WWII JapanLists about life in the Empire of Japan from 1939, at which point it was already at odds with China, to the aftermath of the devastation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki post-1945.
At the end of WWII, Japan was in nearly total devastation, and the civilians who remained loyal to their country and emperor were having a particularly difficult time. But when the Japanese military said "fight on," there really wasn't any doubt that the order would be followed. In an effort to put an end to these shenanigans while there were still some people left living on the Japanese home islands, the US decided to roll up with Little Boy and Fat Man.
Those were the names of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively. The aftermath of the atomic bombs can only be described as complete devastation. After Hiroshima was hit, chaos ensued. The immediate aftermath of the Nagasaki bomb was equally chaotic, but in a much different way.
In total, the two devices took an estimated 103,000 lives as a result of the blast itself, the ensuing fires, and long-term radiation poisoning, according to the World Nuclear Association. The Hiroshima bomb is believed to have ended 45,000 lives in the first day alone. That was just under one-fifth of the city's total population. The casualty count in Nagasaki was a staggering 40,000, counting only the first day. Between the atomic devices and the multitude of other bad things raining down on Japan, the immediate post-WWII years were pretty brutal times.
On the morning of August 6, 1945, the citizens of Hiroshima were just starting their day under a clear, beautiful sky. Unbeknownst to them, the Enola Gay had just unloaded the Little Boy atomic device, which was plummeting toward the unsuspecting city. When the device reached 1,900 feet above Hiroshima... bang. A flash of light 10 times brighter than the sun lit up the city, blinding those unlucky enough to be staring at it.
Those within the immediate blast radius were the lucky ones; they perished instantly. Some were instantly incinerated, leaving behind shadows burned into the very ground beneath them, referred to as nuclear shadows. In the most famous nuclear shadow (shown above), a person was sitting on the steps of a bank, waiting for it to open. These steps were later moved to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum for preservation, where they can be viewed today.
Almost instantly, shock waves rippled through the town. As Life magazine put it in 1946, "In the following waves people's bodies were terribly squeezed, then their internal organs ruptured. Then the blast blew the broken bodies at 500 to 1,000 miles per hour through the flaming, rubble-filled air. Practically everybody within a radius of 6,500 feet was killed or seriously injured and all buildings crushed or disemboweled."
The atomic burst was estimated to have reached over a million degrees Celsius, igniting the air surrounding it on its descent. The fireball, which began at 840 feet in diameter, also kept expanding on its way down, a small sun engulfing the sky above the city. The intense levels of heat and radiation from the fireball began to light everything in the vicinity on fire. And - before the device was even done exploding - a massive firestorm began to engulf the city.
The intense firestorm completely incinerated everything within around one mile of ground zero. This was not like other fire-bombing raids, however. In conventional air raids, the hollowed out shells of buildings remained standing. In Hiroshima, there was nothing left, save a few pieces of steel-reinforced concrete. Even modern, well-constructed buildings were completely destroyed.
Looking back at the mushroom cloud billowing up above the unfolding devastation, Captain Robert Lewis, co-pilot of the Enola Gay, commented, "My God, what have we done?"
The destruction wrought by the device was so inconceivable that many people thought that they were in hell. Others thought that the world had ended. With lifeless bodies, fire, and destruction as far as the eye could see, such a conclusion was not far off the mark. Survivors of the atomic device are called "hibakusha" in Japan, and their eyewitness accounts shed some light into the utter horror of the scene.
"Near the bridge there were a whole lot of dead people... Sometimes there were ones who came to us asking for a drink of water. They were bleeding from their faces and from their mouths and they had glass sticking in their bodies. And the bridge itself was burning furiously... The details and the scenes were just like hell," a 6-year-old boy recounted.
A Protestant minister explained, "The feeling I had was that everyone was dead. The whole city was destroyed... I thought this was the end of Hiroshima - of Japan - of humankind... This was God's judgment on man."
A Black Rain Fell
In both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, about 30-40 minutes after the devices exploded, black rain began to fall down like a scene out of some horror film. The radioactive isotopes, combined with debris and airborne particles thrown high into the air by the detonation, had mixed with water vapor and condensed.
The dangerous, radioactive rain fell on the unsuspecting people bellow, some of whom were so thirsty that they attempted to drink it.
In the minutes and hours after the devices went off, survivors began to display the symptoms of radiation poisoning. Nausea, bleeding, hair loss, and loss of life were common. Flash burns, cataracts, malignant tumors, and a susceptibility to leukemia also occurred.
Unfortunately, the atomic device had wiped out 90% of medical personnel in Hiroshima, and treatment supplies quickly ran out. Many of the survivors had to fend for themselves, perishing on the roadside where they fell.
The device knocked out all direct lines of communication to and from Hiroshima, so it was hours before the Japanese military had any idea what had happened. Radio stations had gone off air, and the main-line telegraph had stopped working. The military was puzzled, knowing that a large attack would have been picked up by radar. They sent out a young officer to fly to the city and investigate.
When the plane was 100 miles from the city, the officer spotted a large cloud of smoke rising in the sky. Below, the remains of the city still burned in the afternoon sun. After circling the city, the officer landed south of it and began organizing relief efforts, still not understanding what exactly had transpired.
The first reports of the event came into Tokyo from towns neighboring Hiroshima. People described a "sinister cloud," an "enormous explosion," a "terrible flash," and a "heavy roar." Descriptions of the city's total destruction were almost beyond belief.
