomb ... should be ready for delivery on the first suitable weather after 17 or 18 august." the memo today contains hand written comment written by marshall: "it is not to be released over japan without express authority from the president."[87] at the cabinet meeting that morning, truman discussed these actions. james forrestal paraphrased truman as saying "there will be further dropping of the atomic bomb," while henry a. wallace recorded in his diary that: "truman said he had given orders to stop atomic bombing. he said the thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrific. he didn't like the idea of killing, as he said, 'all those kids.'"[230] the previous order that the target cities were to be attacked with atomic bombs "as made ready" was thus modified.[231] there was already discussion in the war department about conserving the bombs then in production for operation downfall, and marshall suggested to stimson that the remaining cities on the target list be spared attack with atomic bombs.[232] two more fat man assemblies were readied, and scheduled to leave kirtland field for tinian on 11 and 14 august,[233] and tibbets was ordered by lemay to return to albuquerque, new mexico, to collect them.[234] at los alamos, technicians worked 24 hours straight to cast another plutonium core.[235] although cast, it still needed to be pressed and coated, which would take until 16 august.[236] therefore, it could have been ready for use on 19 august. unable to reach marshall, groves ordered on his own authority on 13 august that the core should not be shipped.[231] until 9 august, japan's war council still insisted on its four conditions for surrender. the full cabinet met at 14:30 on 9 august, and spent most of the day debating surrender. anami conceded that victory was unlikely, but argued in favor of continuing the war. the meeting ended at 17:30, with no decision having been reached. suzuki went to the palace to report on the outcome of the meeting, where he met with kōichi kido, the lord keeper of the privy seal of japan. kido informed him that the emperor had agreed to hold an imperial conference, and gave a strong indication that the emperor would consent to surrender on condition that kokutai be preserved. a second cabinet meeting was held at 18:00. only four ministers supported anami's position of adhering to the four conditions, but since cabinet decisions had to be unanimous, no decision was reached before it ended at 22:00.[237] calling an imperial conference required the signatures of the prime minister and the two service chiefs, but the chief cabinet secretary hisatsune sakomizu had already obtained signatures from toyoda and general yoshijirō umezu in advance, and he reneged on his promise to inform them if a meeting was to be held. the meeting commenced at 23:50. no consensus had emerged by 02:00 on 10 august, but the emperor gave his "sacred decision",[238] authorizing the foreign minister, shigenori tōgō, to notify the allies that japan would accept their terms on one condition, that the declaration "does not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of his majesty as a sovereign ruler."[239] on 12 august, the emperor informed the imperial family of his decision to surrender. one of his uncles, prince asaka, asked whether the war would be continued if the kokutai could not be preserved. hirohito simply replied, "of course."[240] as the allied terms seemed to leave intact the principle of the preservation of the throne, hirohito recorded on 14 august his capitulation announcement which was broadcast to the japanese nation the next day despite an attempted military coup d'état by militarists opposed to the surrender.[241] in his declaration's fifth paragraph, hirohito solely mentions the duration of the conflict; and did not explicitly mention the soviets as a factor for surrender: but now the war has lasted for nearly four years. despite the best that has been done by every one the gallant fighting of military and naval forces, the diligence and assiduity of our servants of the state and the devoted service of our one hundred million people, the war situation has developed not necessarily to japan's advantage, while the general trends of the world have all turned against her interest. the sixth paragraph by hirohito specifically mentions the use of nuclear ordnance devices, from the aspect of the unprecedented damage they caused: moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization. the seventh paragraph gives the reason for the ending of hostilities against the allies: such being the case, how are we to save the millions of our subjects, or to atone ourselves before the hallowed spirits of our imperial ancestors? this is the reason why we have ordered the acceptance of the provisions of the joint declaration of the powers.[242] in his "rescript to the soldiers and sailors" delivered on 17 august, hirohito did not refer to the atomic bombs or possible human extinction, and instead described the soviet declaration of war as "endangering the very foundation of the empire's existence."[243] on 10 august 1945, the day after the nagasaki bombing, military photographer yōsuke yamahata, correspondent higashi, and artist yamada arrived in the city with instructions to record the destruction for propaganda purposes. yamahata took scores of photographs, and on 21 august, they appeared in mainichi shimbun, a popular japanese newspaper. after japan's surrender and the arrival of american forces, copies of his photographs were seized amid the ensuing censorship, but some records have survived.[244] leslie nakashima, a former united press (up) journalist, filed the first personal account of the scene to appear in american newspapers. he observed that large numbers of survivors continued to die from what later became recognized as radiation poisoning.[245] on 31 august, the new york times published an abbreviated version of his 27 august up article. nearly all references to uranium poisoning were omitted. an editor's note was added to say that, according to american scientists, "the atomic bomb will not have any lingering after effects."[246][245] wilfred burchett was also one of the first western journalists to visit hiroshima after the bombing. he arrived alone by train from tokyo on 2 september, defying the traveling ban put in place on western correspondents.[247] burchett's dispatch, "the atomic plague", was printed by the daily express newspaper in london on 5 september 1945. the reports from nakashima and burchett informed the public for the first time of the gruesome effects of radiation and nuclear fallout radiation burns and radiation poisoning, sometimes lasting more than thirty days after the blast.[248][249] burchett especially noted that people were dying "horribly" after bleeding from orifices, and their flesh would rot away from the injection holes where vitamin a was administered, to no avail.[247] the new york times then apparently reversed course and ran a front page story by bill lawrence confirming the existence of a terrifying affliction in hiroshima, where many had symptoms such as hair loss and vomiting blood before dying.[247] lawrence had gained access to the city as part of a press junket promoting the u.s. army air force. some reporters were horrified by the scene, however, referring to what they saw as a "death laboratory" littered with "human guinea pigs". general macarthur found the reporting to have turned from good pr into bad pr and threatened to court martial the entire group. he withdrew burchett's press accreditation and expelled the journalist from the occupation zones.[250] the authorities also accused him of being under the sway of japanese propaganda and later suppressed another story, on the nagasaki bombing, by george weller of the chicago daily news. less than a week after his new york times story was published, lawrence also backtracked and dismissed the reports on radiation sickness as japanese efforts to undermine american morale.[251][247] a member of the united states strategic bombing survey, lieutenant daniel a. mcgovern, arrived in september 1945 to document the effects of the bombing of japan.[252] he used a film crew to document the effects of the bombings in early 1946. the film crew shot 27,000 m (90,000 ft) of film, resulting in a three hour documentary titled the effects of the atomic bombs against hiroshima and nagasaki. the documentary included images from hospitals, burned out buildings and cars, and rows of skulls and bones on the ground. it was classified "secret" for the next 22 years.[253][254] motion picture company nippon eigasha started sending cameramen to nagasaki and hiroshima in september 1945. on 24 october 1945, a u.s. military policeman stopped a nippon eigasha cameraman from continuing to film in nagasaki. all nippon eigasha's reels were confiscated by the american authorities, but they were requested by the japanese government, and declassified.[254] the public release of film footage of the city post attack, and some research about the effects of the attack, was restricted during the occupation of japan,[255] but the hiroshima based magazine, chugoku bunka, in its first issue published on 10 march 1946, devoted itself to detailing the damage from the bombing.[256] the book hiroshima, written by pulitzer prize winner john hersey and originally published in article form in the new yorker,[257] is reported to have reached tokyo in english by january 1947, and the translated version was released in japan in 1949.[258][259][260] it narrated the stories of the lives of six bomb survivors from immediately prior to, and months after, the dropping of the little boy bomb.[257] beginning in 1974, a compilation of drawings and artwork made by the survivors of the bombings began to be compiled, with completion in 1977, and under both book and exhibition format, it was titled the unforgettable fire.[261] the bombing amazed otto hahn and other german atomic scientists, whom the british held at farm hall in operation epsilon. hahn stated that he had not believed an atomic weapon "would be possible for another twenty years"; werner heisenberg did not believe the news at first. carl friedrich von weizsäcker said "i think it's dreadful of the americans to have done it. i think it is madness on their part", but heisenberg replied, "one could equally well say 'that's the quickest way of ending the war'". hahn was grateful that the german project had not succeeded in developing "such an inhumane weapon"; karl wirtz observed that even if it had, "we would have obliterated london but would still not have conquered the world, and then they would have dropped them on us".[262] hahn told the others, "once i wanted to suggest that all uranium should be sunk to the bottom of the ocean".[262] the vatican agreed; l'osservatore romano expressed regret that the bomb's inventors did not destroy the weapon for the benefit of humanity.[263] rev. cuthbert thicknesse, the dean of st albans, prohibited using st albans abbey for a thanksgiving service for the war's end, calling the use of atomic weapons "an act of wholesale, indiscriminate massacre".[264] nonetheless, news of the atomic bombing was greeted more positively in the u.s.; a poll in fortune magazine in late 1945 showed a significant minority of americans (23 percent) wishing that more atomic bombs could have been dropped on japan.[265][266] the initial positive response was supported by the imagery presented to the public (mainly the powerful images of the mushroom cloud).[265] during this time in america, it was a common practice for editors to keep graphic images of death out of films, magazines, and newspapers.