The reality of atomic bombs, a look at Hiroshima 1945
Alright, so… we’ve all heard about what happened on August 6 and August 9, 1945. The US dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, one in Hiroshima and one in Nagasaki. Very devastating and monstrous event. But I’m not here to talk about the statistics and the magnitude of the event, and how many people were killed. But rather, I wanna explore how it must have felt to be in these two cities during the event. What was the personal experience of the survivors of this terrible weapon? I will be referencing a paper written by Robert Jay Lifton called Psychological Effects of the Atomic Bomb in Hiroshima: The Theme of Death
as someone interested in how people act in different contexts, I always think about how people react to extreme circumstances, how would I have reacted? How would the average person react? The Atomic bomb dropped at 8:15 AM on August 6, 1945 but before that it was relatively peaceful. A couple of moments were all it took for countless people to experience hell on earth.
Now, there was nervousness among the Japanese back then because of their involvement in World War 1 but there was a sense of relief and relaxation once the people were told the air-raid warning was gone (pg. 464).
For example, one of the survivors was a young shopkeeper assistant who was 13 at the time (pg. 465). He stayed home that day because he wasn’t feeling well. Like everyone else, he felt relieved once he heard the air-raid warning was lifted by the government and that it was safe now. In relief he lays back down on his bed when suddenly a white light takes his sight, immense heat, and an electric shock run through his body . . . next thing he knows, he is under rubble of his own house, everything is black, nobody is around him, shocked and afraid he screams for help. Keep in mind, his house was 1400 meters away from the center of the bomb. Nonetheless, death is creeping. The boy hears voices of other people moaning and screaming. So, after a short period of time, the boy starts losing hope and starts thinking he will die soon. He was angry and furious because he didn’t even know what hit him and everyone around him. He was laying on his bed peacefully moments ago, and now he is about to die while the world around him turned into living hell.
But then the little boy’s mother finds and rescues him. He notices the mother was also injured. Regardless, they both try to escape from the fire and everything around them but the mother’s injuries are slowing them down which eventually leads to them being surrounded by fire. The boy takes responsibility and puts his mother down to escape, get some help, and come back to his mother to assist her. But unfortunately, he doesn’t come back in time and finds his mother dead (pg. 465).
Heavy stuff . . . I know. There are many stories similar to this one. What makes it worse is the sense of guilt the survivors felt after going through all of that. The boy spent many years with survivors guilt, wondering if he could’ve saved his mother and if he deserves to live. The guilt is heavy.
Now we heard about how it must have felt to be close to the bomb and to be attacked by it. What if you were “lucky” that day, and was very far from the bomb? 5000 meters far. What was the view of Hiroshima? A middle aged teacher was lucky enough, arguably, to be near a mountain called Hijiyama Mountain and looked at Hiroshima from up there, or what remained of Hiroshima. He said,
“I climbed Hijiyama Mountain and looked down. I saw that Hiroshima had disappeared. … I was shocked by the sight. . . . What I felt then and still feel now I just can’t explain with words. Of course I saw many dreadful scenes after that- but that experience, looking down and finding nothing left of Hiroshima- was so shocking that I simply can’t express what I felt. I could see Koi [a suburb at the opposite end of the city] and a few buildings standing. . . . But Hiroshima didn’t exist-that was mainly what I saw- Hiroshima just didn’t exist” (pg. 467).
The teacher had family members in Hiroshima, so he had to go to the city and look for them. This is what he had to say about that experience
“I went to look for my family. Somehow I became a pitiless person, because if I had pity I would not have been able to walk through the city, to walk over those dead bodies. The most impressive thing was the expression in people’s eyes-bodies badly injured which had turned black- their eyes looking for someone to come and help them. They looked at me and knew that I was stronger than they. … I was looking for my family and looking carefully at everyone I met to see if he or she was a family member-but the eyes-the emptiness-the helpless expression- were something I will never forget. … I often had to go to the same place more than once. I would wish that the same family would not still be there. … I saw disappointment in their eyes. They looked at me with great expectation, staring right through me. It was very hard to be stared at by those eyes” (pg. 469).
In my opinion, the usage of the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was one of the biggest crimes ever committed, if not the biggest. It is an experience that will be remembered throughout history, hopefully as a mistake to never be made again.
Lifton, R. J. (1963). Psychological Effects of the Atomic Bomb in Hiroshima: The Theme of Death. Daedalus, 92(3), 462–497. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20026792
