Sixty-five years ago a blinding flash of light leveled the city of Hiroshima Japan. The United States dropped the atomic bomb, dubbed “Little Boy,” over the city’s downtown. Three days later, the United States dropped “Fat Man” on the outskirts of Nagasaki. Japan surrendered six days later, ending the most devastating war the world had ever seen.
Hiroshima was completely destroyed. Before and after photos show that the buildings in the city were almost totally razed. Over 70,000 people died the first day, with roughly 70,000 more perishing from radiation poisoning in the following months.
But why was Hiroshima chosen in the first place? Its strategic importance was only part of the reason it was chosen. There were several military camps around the city including the headquarters of the Fifth Division and 2nd General Army. However up to that point, the U.S. Air Force hadn’t deemed it as important enough to bomb in the preceding months of the war.
It sounds twisted, but in a way the city was chosen to be a massive science experiment. As far back as May, the bomb planning committee which included Manhattan Project leader Robert Oppenheimer chose Hiroshima as one of five potential sites because of its pristine state in order to cleanly study the bombs’ effects on a metropolitan area. Dr. Joyce C. Stearns who was in charge of recommending targets to the air force, looked specifically for cities untouched by Allied bombing runs.
Before Little Boy was dropped, the only nuclear explosion the world had ever seen up to that point was the Trinity test in the middle of the New Mexico desert. The test showed the bomb worked, and showcased its devastating effects over the desolate sands of the American Southwest. (To this day, large sections of ground are still covered in “Trinitite,” a kind of glass formed when the intense heat and pressure of that fist mushroom cloud fused desert sand into glass.)
Nuclear weapons were a completely new weapon and no one knew for sure what kind of devastating effects it possessed. The scientists who created it knew the explosion would be huge and radiation would likely permeate itself around the area, though how much was anything but certain.
After the bombs fell, Japanese and U.S. researchers descended upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki to study its after effects. These researchers studied everything from the blast patterns of the bomb to the effects of radiation on human tissue. Much of what is known today about the effects of nuclear fallout came from the researchers studying the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The city of Hiroshima has long since been rebuilt; however the city still bears the marks of the bombing. Though almost the entire city was leveled, the ruins of the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall remained standing located almost directly below the detonation. Its ghostly shell still stands amidst the city today, as a reminder and a warning of the awesome power of nuclear weapons. It has been renamed the Hiroshima Peace Memorial or the Genbaku Dome, and is a part of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.