[267] an estimated 90,000 to 166,000 people in hiroshima (between 26 and 49 percent of its population) and 60,000 to 80,000 people in nagasaki (between 22 and 32 percent of its population) died in 1945, of which a majority in each case were killed on the days of the bombings, due to the force and heat of the blasts themselves. nearly all of the remainder of victims died within two to four months, due to radiation exposure and resulting complications.[121][150] one atomic bomb casualty commission (abcc) report discusses 6,882 people examined in hiroshima and 6,621 people examined in nagasaki, who were largely within 2,000 meters (6,600 ft) of the hypocenter, who suffered injuries from the blast and heat but died from complications frequently compounded by acute radiation syndrome (ars), all within about 20 to 30 days.[268][269] many people not injured by the blast eventually died within that timeframe as well after suffering from ars. at the time, the doctors had no idea what the cause was and were unable to effectively treat the condition.[247] midori naka was the first death officially certified to be the result of radiation poisoning or, as it was referred to by many, the "atomic bomb disease". she was some 650 meters (2,130 ft) from the hypocenter at hiroshima and would die on 24 august 1945 after traveling to tokyo. it was unappreciated at the time but the average radiation dose that would kill approximately 50 percent of adults (the ld50) was approximately halved; that is, smaller doses were made more lethal when the individual experienced concurrent blast or burn polytraumatic injuries.[270] conventional skin injuries that cover a large area frequently result in bacterial infection; the risk of sepsis and death is increased when a usually non lethal radiation dose moderately suppresses the white blood cell count.[271] in the spring of 1948, the abcc was established in accordance with a presidential directive from truman to the national academy of sciences national research council to conduct investigations of the late effects of radiation among the survivors in hiroshima and nagasaki.[272] in 1956, the abcc published the effect of exposure to the atomic bombs on pregnancy termination in hiroshima and nagasaki.[273] the abcc became the radiation effects research foundation (rerf) on 1 april 1975. a binational organization run by both the united states and japan, the rerf is still in operation today.[274] cancers do not immediately emerge after exposure to radiation; instead, radiation induced cancer has a minimum latency period of some five years and above, and leukemia some two years and above, peaking around six to eight years later.[275] jarrett foley published the first major reports on the significant increased incidence of the latter among survivors. almost all cases of leukemia over the following 50 years were in people exposed to more than 1gy.[276] in a strictly dependent manner dependent on their distance from the hypocenter, in the 1987 life span study, conducted by the radiation effects research foundation, a statistical excess of 507 cancers, of undefined lethality, were observed in 79,972 hibakusha who had still been living between 1958 and 1987 and who took part in the study.[277] as the epidemiology study continues with time, the rerf estimates that, from 1950 to 2000, 46 percent of leukemia deaths which may include sadako sasaki and 11 percent of solid cancers of unspecified lethality were likely due to radiation from the bombs or some other post attack city effects, with the statistical excess being 200 leukemia deaths and 1,700 solid cancers of undeclared lethality. both of these statistics being derived from the observation of approximately half of the total survivors, strictly those who took part in the study.[278] a meta analysis from 2016 found that radiation exposure increases cancer risk, but also that the average lifespan of survivors was reduced by only a few months compared to those not exposed to radiation.[279] while during the preimplantation period, that is one to ten days following conception, intrauterine radiation exposure of "at least 0.2 gy" can cause complications of implantation and death of the human embryo.[280] the number of miscarriages caused by the radiation from the bombings, during this radiosensitive period, is not known. one of the early studies conducted by the abcc was on the outcome of pregnancies occurring in hiroshima and nagasaki, and in a control city, kure, located 29 km (18 mi) south of hiroshima, to discern the conditions and outcomes related to radiation exposure.[281] james v. neel led the study which found that the overall number of birth defects was not significantly higher among the children of survivors who were pregnant at the time of the bombings.[282] he also studied the longevity of the children who survived the bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki, reporting that between 90 and 95 percent were still living 50 years later.[283] while the national academy of sciences raised the possibility that neel's procedure did not filter the kure population for possible radiation exposure which could bias the results,[284] overall, a statistically insignificant increase in birth defects occurred directly after the bombings of nagasaki and hiroshima when the cities were taken as wholes, in terms of distance from the hypocenters. however, neel and others noted that in approximately 50 humans who were of an early gestational age at the time of the bombing and who were all within about 1 kilometer (0.62 mi) of the hypocenter, an increase in microencephaly and anencephaly was observed upon birth, with the incidence of these two particular malformations being nearly three times what was to be expected when compared to the control group in kure.[285] in 1985, johns hopkins university geneticist james f. crow examined neel's research and confirmed that the number of birth defects was not significantly higher in hiroshima and nagasaki.[286] many members of the abcc and its successor radiation effects research foundation (rerf) were still looking for possible birth defects among the survivors decades later, but found no evidence that they were significantly common among the survivors or inherited in the children of survivors.[283][287] despite the small sample size of 1,600 to 1,800 persons who came forth as prenatally exposed at the time of the bombings, that were both within a close proximity to the two hypocenters, to survive the in utero absorption of a substantial dose of radiation and then the malnourished post attack environment, data from this cohort do support the increased risk of severe mental retardation (smr), that was observed in some 30 individuals, with smr being a common outcome of the aforementioned microencephaly. while a lack of statistical data, with just 30 individuals out of 1,800, prevents a definitive determination of a threshold point, the data collected suggests a threshold intrauterine or fetal dose for smr, at the most radiosensitive period of cognitive development, when there is the largest number of undifferentiated neural cells (8 to 15 weeks post conception) to begin at a threshold dose of approximately "0.09" to "0.15" gy, with the risk then linearly increasing to a 43 percent rate of smr when exposed to a fetal dose of 1 gy at any point during these weeks of rapid neurogenesis.[288][289] however either side of this radiosensitive age, none of the prenatally exposed to the bombings at an age less than 8 weeks, that is prior to synaptogenesis or at a gestational age more than 26 weeks "were observed to be mentally retarded", with the condition therefore being isolated to those solely of 8 26 weeks of age and who absorbed more than approximately "0.09" to "0.15" gy of prompt radiation energy.[288][290] examination of the prenatally exposed in terms of iq performance and school records, determined the beginning of a statistically significant reduction in both, when exposed to greater than 0.1 to 0.5 gray, during the same gestational period of 8 25 weeks. however outside this period, at less than 8 weeks and greater than 26 after conception, "there is no evidence of a radiation related effect on scholastic performance."[288] the reporting of doses in terms of absorbed energy in units of grays and rads   rather than the biologically significant, biologically weighted sievert in both the smr and cognitive performance data   is typical.[290] the reported threshold dose variance between the two cities is suggested to be a manifestation of the difference between x ray and neutron absorption, with little boy emitting substantially more neutron flux, whereas the baratol that surrounded the core of fat man filtered or shifted the absorbed neutron radiation profile, so that the dose of radiation energy received in nagasaki was mostly that from exposure to x rays/gamma rays. contrast this to the environment within 1500 meters of the hypocenter at hiroshima, where the in utero dose depended more on the absorption of neutrons which have a higher biological effect per unit of energy absorbed.[291] from the radiation dose reconstruction work, the estimated dosimetry at hiroshima still has the largest uncertainty as the little boy bomb design was never tested before deployment or afterward; as such, the estimated radiation profile absorbed by individuals at hiroshima had required greater reliance on calculations than the japanese soil, concrete and roof tile measurements which began to reach accurate levels and thereby inform researchers, in the 1990s.[292][293][294] many other investigations into cognitive outcomes, such as schizophrenia as a result of prenatal exposure, have been conducted with "no statistically significant linear relationship seen". there is a suggestion that in the most extremely exposed, those who survived within a kilometer or so of the hypocenters, a trend emerges akin to that seen in smr, though the sample size is too small to determine with any significance.[295] the survivors of the bombings are called hibakusha (被爆者, .mw parser output .ipa label small{font size:85%}.mw parser output .references .ipa label small,.mw parser output .infobox .ipa label small,.mw parser output .navbox .ipa label small{font size:100%}pronounced [çibaꜜkɯ̥ɕa] or [çibakɯ̥ꜜɕa]), a japanese word that translates to "explosion affected people". the japanese government has recognized about 650,000 people as hibakusha. as of 31 march 2024[update], 106,825 were still alive, mostly in japan,[296] the government of japan recognizes about one percent of these as having illnesses caused by radiation.[297][better source needed] the memorials in hiroshima and nagasaki contain lists of the names of the hibakusha who are known to have died since the bombings. updated annually on the anniversaries of the bombings, as of august 2024[update], the memorials record the names of more than 540,000 hibakusha; 344,306 in hiroshima[298] and 198,785 in nagasaki.[299] if they discuss their background, hibakusha and their children were (and still are) victims of fear based discrimination and exclusion for marriage or work[300] due to public ignorance; much of the public persist with the belief that the hibakusha carry some hereditary or even contagious disease.[301] this is despite the fact that no statistically demonstrable increase of birth defects/congenital malformations was found among the later conceived children born to survivors of the nuclear weapons used at hiroshima and nagasaki, or has been found in the later conceived children of cancer survivors who had previously received radiotherapy.[302][303][304] the surviving women of hiroshima and nagasaki, that could conceive, who were exposed to substantial amounts of radiation, had children with no higher incidence of abnormalities/birth defects than the rate which is observed in the japanese average.