Hiroshima Marks 73rd Anniversary of Atomic Bombing – Devastating Pictures of the City and Victims, Blood-Chilling Shadows + Unknown Facts About Tragedy
Hiroshima marked the anniversary of the Aug. 6, 1945, atomic bombing of the city with a somber ceremony Monday to remember those killed and injured.
Nexter.org asks all to remember the tragic events and danger of using nuclear weapon, that’s why we prepared important facts about the Hiroshima atomic bombing and blood-chilling pictures from the scene.
The darkest page in humanity’s history
Today’s anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki arrives in a moment of increasingly heated nuclear rhetoric between the U.S. and North Korea.
On August 6, 1945, during World War II (1939-45), an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
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The explosion wiped out 90 percent of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure.
Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people.
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The vast majority of casualties were civilians. After effects, such as complications from radiation exposure, have since taken the lives of unknown thousands more.
Source: Getty Images
Japan surrendered days later, officially ending World War II.
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In the days leading up to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings the US Air Force dropped not bombs but leaflets, warning Japanese citizens that they should evacuate the cities listed if they want to save their lives. The message was also broadcast on radio every 15 minutes on an American controlled station.
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Only 3 of the 12 people on board the Enola Gay actually knew the real purpose of their mission to Hiroshima.
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When the bomb in Hiroshima went off, the thermal radiation caused burns on people who were not killed by the explosion. But the severity of the burns depended on the clothes they were wearing, with white clothes reflecting radiation and black absorbing it. This meant that if people were wearing striped clothes when the bomb hit, the burns pattern matched their outfit.
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As thermal radiation travels in straight lines from the fireball, any opaque object in its path produces a ‘nuclear shadow’. Hence the radiation produced permanent nuclear shadows of objects and even people around the sites which can be seen even today.
Source: Getty Images
The heat of the explosion instantly vaporized the bodies of people in near vicinity but left their shadows.
Source: Getty Images
Today, Hiroshima is inhabited by about 1 million people.
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