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https://theconversation.com/hiroshima-attack-marks-its-78th-anniversary-its-lessons-of-unnecessary-mass-destruction-could-help-guide-future-nuclear-arms-talks-210115>
"It was 8:15 on a Monday morning, Aug. 6, 1945. World War II was raging in
Japan.
An American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first atomic bomb over Hiroshima,
Japan – an important military center with a civilian population close to
300,000 people.
The U.S. wanted to end the war, and Japan was unwilling to surrender
unconditionally.
The bomber plane was called the Enola Gay, named for Enola Gay Tibbets, the
mother of the pilot.
Its passenger was “Little Boy” – an atomic bomb that quickly killed 80,000
people in Hiroshima. Tens of thousands more would later die of the excruciating
effects of radiation exposure.
Three days later, U.S. soldiers in a second B-29 bomber plane dropped another
atomic bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people.
It was the first – and so far, only – time atomic bombs were used against
civilians. But U.S. scientists were confident it would work, because they had
tested one just like it in New Mexico a month before. This was part of the
Manhattan Project, a secret, federally funded science effort that produced the
first nuclear weapons.
What might have been a single year of nuclear weapons development ushered in
decades and decades of nuclear proliferation – a challenge across countries and
professions.
Having worked on nuclear weapons both as a journalist covering the Pentagon and
then as a White House special assistant on the National Security Council and
undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, I understand how critical it is
to educate and inform citizens about the dangers of nuclear war and how to
control the development of nuclear weapons."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