[305][306][307] a study of the long term psychological effects of the bombings on the survivors found that even 17 20 years after the bombings had occurred survivors showed a higher prevalence of anxiety and somatization symptoms.[308] perhaps as many as 200 people from hiroshima sought refuge in nagasaki. the 2006 documentary twice survived: the doubly atomic bombed of hiroshima and nagasaki documented 165 nijū hibakusha (lit. double explosion affected people), nine of whom claimed to be in the blast zone in both cities.[309] on 24 march 2009, the japanese government officially recognized tsutomu yamaguchi as a double hibakusha. he was confirmed to be 3 km (1.9 mi) from ground zero in hiroshima on a business trip when the bomb was detonated. he was seriously burnt on his left side and spent the night in hiroshima. he arrived at his home city of nagasaki on 8 august, the day before the bombing, and he was exposed to residual radiation while searching for his relatives. he was the first officially recognized survivor of both bombings.[310] he died in 2010 of stomach cancer.[311] during the war, japan brought as many as 670,000 korean conscripts to japan to work as forced labor.[312] about 5,000 8,000 koreans were killed in hiroshima and 1,500 2,000 in nagasaki.[313] korean survivors had a difficult time fighting for the same recognition as hibakusha as afforded to all japanese survivors, a situation which resulted in the denial of free health benefits to them in japan. most issues were eventually addressed in 2008 through lawsuits.[314] hiroshima was subsequently struck by typhoon ida on 17 september 1945. more than half the bridges were destroyed, and the roads and railroads were damaged, further devastating the city.[315] the population increased from 83,000 soon after the bombing to 146,000 in february 1946.[316] the city was rebuilt after the war, with help from the national government through the hiroshima peace memorial city construction law passed in 1949. it provided financial assistance for reconstruction, along with land donated that was previously owned by the national government and used for military purposes.[317] in 1949, a design was selected for the hiroshima peace memorial park. hiroshima prefectural industrial promotion hall, the closest surviving building to the location of the bomb's detonation, was designated the hiroshima peace memorial. the hiroshima peace memorial museum was opened in 1955 in the peace park.[318] hiroshima also contains a peace pagoda, built in 1966 by nipponzan myōhōji daisanga.[319] on 27 january 1981, the atomic bombing relic selecting committee of hiroshima announced to build commemorative plaques at nine historical sites related to the bombing in the year. genbaku dome, shima hospital (hypocenter), motoyasu bridge [ja] all unveiled plaques with historical photographs and descriptions. the rest sites planned including hondō shopping street, motomachi no.2 army hospital site, hiroshima red cross hospital [ja], fukuromachi elementary school [ja], hiroshima city hall [ja] and hiroshima station. the committee also planned to establish 30 commemorative plaques in three years.[320] nagasaki was rebuilt and dramatically changed form after the war. the pace of reconstruction was initially slow, and the first simple emergency dwellings were not provided until 1946. the focus on redevelopment was the replacement of war industries with foreign trade, shipbuilding and fishing. this was formally declared when the nagasaki international culture city reconstruction law was passed in may 1949.[316] new temples were built, as well as new churches owing to an increase in the presence of christianity. the nagasaki atomic bomb museum opened in the mid 1990s.[321] some of the rubble was left as a memorial, such as a torii at sannō shrine, and an arch near ground zero. in 2013, four locations were designated registered monuments to provide legal protection against future development. these four sites, together with "ground zero" (the hypocenter of the atomic bomb explosion) were collectively designated a national historic site in 2016.[322] these sites include: the role of the bombings in japan's surrender, and the ethical, legal, and military controversies surrounding the united states' justification for them have been the subject of scholarly and popular debate.[323] on one hand, it has been argued that the bombings caused the japanese surrender, thereby preventing casualties that an invasion of japan would have involved.[7][324] stimson talked of saving one million casualties.[325] the naval blockade might have starved the japanese into submission without an invasion, but this would also have resulted in many more japanese deaths.[326] however, critics of the bombings have asserted that atomic weapons are fundamentally immoral, that the bombings were war crimes, and that they constituted state terrorism.[327] the japanese may have surrendered without the bombings, but only an unconditional surrender would satisfy the allies.[328] others, such as historian tsuyoshi hasegawa, argued that the entry of the soviet union into the war against japan "played a much greater role than the atomic bombs in inducing japan to surrender because it dashed any hope that japan could terminate the war through moscow's mediation".[329][330] a view among critics of the bombings, popularized by american historian gar alperovitz in 1965, is that the united states used nuclear weapons to intimidate the soviet union in the early stages of the cold war. james orr wrote that this idea became the accepted position in japan and that it may have played some part in the decision making of the us government.[331] the hague conventions of 1899 and 1907, which address the codes of wartime conduct on land and at sea, were adopted before the rise of air power. despite repeated diplomatic attempts to update international humanitarian law to include aerial warfare, it was not updated before world war ii. the absence of specific international humanitarian law did not mean aerial warfare was not covered under the laws of war, but rather that there was no general agreement of how to interpret those laws.[332] this means that aerial bombardment of civilian areas in enemy territory by all major belligerents during world war ii was not prohibited by positive or specific customary international humanitarian law.[333] in 1963 the bombings were subjected to judicial review in ryuichi shimoda v. the state. the district court of tokyo ruled the use of nuclear weapons in warfare was not illegal,[334][335] but held in its obiter dictum[335] that the atomic bombings of both hiroshima and nagasaki were illegal under international law of that time, as an indiscriminate bombardment of undefended cities. the court denied the appellants compensation on the grounds that the japanese government had waived the right for reparations from the u.s. government under the treaty of san francisco.[336] by 30 june 1946, there were components for nine atomic bombs in the us arsenal, all fat man devices identical to the one used at nagasaki.[337] the nuclear weapons were handmade devices, and a great deal of work remained to improve their ease of assembly, safety, reliability and storage before they were ready for production. there were also many improvements to their performance that had been suggested or recommended, but that had not been possible under the pressure of wartime development.[338] the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, fleet admiral william d. leahy, decried the use of the atomic bombs as adopting "an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the dark ages",[339] but in october 1947 he reported a military requirement for 400 bombs.[340] the american monopoly on nuclear weapons lasted four years before the soviet union detonated an atomic bomb in september 1949.[340] the united states responded with the development of the hydrogen bomb, a thousand times as powerful as the bombs that devastated hiroshima and nagasaki.[341] such ordinary fission bombs would henceforth be regarded as small tactical nuclear weapons. by 1986, the united states had 23,317 nuclear weapons and the soviet union had 40,159. in early 2019, more than 90% of the world's 13,865 nuclear weapons were owned by the united states and russia.[342][343] by 2020, nine nations had nuclear weapons,[344] but japan was not one of them.[345] japan reluctantly signed the treaty on the non proliferation of nuclear weapons in february 1970,[346] but is still sheltered under the american nuclear umbrella. american nuclear weapons were stored on okinawa, and sometimes in japan itself, albeit in contravention of agreements between the two nations.[347] lacking the resources to fight the soviet union using conventional forces, nato came to depend on the use of nuclear weapons to defend itself during the cold war, a policy that became known in the 1950s as the new look.[348] in the decades after hiroshima and nagasaki, the united states would threaten many times to use its nuclear weapons.[349] on 7 july 2017, more than 120 countries voted to adopt the un treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. elayne whyte gómez, president of the un negotiations, said, "the world has been waiting for this legal norm for 70 years".[350] as of 2024[update], japan has not signed the treaty.[351][352][353][354]

our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. less than two weeks after being sworn in as president, harry s. truman received a long report from secretary of war henry l. stimson. “within four months,” it began, “we shall in all probability have completed the most terrible weapon ever known in human history.” truman’s decision to use the atomic bomb on hiroshima and nagasaki resulted from the interplay of his temperament and several other factors, including his perspective on the war objectives defined by his predecessor, franklin d. roosevelt, the expectations of the american public, an assessment of the possibilities of achieving a quick victory by other means, and the complex american relationship with the soviet union. although in later decades there was considerable debate about whether the bombings were ethically justified, virtually all of america’s political and military leadership, as well as most of those involved in the atomic bomb project, believed at the time that truman’s decision was correct. during world war i, truman commanded a battery of close support 75mm artillery pieces in france and personally witnessed the human costs of intense front line combat. after returning home, he became convinced that he probably would have been killed if the war had lasted a few months longer. at least two of his world war i comrades had lost sons in world war ii, and truman had four nephews in uniform. his first hand experience with warfare clearly influenced his thinking about whether to use the atomic bomb. a second factor in truman’s decision was the legacy of roosevelt, who had defined the nation’s goal in ending the war as the enemy’s “unconditional surrender,” a term coined to reassure the soviet union that the western allies would fight to the end against germany. it was also an expression of the american temperament; the united states was accustomed to winning wars and dictating the peace. on may 8, 1945, germany surrendered unconditionally to great rejoicing in the allied countries. the hostility of the american public toward japan was even more intense and demanded an unambiguous total victory in the pacific. truman was acutely aware that the country in its fourth year of total war also wanted victory as quickly as possible. a skilled politician who knew when to compromise, truman respected decisiveness. meeting with anthony eden, the british foreign secretary, in early may, he declared: “i