The Partnership by Philip Taubman

Author:Philip Taubman
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-09-16T04:14:51+00:00

CHAPTER THREE

Our number one concern is the acquisition of fissile material by a terror group.

—AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE OFFICIAL

The workday was just beginning in Hiroshima on Monday, August 6, 1945. The sun was bright and warm as commuters made their way to offices by foot or bicycle, children headed to school, and citizens tended to a number of civil defense projects around the city. Earlier in the morning, officials had called off an air raid alert after a weather plane passed uneventfully overhead. After four years of war, people were thankful that their city had largely escaped the ruinous American bombing raids that had damaged other Japanese cities.

At approximately 8:15 a.m., a 9,700-pound uranium bomb, dubbed “Little Boy” by its American makers, exploded roughly 1,900 feet above Hiroshima.

“Those closest to the explosion died instantly, their bodies turned to black char,” an American account recalled. “Nearby birds burst into flames in mid-air, and dry, combustible materials such as paper instantly ignited as far away as 6,400 feet from ground zero. The white light acted as a giant flashbulb, burning the dark patterns of clothing onto skin and the shadows of bodies onto walls.”

Those not incinerated by the blast were terribly burned or bloodied by flying shards of glass. “Within minutes 9 out of 10 people half a mile or less from ground zero were dead…. Nearly every structure within one mile of ground zero was destroyed, and almost every building within three miles was damaged.

“The numerous small fires that erupted simultaneously all around the city soon merged into one large firestorm, creating extremely strong winds that blew towards the center of the fire. The firestorm eventually engulfed 4.4 square miles of the city, killing anyone who had not escaped in the first minutes after the attack.”

The United States estimated that 70,000 people died as a result of the initial blast, heat, and radiation effects. By the end of 1945, a government report said, the death toll was probably over 100,000. “The five-year death total may have reached or even exceeded 200,000, as cancer and other long-term effects took hold.”

It is understandably hard for Americans to contemplate an attack of that magnitude somewhere in the United States. It would be a day unlike any other in American history. One way to think about it is to recall the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, and imagine an assault that would make that awful day seem like a pinprick. All the loss of life on 9/11, the dislocation, the families that lost loved ones in the towers of the World Trade Center, the hundreds of New York firefighters who perished when the buildings collapsed, the men and women who began a beautiful late-summer day at work in the upper stories of the towers, then jumped out of windows, preferring to die instantly rather than burn to death, the soldiers and civilians who died at the Pentagon, the disintegration of United Airlines Flight 93 when it plunged into a Pennsylvania field—all that horror would be thousands of times worse in a nuclear attack.

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