am here to make decisions, and whether they prove right or wrong i am going to make them,” an attitude that implied neither impulsiveness nor solitude. after being presented with stimson’s report, he appointed a blue ribbon “interim committee” to advise him on how to deal with the atomic bomb. headed by stimson and james byrnes, whom truman would soon name secretary of state, the interim committee was a group of respected statesmen and scientists closely linked to the war effort. after five meetings between may 9 and june 1, it recommended use of the bomb against japan as soon as possible and rejected arguments for advance warning. clearly in line with truman’s inclinations, the recommendations of the interim committee amounted to a prepackaged decision. among those who had full knowledge of the manhattan project to build an atomic bomb, most agreed that the weapon should be used. however, sharp dissent came from a group of scientists at the project’s facilities at the university of chicago. their leader, leo szilard, along with two prestigious colleagues, walter bartkey, a dean of the university of chicago, and harold urey, director of the project’s research in gaseous diffusion at columbia university, sought a meeting with truman but were diverted to byrnes, who received them with polite skepticism. as he listened to them argue that the united states should refrain from using the bomb and that it should share its atomic secrets with the rest of the world after the war, byrnes felt that he was dealing with unworldly intellectuals who had no grasp of political and diplomatic realities. he neither took their suggestions seriously nor discussed them with truman, who most likely would have shared his attitude anyway. szilard and his associates seem to have represented only a small minority of the many hundreds of scientists who worked on the bomb project. in july 1945 project administrators polled 150 of the 300 scientists working at the chicago site and could find only 19 who rejected any military use of the bomb and another 39 who supported an experimental demonstration with representatives of japan present, followed by an opportunity for surrender. most of the scientists, however, supported some use of the bomb: 23 supported using it in a way that was militarily “most effective,” and 69 opted for a “military demonstration in japan” with an opportunity for surrender “before full use of the weapons.” in later years, several key figures, including general dwight d. eisenhower, general douglas macarthur, admiral william leahy, and assistant secretary of war john j. mccloy, claimed to have opposed using the bomb, but there is no firm evidence of any substantial contemporary opposition. most of the scientists, civilian leaders, and military officials responsible for the development of the bomb clearly assumed that its military use, however unpleasant, was the inevitable outcome of the project. although they were forced to formulate an opinion before a single bomb had been built or tested, it is unlikely that a more precise knowledge of the weapon’s power would have changed many minds. truman faced almost no pressure whatever to reexamine his own inclinations. when truman became president, a long and bitter military campaign in the pacific, marked by fanatical japanese resistance and strongly held racial and cultural hostilities on both sides, was nearing its conclusion. in february 1945, about a month after he was sworn in as vice president, american troops invaded the small island of iwo jima, located 760 miles (1,220 km) from tokyo. the americans took four weeks to defeat the japanese forces and suffered nearly 30,000 casualties. on april 1, 12 days before he became president, the united states invaded okinawa, located just 350 miles (560 km) south of the japanese home island of kyushu. the battle of okinawa was one of the fiercest of the pacific war. the small island was defended by 100,000 japanese troops, and japanese military leaders attempted with some success to mobilize the island’s entire civilian population. offshore, japanese kamikaze planes inflicted severe losses on the american fleet. after nearly 12 weeks of fighting, the united states secured the island on june 21 at a cost of nearly 50,000 american casualties. japanese casualties were staggering, with approximately 90,000 defending troops and at least 100,000 civilians killed. the americans considered okinawa a dress rehearsal for the invasion of the japanese home islands, for which the united states was finalizing a two stage plan. the first phase, code named olympic, was scheduled for late october 1945, with a landing on kyushu, defended by an estimated 350,000 japanese troops backed by at least 1,000 kamikaze planes. olympic entailed the use of nearly 800,000 american assault troops and an enormous naval fleet. the scale of the operation was to be similar to that of the normandy invasion in france in june 1944, which involved 156,000 allied troops in the first 24 hours and approximately 850,000 others by the end of the first week of july. estimates of casualties from an invasion of japan varied, but nearly everyone involved in the planning assumed that they would be substantial; mid range estimates projected 132,000 american casualties, with 40,000 deaths. truman told his military advisers that he hoped “there was a possibility of preventing an okinawa from one end of japan to another.” the second phase of the plan, code named coronet, envisioned a landing near tokyo on the home island of honshu in the spring of 1946 and a japanese surrender sometime before the end of the year. the same mid range estimate that predicted 132,000 casualties for olympic projected 90,000 for coronet. if both invasions were necessary, by the most conservative estimates the united states would suffer 100,000 killed, wounded, or missing, as compared to a pacific war total that by mid june was approaching 170,000. thus, the best estimates available to truman predicted that the war would continue for a year or longer and that casualties would increase by 60 to 100 percent or more. but would japan have surrendered without either invasion? by mid 1945, an american naval blockade had effectively cut off the home islands from the rest of the world. moreover, regular incendiary bombing raids were destroying huge portions of one city after another, food and fuel were in short supply, and millions of civilians were homeless. general curtis lemay, the commander of american air forces in the pacific, estimated that by the end of september he would have destroyed every target in japan worth hitting. the argument that japan would have collapsed by early fall is speculative but powerful. nevertheless, all the evidence available to washington indicated that japan planned to fight to the end. throughout july, intelligence reports claimed that troop strength on kyushu was steadily escalating. moreover, american leaders learned that japan was seeking to open talks with the soviet union in the hopes of making a deal that would forestall soviet entry into the pacific war. in the absence of formal negotiations for a japanese surrender, the two sides communicated with each other tentatively and indirectly, and both were constrained by internal sentiment that discouraged compromise. in japan no military official counseled surrender, and civilian leaders who knew that the war was lost dared not speak their thoughts openly. vague contacts initiated by junior level japanese diplomats in sweden and switzerland quickly turned to nothing for lack of high level guidance. the japanese initiative to the soviet union also produced no results because tokyo advanced no firm concessions. japan faced inevitable defeat, but the concept of surrender carried a stigma of dishonour too great to contemplate. in the united states, conversely, the sure prospect of total victory made it close to impossible for truman to abandon the goal of unconditional surrender. the most tangled problem in this conflict of national perspectives was the future of the japanese emperor, hirohito. americans viewed hirohito as the symbol of the forces that had driven japan to launch an aggressive, imperialistic war. most americans wanted him removed; many assumed he would be hanged. few imagined that the institution he embodied would be allowed to continue after the war. private discussions among state department officials and truman’s advisers achieved no consensus. although some thought it necessary to keep hirohito on the throne in order to prevent mass popular resistance against the american occupation, others wanted him arrested and tried as a necessary first step in the eradication of japanese militarism. american propaganda broadcasts beamed at japan hinted that he might be kept on the throne, but truman was unwilling to give an open guarantee. the japanese saw the emperor as embodying in a near mystical way the divine spirit of the japanese race. although not exactly an object of religious worship, he was venerated as an all important symbol of national identity. moreover, the entire japanese civilian and military leadership had a special interest in his survival. they were his servants, and for the military officers especially hirohito’s continuance represented their best hope of retaining some power or at least avoiding execution or prison in the postwar period. in the absence of something approaching formal negotiations, american and japanese diplomats could not even meet to discuss a compromise formula for postwar japan. although the atomic bomb was never conceived as a tool to be employed in u.s. soviet relations, its very existence would have an unavoidable impact on every aspect of america’s foreign affairs. truman regarded the soviet union as a valued ally in the just concluded fight against nazi germany, but he distrusted it as a totalitarian state and was wary of its postwar plans. his personal diaries and letters reveal hope for a satisfactory postwar relationship but determination not to embark on a policy of unilateral concessions. by mid summer 1945, although he was already upset by indications that the soviets intended to impose “friendly” governments in the eastern european states they occupied, truman still wanted the soviets to enter the war against japan. truman and byrnes also certainly assumed that the atomic bomb would greatly increase the power and leverage of the united states in world politics and would win the grudging respect of the soviets. however, it is a giant leap to conclude that the bomb was used primarily as a warning to the soviet union rather than as a means to compel japan’s surrender. at the potsdam conference in germany in mid july, truman met with british prime minister winston churchill (who was succeeded near the end of the conference by clement attlee) and soviet leader josef stalin. from truman’s perspective, the conference had two purposes: to lay the groundwork for rebuilding postwar europe and to secure soviet participation in the war against japan. on july 16, the day before the conference opened, truman received word that the first atomic bomb had been successfully tested in the new mexico desert. he shared the information fully with churchill (britain was a partner in the development of the bomb) but simply told stalin that the united states had created a powerful new weapon. stalin who had detailed knowledge of the project through espionage feigned indifference. he also reaffirmed an earlier pledge to attack japanese positions in manchuria no later than mid august. truman, apparently uncertain that the bomb alone could compel surrender, was elated. revisionist historians would later argue that the bomb was used in the hope of securing japan’s surrender before the soviet union could enter the pacific war.

alternatively, search more than 1 million objects from iwm collections alternatively, search more than 1 million objects from iwm collections the first atomic bomb at hiroshima at 8.15 on the morning of 6th august 1945, the japanese city of hiroshima was devastated by the first atomic bomb to be used as a weapon of war. the bomb, nicknamed `little boy’, was dropped from the usaaf b29 bomber `enola gay’ and exploded some 1,800 feet above the city. delivering the equivalent of around 12.5 kilotons of tnt, the bomb reduced 5 square miles of the city centre to ashes and caused the deaths of an estimated 120,000 people within the first four days following the blast. many were instantly vaporised by the explosion, others died afterwards from the effects of burns and radiation. three days later, just after 11 on the morning of 9th august, a second atomic bomb nicknamed `fat man’ exploded above the city of nagasaki. although it was even more powerful than `little boy’, the destruction caused by this bomb was less than at hiroshima due to the nature of the terrain (the original target had been the city of kokura, but the b29 carrying the bomb had been diverted to nagasaki because of heavy cloud cover). nonetheless, over 2 square miles of the city were pulverised and some 73,000 people killed. destruction at nagasaki a general view of nagasaki looking towards the hypocentre, a mile behind the mitsubish armament and steel works, seen across the urakami river in the centre background. in the foreground is the shell of the mitsubishi woodworking plant, which was unharmed by the blast, but was gutted by fire. the two atomic explosions had the effects desired by the allies. on 10th august the japanese government indicated its readiness to accept defeat, subject to certain conditions. on 14th august it finally accepted the demand for unconditional surrender. the following day was declared `victory over japan’ or vj day, although it was not until 2nd september that the final japanese surrender was signed, thereby bringing the second world war to a formal close. why had the allied powers considered it necessary to inflict such unprecedented destruction on japanese civilians in order to bring the war to an end? at the potsdam conference (17th july   2nd august 1945) the allies formulated their terms for ending the war with japan, which centred on that country’s acceptance of unconditional surrender, as had been the case with nazi germany in may. however, the allies were also aware that whilst the japanese emperor hirohito desired an end to hostilities, and would probably accept the unconditional capitulation demanded, the `hawks’ of the japanese military and civilian leadership were totally opposed to such a humiliating condition and were ready to fight to the finish   whatever that might look like. it was this knowledge that informed the contents of the potsdam declaration, in particular the statement that failure to accept unconditional surrender would result in “prompt and utter destruction” for japan. it was no coincidence that on 16th july, the day before the opening of the potsdam conference, the world’s first nuclear bomb was detonated in the desert of new mexico. it demonstrated a destructive power never before seen in a man made device. in one split second, the face of war changed completely. up until that time, the defeat of japan had been planned and prosecuted with the conventional means of land, sea and air forces. the main debate in early 1945, particularly within the us joint chiefs of staff, was whether that defeat would be best achieved primarily by naval blockade and bombing of infrastructure, or by an invasion of the japanese home islands. the latter strategy won the day, as being potentially the least costly to the allies in the long run, and became`operation downfall’. it was planned to start in november 1945, and was predicted to run well into the spring of 1946. as intelligence assessments of japan’s actual defensive dispositions began to build up, however, `downfall’ came under increasing pressure. estimates of likely allied (and especially american) casualties snowballed, some running into the millions, and planners began searching desperately for alternatives. the atomic bomb that was tested at alamogordo in july seemed to offer a very compelling one. the potsdam conference winston churchill, president truman and stalin met at the potsdam conference in july 1945. their terms for ending the war with japan hinged on the nation's acceptance of unconditional surrender. us president truman and senior government officials had been aware since june 1945 that atomic weapons were likely to be available in the very near future. in light of japan’s apparently uncompromising response to the potsdam declaration, and the predicted spiralling casualty costs of `downfall’, there was little hesitation in activating the american plans for the use of “special bombs” on japan. for the key decision makers at the time, dropping one or more atomic bombs on japanese cities seemed very much the lesser evil. even then, it took two demonstrations of the horrors of nuclear warfare to convince the japanese hardliners that they should accept the previously unacceptable. the cost of victory looking back on these events some time later, lieutenant general leslie r groves, former director of the `manhattan project’ that had developed the first a bomb, commented: “the atomic bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki ended world war ii. there can be no doubt of that. while they brought death and destruction on a horrifying scale, they averted even greater losses   american, english, and japanese”. it was a view that generated controversy then and after as to the justification or otherwise of the use of such weapons on largely defenceless civilian targets, at such terrible cost. but the nuclear genii, once out of the bottle, could not be put back in. the ever present threat of a nuclear option in the superpower stand offs of the cold war defined global politics after 1945. hiroshima and nagasaki raised the spectre of mutual assured destruction (mad) that has haunted the world into our present times. related content how the end of the second world war led to a nuclear arms race in august 1945 atomic bombs were dropped on the japanese cities of hiroshima and nagasaki, hastening the end of the second world war and heralding the birth of the atomic age. how the potsdam conference shaped the future of post war europe the potsdam conference was the last meeting of the ‘big three’ allied leaders during the second world war. at yalta in february 1945, british prime minister winston churchill, american president franklin d roosevelt and soviet premier joseph stalin had agreed to meet again following the defeat of germany, principally to determine the borders of post war europe. victory 75 commemorate 75 years since the end of the second world war in europe and remember the personal stories of people who stood together during a time of national crisis. why were atomic bombs dropped on hiroshima and nagasaki? the bombing of hiroshima and nagasaki in august 1945 brought an end to the second world war, but at a terrible cost to the japanese civilian population, and signalling the dawn of the nuclear age. what had led to the fateful decision to deploy these new weapons of mass destruction? listen to our soundscape and reflect on what happened when the atomic bomb was dropped on hiroshima on 6 august 1945. voices of war: nagasaki on 9 august 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on the japanese city of nagasaki. listen to first hand accounts of what happened in nagasaki, taken from iwm’s extensive sound archive and the archives of the atomic heritage foundation. b 29 superfortress: the aircraft that bombed hiroshima the b 29 superfortress is arguably the most important and controversial aircraft in human history. with the dubious honour of being history’s deadliest bomber and the only aircraft to drop a nuclear weapon in combat, its story is one of ground breaking innovation, unimaginable destruction and decisions that would dictate the course of the twentieth century. © imperial war museums 2025

menu the john f. kennedy presidential library and museum will be closed on sunday, february 9 due to anticipated snow storm. the library will reopen to the public on monday, february 10. the destruction of hiroshima and nagasaki by atomic bombs marked the end of world war ii and the beginning of the nuclear age. as tensions between east and west settled into a cold war, scientists in the united states, great britain, and the soviet union conducted tests and developed more powerful nuclear weapons. in 1959, radioactive deposits were found in wheat and milk in the northern united states. as scientists and the public gradually became aware of the dangers of radioactive fallout, they began to raise their voices against nuclear testing. leaders and diplomats of several countries sought to address the issue. in may 1955, the united nations disarmament commission brought together the united states, the united kingdom, canada, france, and the soviet union to begin negotiations on ending nuclear weapons testing. conflict soon arose over inspections to verify underground testing. the soviet union feared that on site inspections could lead to spying that might expose the soviets' vastly exaggerated claims of the number of deliverable nuclear weapons. as negotiators struggled over differences, the soviet union and the united states suspended nuclear tests a moratorium that lasted from november 1958 to september 1961. john f. kennedy had supported a ban on nuclear weapons testing since 1956. he believed a ban would prevent other countries from obtaining nuclear weapons, and took a strong stand on the issue in the 1960 presidential campaign. once elected, president kennedy pledged not to resume testing in the air and promised to pursue all diplomatic efforts for a test ban treaty before resuming underground testing. he envisioned the test ban as a first step to nuclear disarmament. president kennedy met with soviet premier khrushchev in vienna in june 1961, just five weeks after the humiliating defeat of the us sponsored invasion of cuba at the bay of pigs. khrushchev took a hard line at the summit. he announced his intention to cut off western access to berlin and threatened war if the united states or its allies tried to stop him. many us diplomats felt that kennedy had not stood up to the soviet premier at the summit and left khrushchev with the impression that he was a weak leader. president kennedy's political and military advisors feared that the soviet union had continued secret underground testing and made gains in nuclear technology. they pressured kennedy to resume testing. and, according to a gallup poll in july 1961, the public approved of testing by a margin of two to one. in august 1961, the soviet union announced its intention to resume atmospheric testing, and over the next three months it conducted 31 nuclear tests. it exploded the largest nuclear bomb in history 58 megatons 4,000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on hiroshima. discouraged and dismayed by the soviet tests, president kennedy pursued diplomatic efforts before allowing renewed testing by the united states. in his address to the united nations on september 25, 1961, he challenged the soviet union "not to an arms race, but to a peace race." president kennedy was unsuccessful in his efforts to reach a diplomatic agreement and reluctantly announced the resumption of atmospheric testing. american testing resumed on april 25, 1962. after the cuban missile crisis in october 1962, president kennedy and premier khrushchev realized that they had come dangerously close to nuclear war. both leaders sought to reduce tensions between their two nations. as khrushchev described it, "the two most powerful nations had been squared off against each other, each with its finger on the button." jfk shared this concern, once remarking at a white house meeting, "it is insane that two men, sitting on opposite sides of the world, should be able to decide to bring an end to civilization." in a series of private letters, khrushchev and kennedy reopened a dialogue on banning nuclear testing. in his commencement address at american university on june 10, 1963, kennedy announced a new round of high level arms negotiations with the russians. he boldly called for an end to the cold war. "if we cannot end our differences," he said, "at least we can help make the world a safe place for diversity." the soviet government broadcast a translation of the entire speech, and allowed it to be reprinted in the controlled soviet press. president kennedy selected averell harriman, an experienced diplomat known and respected by khrushchev, to resume negotiations in moscow. an agreement to limit the scope of the test ban paved the way for a treaty. by excluding underground tests from the pact, negotiators eliminated the need for the on site inspections that worried the kremlin. on july 25, 1963, after only 12 days of negotiations, the two nations agreed to ban testing in the atmosphere, in space, and underwater. the next day, in a television address announcing the agreement, kennedy claimed that a limited test ban" is safer by far for the united states than an unlimited nuclear arms race." the limited nuclear test ban treaty was signed in moscow on august 5, 1963, by us secretary dean rusk, soviet foreign minister andrei gromyko, and british foreign secretary lord home one day short of the 18th anniversary of the dropping of an atomic bomb on hiroshima. over the next two months, president kennedy convinced a fearful public and a divided senate to support the treaty. the senate approved the treaty on september 23, 1963, by an 80 19 margin. kennedy signed the ratified treaty on october 7, 1963. the treaty: thirty three years later, the united nations general assembly adopted the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty. signed by 71 nations, including those possessing nuclear weapons, the treaty prohibited all nuclear test explosions including those conducted underground. though it was signed by president bill clinton, the senate rejected the treaty by a vote of 51 to 48. the john f. kennedy presidential library and museum is dedicated to the memory of our nation's thirty fifth president and to all those who through the art of politics seek a new and better world. columbia point, boston ma 02125 | (617) 514 1600‍ open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. closed on wednesdays in january and february. | free parking the john f. kennedy presidential library & museum is one of 16 presidential libraries administered by the national archives and records administration. this website is hosted and maintained by the john f. kennedy library foundation.

many americans greeted the news of the atomic bombing of hiroshima with jubilation. beginning shortly after the war, however, a number of prominent us military leaders began to question the bomb's use. top image courtesy of the harry s. truman library and museum. on august 6, 1945, the b 29 superfortress enola gay dropped the atomic bomb called “little boy” on hiroshima. the ill fated city vanished under a phantasmagorical column of seething gas, smoke, and dust that rose 40,000 feet into the sky. paul tibbets, the pilot and mission commander, looked down and saw “a black, boiling nest… i didn’t think about what was going on down on the ground you need to be objective about this. i didn’t order the bomb to be dropped, but i had a mission to do.” the enola gay’s 12 man aircrew fell silent as they returned to base. co pilot robert lewis wrote in his mission log, “just how many japs did we kill?... my god, what have we done?” radar operator joe stiborik was “dumbfounded.” he judged that the crew was in a “state of shock. i think the foremost thing in all our minds was that the thing was going to bring an end to the war, and we tried to look at it that way.” landing on tinian eight hours later, the crew was greeted by an ebullient crowd of servicemen, journalists, and photographers. congratulated and feted, they drank an extra ration of cold beer, danced in a jitterbug contest, and watched thea technicolor movie, “it’s a pleasure.” president harry truman, returning by sea from europe on the cruiser augusta, received the news by radio dispatch. “the greatest thing in history,” he exclaimed to his staff. he read the dispatch to a mess deck crowded with sailors, who erupted into cheering. later he read a statement for a film crew in his stateroom: “it is an atomic bomb. it is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. the force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the far east.” president harry truman dines with sailors aboard the uss augusta on his way to the potsdam conference in july 1945. courtesy harry s. truman library and museum. americans greeted the news with unbridled jubilation. after almost four years of savage war, few were inclined to shed tears for the fate of japanese civilians on the ground. attacking cities from the air was no longer seen as unjustified. all the major combatant nations had engaged in “terror bombing” of enemy cities. at first, few americans even paused to consider that hiroshima was a city. the white house statement misleadingly identified the target as an “important japanese army base,” rather than as a large japanese city with a base in it. an earlier draft had called it “purely a military base.” to pacific war veterans, who had dreaded an invasion of japan, the atomic bomb meant even more. it was a godsend, an unexpected reprieve, a stay of execution. paul fussell, a 21 year old army lieutenant, recalled of his unit: “we cried with relief and joy. we were going to live. we were going to grow up to adulthood after all.” to robert edson lee, a sailor in the pacific, the bomb meant simply “that we could go home, and that ended our moral concern.” muffled by the general revelry and applause, however, there were notes of doubt, pangs of regret, and even righteous anger. pondering the news that one bomb carried by one plane had leveled a city, servicemen and civilians grasped that humanity, for the first time, wielded the power to cause its own extinction. a few iconoclasts protested that truman had needlessly undercut the country’s international moral standing. among the dissidents were some of the highest ranking officers in the military. general douglas macarthur confided his thoughts to his personal pilot, who recorded in his diary on august 7: “general macarthur definitely is appalled and depressed by this frankenstein monster.” when dwight d. eisenhower had learned of the manhattan project, several weeks earlier, he had urged against dropping the bomb on japan: “i disliked seeing the united states take the lead in introducing into war something as horrible and destructive as this new weapon was described to be.” among the navy brass, feelings ran strong against the bombings. admiral ernest king, the chief of naval operations, told his co author that he did not like the atomic bomb “or any part of it,” and said that the air sea blockade would have been enough to force a japanese surrender. several leading air commanders, including generals hap arnold and curtis lemay, said that the atomic bombs were unnecessary because conventional bombing had already brought japan to its knees. remarks of this sort can be understood in the context of internal military politics and budgetary positioning. yet it is clear that many military leaders thought the atomic bombings unjustified and even immoral. admiral bill leahy, the senior most active duty us officer of the second world war, left a scathing passage in his memoir, charging that the united states had “adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the dark ages. i was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying woman and children.” during the war, admiral william “bull” halsey was famous for his bloody minded tirades against the japanese. he had publicly said that japan was “not fit to live in a civilized world.” he had joked about castrating all japanese males. to reporters he had implied that the emperor hirohito would be executed, and threatened to let his forces sack and pillage tokyo. americans had delighted in his exhortations to “kill japs, kill japs and kill more japs!” halsey and his smashmouth motto had appeared on the cover of time magazine just two weeks before the bombing of hiroshima. but in september 1946, after john hersey’s graphic “hiroshima” article ran in the new yorker, the admiral told reporters: “the first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment. it was a mistake to ever drop it.” he blamed the scientists, who “had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it. it killed a lot of japs, but the japs had put out a lot of peace feelers through russia long before.” this outburst angered a group of scientists, who wrote admiral nimitz to complain. nimitz replied that neither the scientists nor the military were responsible for the bomb: “i am informed that the decision to drop the atomic bomb on japanese cities was made at a level higher than that of the joint chiefs of staff.” of course, military leaders were only human, and therefore fallible. gold braid and stars did not equip them to render incontrovertible ethical and moral judgments. they may have been led astray by mistaken intelligence, or were less than fully informed about the deadly intransigence of japanese army leaders. as older men who had begun their military careers at the turn of the twentieth century, their sensibilities may simply have fallen behind the times. but with 75 years of hindsight, one is struck by the pervasiveness of anti atomic bomb sentiments across the top echelon of the military. in 1945, eight americans (four generals, four admirals) held five star rank. seven later stated that the bombings were either unnecessary to end the war, morally indefensible, or both. that fact is all the more arresting when you consider that their professional code discouraged second guessing the decisions of superiors, and that they were discussing an event that had already happened, and thus could not be reversed. right or wrong, their opinions do not deserve to be dismissed, ignored, or suppressed. they had led our armed forces through the largest and bloodiest war in history. they had seen the battlefields and the cemeteries. none held illusions about the extent and depravity of japanese war crimes. all had studied and debated the options to achieve victory in the pacific. they had worked together to prepare the invasion plans, and they held direct responsibility for american troops deployed in the theater. and yet they also cared deeply about the reputation and standing of the united states in the long lens of history. in 1947, former secretary of war henry stimson published an influential article in harper’s magazine entitled, “the decision to use the atomic bomb.” this essay laid the foundation for what became known as the traditional or “orthodox” story of hiroshima and nagasaki, which sank deep into the american consciousness and remains lodged there to this day. truman, it was said, faced a categorical or binary choice between dropping the bomb or launching a bloody invasion of japan. faced with these alternatives, he chose the course that would result in fewer net deaths and the least aggregate suffering. by setting the decision up as a forced binary door a or door b this account purged the moral uncertainties. it was a textbook perfect case of benthamite utilitarian reasoning (“the greatest good for the greatest number.”) with surgical precision it removed the notion, widely held in 1945, that the bombings were condign retribution against a barbaric enemy. it preserved americans’ common understanding that we were a fundamentally good and just nation that had set a righteous example for the world. the story is simple, unambiguous, internally consistent, and flawlessly logical. like the lyrics of a beloved old folk song, it is easy to learn by heart. it has been handed down through the decades, taught by one generation to the next. the lyrics have remained consistent over time, proving largely impervious to the emergence of new evidence. critics call it a myth, while defenders maintain that it is essentially the truth. over time, the traditional or orthodox view acquired a misleading postscript. many came to believe that the atomic bombings had been uncontroversial during and after world war ii. opposition and criticism, it was suggested, were an artifact of the vietnam era, when “revisionist” historians emerged amid the turmoil of the antiwar movement and the rise of the new left. the term “revisionism” was often heard in 1995, during the heated public controversy over the enola gay exhibit at the national air and space museum in washington, dc. leading journalists, columnists, and elected officials joined with veterans’ groups and military associations in gang tackling the museum curators and the historians on its advisory board. charles krauthammer wrote that the controversy proved that “elite american museums, like the universities, have fallen to the forces of political correctness and historical revisionism.” edwin yoder dismissed criticism of the atomic bombings as “a byproduct of the great quarrel over vietnam far more a product of the furies of the 1960s than of the war planning of the 1940s, when president truman and his advisors made the decision.” the us senate adopted a resolution denouncing the script as “revisionist and offensive to many wwii veterans.” but the dread term “revisionism” has always been a misnomer. new evidence about the atomic bombs emerged little by little, decade by decade, as a result of document declassifications and the publication of memoirs and diaries. it would be strange if relevant new information had come to light without prompting a revision of earlier views. the specialists in this field are not tribunes of the academic left, as the critics have so glibly charged; they are objective scholars committed to empirical methods and rational analysis. they debate various disputed points, and some can be roughly sorted into contending “camps.” broadly speaking, however, all can at least agree on the salient facts, and their disagreements are largely a matter of emphasis and interpretation. the history they have pieced together is substantially more complex and ambiguous than the story lodged in popular memory. the controversy over the bombings is really several discrete subsidiary debates. it is not simply: “the atomic bomb, yes or no?” but rather: “an explicit prior warning, yes or no?... hit military targets instead of cities, yes or no?... guarantee hirohito’s throne, yes or no?... the bombings were intended to gain leverage over stalin, yes or no?... the russian declaration of war forced japanese surrender, yes or no?... without the bombs, japan would likely have surrendered prior to invasion, yes or no?... nagasaki, yes or no?” as for the persistent canard that criticism of the atomic bombings was a “byproduct of the great quarrel over vietnam,” the on the record views of leading wwii officers stands in refutation. the hard question has never been whether or not the united states should have used the atomic bomb. given the circumstances, and truman’s limited options, i believe it was justified to use this new weapon to hasten the war’s end. the hard questions, in my view, are whether the bomb should have been used without a prior explicit warning, and whether it should have been dropped on a city. in confronting these questions, truman appears to have suffered his own pangs of conscience. on july 25, 1945, he recorded in his diary: “i have told the sec. of war, mr. stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children…the target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement asking the japs to surrender and save lives. i’m sure they will not do that, but we will have given them the chance.” but on that same day, the war department issued an order to drop two atomic bombs on a list of four target cities. the order made no mention of warnings, military objectives, or sparing women and children. the cities had not been selected for their military character, and the military installations therein were not specified as aiming points. two weeks later, with no explicit prior warning, “little boy” wiped out the seventh largest city in japan. the july 25 entry in truman’s diary is bizarre and inexplicable. perhaps he felt sudden qualms, and soothed them with therapeutic delusions. he may have sensed that future historians and biographers were reading over his shoulder, and hoped to be commended as a man of delicate conscience. if so, the gesture hardly does him credit. but if he meant what he wrote, it suggests that truman knew, at some level, that dropping this monstrous weapon on a city was wrong. if fdr had lived, would he have given the order that truman pretends he gave? if truman had been in office longer, would he have gained the courage of his convictions, and given the order that he plainly believed to be right? alas, posterity can only speculate and will continue to speculate, each time this ghastly anniversary comes around. ian w. toll is the author of a nonfiction trilogy about the pacific war. the final book, twilight of the gods: war in the western pacific, 1944 1945, will be published on september 1, 2020. he was a speaker at the national wwii museum’s 2019 international conference on world war ii. this article is part of an ongoing series commemorating the 75th anniversary of the end of world war ii made possible by bank of america. this masterful history encompasses the heart of the pacific war the period between mid 1942 and mid 1944 when parallel allied counteroffensives north and south of the equator washed over japan's far flung island empire like a "conquering tide." before the allies could cross the rhine river, bernard montgomery’s forces first had to pry the german defenders away from its western bank with two simultaneous operations: veritable and grenade. as dozens of their players left the gridiron for battlefields overseas, the cities of philadelphia and pittsburgh joined forces to keep the decimated nfl squads up and running. tens of thousands of allied civilians, including children, were caught in the crossfire of world war ii in the pacific and interned in camps such as santo tomas in the philippines. desperate for slave labor to continue the doomed war effort and fearful of camp survivors exposing nazi crimes, german decision makers put in motion nearly three quarters of a million concentration camp prisoners. of this number, 250,000 died in these death marches. torn and warped by japanese bullets, this piece of protective gear is a rare testament to the ferocious fighting of the oft forgotten aleutian islands campaign. the invasion of tarawa marked the first major action by american forces in the central pacific. waves of marines were badly mauled as they struggled to cross reefs and assault the beach. in her december 8, 1941, my day column, eleanor roosevelt reflects on the moment she learned of japan’s attack on pearl harbor and other locations, describing the nation’s shift from uncertainty to resolve. if the american forces could break through the hürtgen forest, there was a chance they could reach the rhine near cologne, threatening the german industrial region along the ruhr river and possibly even force a crossing. open today 9:00 a.m.   5:00 p.m. 945 magazine street, new orleans, la 70130 info@nationalww2museum.org 504 528 1944 #1 attraction in new orleans view campus map

a blog of the u.s. national archives pieces of history today’s post comes from michael j. hancock, an archives technician at the national archives at college park, md. there was a time when the greatest threat during the cold war was a nuclear strike by the soviet union. but for a moment during those tension filled years, the united states almost nuked itself. the u.s. narrowly avoided a catastrophic disaster when two mark 39 hydrogen bombs were accidentally dropped over goldsboro, north carolina, on january 23, 1961. the bombs were released when a b 52 united states air force bomber broke apart midair. one of the bombs performed precisely in accordance with its design: its parachute deployed, its trigger mechanisms engaged, and, remarkably, one single low voltage switch thwarted unimaginable destruction. “keep 19,” a boeing b 52g 95 bw stratofortress with the 4241st strategic wing, was on a 24 hour airborne alert mission off the atlantic coast of the united states. at that time, while the u.s. and the soviet union were engaged in the cold war, the strategic air command kept b 52 bombers, armed with nuclear warheads, flying 24 hours a day, seven days a week. the plane was commanded by maj. walter s. tulloch, u.s. air force, with pilots capt. richard w. hardin and 1st lt. adam c. mattocks. it was armed with two mark 39 thermonuclear bombs, each with an explosive yield of 3 4 megatons. the mark 39 was a two stage, radiation implosion thermonuclear bomb produced from 1957 to 1959, with more than 700 built. it was fully fused, meaning it could be detonated by contact with the ground as an air burst, or “lay down” a series of parachutes would slow the bomb and it would touch down on its target before detonating allowing the bomber time to get clear of the blast zone. the mark 39 was considered a lightweight weapon, weighing 6,500 6,750 pounds, and the bomb measured approximately 12 feet in length, with a diameter of almost 3 feet. the explosive yield of the mark 39 was 3.8 megatons, 250 times the explosive power of the bomb dropped on hiroshima and enough to vaporize everyone and everything within a 17 mile radius roughly the area inside the capital beltway around washington, dc. only three days after president john f. kennedy took office, while the b 52 refueled in flight from an air tanker, the tanker’s crew notified major tulloch that the b 52’s right wing was leaking fuel. the leak was severe, with more than 5,400 gallons (37,000 pounds) of jet fuel lost in less than three minutes as the b 52 was directed to return to seymour johnson air force base in north carolina to attempt an emergency landing. as they descended, the unbalanced condition created by the disproportionate fuel load made the bomber increasingly difficult to maneuver. the bomber went out of control as the right wing was sheared away, and major tulloch ordered the crew to abandon the imperiled aircraft. five crewmen ejected and one climbed out through the top hatch before the b 52 broke apart and exploded. its wreckage covered a roughly two square mile area and, sadly, three crewmen majors shelton and richards and sergeant barnish were killed. as the b 52 broke apart, its two mark 39 bombs were released. one slammed into a muddy field at over 700 miles per hour and buried itself more than 180 feet deep. the other bomb’s parachute safeguard system operated as intended, and it touched down essentially undamaged, discovered hanging from a tree, the parachute preventing it from hitting the earth. a mishap like this, involving the loss of nuclear weapons, is known by the military code name “broken arrow.” official statements indicate that there was no danger of the bombs exploding, while others indicate that five of the six steps (or six of seven) required for a thermonuclear detonation did occur. recovery of the buried bomb proved to be challenging, but after eight days the ordnance team had recovered most of the bomb, including the 92 detonators and conventional explosive “lenses” of the “primary,” the first stage implosion section. the uranium 235/plutonium 239 “pit” the very core of the bomb was recovered on january 29. the “secondary,” however, was never found. for more information visit the national security archive’s nuclear documentation project. thanks for sharing mike. we grew up in challenging times for sure. there is a major flaw in this story. a bomb (or anything for that matter) cannot and would not fall at 700 mph. gravity says so. why make up such a false piece of information? drama. terminal velocity   simple stuff. the terminal velocity of a human body is only 120 mph. i can see your point, however they never stated the direction of the motion they said “velocity” that includes the speed of the bomber+the speed of terminal velocity. so whilst it is possible it is highly unlikely. based on simple calculations, the terminal velocity of a 6500 lb object with a cross sectional surface area between 10 30 ft squared is 537 930 mp. although the missile has a cross sectional diameter of 3 feet, it is also aerodynamically shaped. so a terminal velocity of 700 mph is within reasonable mathematical estimations. i like this guy, for all of you who said you would never need to use and thus know how to do calculas in your daily lives, here’s a bombshell redact to that thinking (pun intended), can you remind me again the rate of gravitational pull? 16m/sec./sec. right? excluding drag of course in 2012 , skydiver felix baumgartner broke the sound barrier and reached a speed of 833.9 mph. at very high altitude were air resistance is almost nonexistent. had he continued to drop to the ground without a parachute his speed would have come closer to the 120mph for falling bodies thats because he was in space where there is no atmosphere, after he entered the atmosphere he slowed back down below terminal velocity i believe the bomb had aerodynamics and designs to enable it to maintain or possibly increase its speed after falling from a supersonic jet. haha i thought that sounded strange. i also, based on the picture of the bomb don’t think it was able to bury itself 180 ft into the ground no matter how muddy the soil. it went 180 feet into the ground   the depth of an 18 story building. a 120 mph impact wouldn’t likely do that. so whered the 2nd part of the bomb go? seems important that they find that and not just say oh well, right? it was just the uranium. i don’t believe there’s any danger of an explosion, just radiation, but even if there was, it’s 180+ feet in the ground in rural north carolina i guess it’s not exactly rural it didn’t sound to me that they just said, “oh well”. they spent 8 days looking for the bomb and all of its parts. i think it is safe to say that this wasn’t an easy find, like brightly colored easter eggs out in the yard. you’d think so wouldn’t ya? the answer is scary. after some time the gave up the search and filled the hole. it’s still in the middle of a farm field. the government bought land land over the hole so that spot could never be built on or farmed. there’s a historical marker for this. get this; the name of the town it’s in is eureka! the land the government has dedicated to isolating the plutonium is managed by nc state university. last note: in the ’80s (when this was still highly classified information) the government was making a lot of noise about closing bases. i was concerned cuz we had bought a house and could get shafted if we were forced to move. my boss said not to worry, the state government would never let the bases go: “sure, you wanna move your bases? don’t forget to take your nuclear warhead with ya” and told me the whole story. the bombs were never pre armed, nor armed, and a nuclear detonation was not possible since the weapons were in a safe condition. there are so many outright errors, especially from parker f. jones, resulting in decades of disinformation and outright falsehoods being perpetuated by this accident. i correct these falsehoods in my article here  https://nuclearweaponsaccidents.blogspot.com/2013/ your email address will not be published. required fields are marked * comment * name * email * website save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time i comment. δdocument.getelementbyid( "ak_js_1" ).setattribute( "value", ( new date() ).gettime() ); window.hsformsonready = window.hsformsonready || []; window.hsformsonready.push(()=>{ hbspt.forms.create({ portalid: 20973928, formid: "4952e145 18a8 4185 b1de 03f7b39bda22", target: "#hbspt form 1739089659000 4926857078", region: "", })});

supported by brandon williams served aboard a nuclear submarine and represented a new york congressional district for one term, but has said little about his experience in the management of atomic weapons. by william j. broad he is about to regain control of the country’s nuclear arsenal at one of the most volatile times in history. by the editorial board a journalist and an analyst, he was driven to hold oil companies accountable. earlier, he was on the storied boat greenpeace when he and others tried to halt a nuclear test. by richard sandomir the launch, into waters west of japan, came shortly after the united states and south korea criticized the north for sending troops to join russia’s war. by choe sang hun nuclear experts see tehran as facing up to a year of hard work to master the knotty basics of building a deliverable atom bomb. by william j. broad washington says it would defend the south against north korea with nuclear arms, if need be. but more and more people in the south think it should rely on itself. by choe sang hun in 1974, a radioactive cloud from a french nuclear test drifted over teahupo’o, tahiti, now the surfing venue for the paris games. villagers still feel the effects. by hannah beech and adam ferguson a former national security adviser says washington “must test new nuclear weapons for reliability and safety in the real world,” while critics say the move could incite a global arms race that heightens the risk of war. by william j. broad let’s not make it the future, too. by kathleen kingsbury the u.s. bombings that ended world war ii didn’t mark the close of atomic warfare. they were just the beginning. by w.j. hennigan
the u.s. bombings thatended world war ii didn’t mark the close of atomic warfare.they were just the beginning. the u.s. bombingsthat ended world war iididn’t mark the close ofatomic warfare. they werejust the beginning. from 1945 to 2017, nuclear nationscarried out more than 2,000 explosive testsin the atmosphere, undergroundand underwater, mostly in remote places. from 1945 to 2017,nuclear nations carried outmore than 2,000 explosivetests in the atmosphere,underground and underwater,mostly in remote places. larger circles indicate places with many tests. larger circles indicate places with many tests. some of the atmospheric testswere magnitudes more powerful thanthe bombs dropped on japan,sickening and displacing thousands. some of the atmospherictests were magnitudes morepowerful than the bombsdropped on japan, sickeningand displacing thousands. their descendants   who continue to endure physical,psychological, economicand cultural fallout   are livingproof that nuclear weaponsshould never be testedagain. if only today’s leaderswould take heed. their descendants   who continue to endure physical,psychological, economicand cultural fallout   are livingproof that nuclear weaponsshould never be testedagain. if only today’s leaderswould take heed. about an hour’s drive from the las vegas strip, deep craters pockmark the desert sand for miles in every direction. it’s here, amid the sunbaked flats, that the united states conducted 928 nuclear tests during the cold war above and below ground. the site is mostly quiet now, and has been since 1992, when washington halted america’s testing program. there are growing fears this could soon change. as tensions deepen in america’s relations with russia and china, satellite images reveal all three nations are actively expanding their nuclear testing facilities, cutting roads and digging new tunnels at long dormant proving grounds, including in nevada. none of these nations have conducted a full scale nuclear test since the 1990s. environmental and health concerns pushed them to move the practice underground in the middle of the last century, before abandoning testing altogether at the end of the cold war.