EVERY year, but particularly today, we hear the echoes of the grief of less than 100,000 officially recognized survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings that killed 214,000, including 38,000 children, in 1945.
In succeeding years, many of the survivors called hibakusha would face leukemia, cancer, or other terrible side effects from the radiation.
The 4,400-kilo “Little Boy” uranium bomb detonated over Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945 had an explosive yield equal to 15,000 metric tons of TNT, razed and burnt around 70 per cent of all buildings and caused an estimated 140,000 deaths by end of 1945, along with increased rates of cancer and chronic disease among the survivors.
TNT is a high explosive formed from toluene by substitution of nitro groups for three hydrogen atoms. It is relatively insensitive to shock and can be conveniently melted.
Three days later, the 4,670-kilo “Fat Man” dropped on Nagasaki killed 74,000 of the approximate 263,000 population at the time of the bombing, who included 240,000 Japanese residents, 9,000 Japanese soldiers, and 400 prisoners of war, according to the Nuclear Museum.
The blitz on Nagasaki leveled 6.7 sq km. of the city, with ground temperatures reaching 4,000°C and radioactive black rain pouring down on the city, silently poisoning countless more by end of 1945.
It takes around10 seconds for the fireball from a nuclear explosion to reach its maximum size, but the effects last for decades and span across generations.
Five to six years after the bombings, the incidence of leukemia increased noticeably among survivors. After about a decade, hibakusha began suffering from thyroid, breast, lung and other cancers at higher than normal rates.
Doubtless, the bombings had a profound impact on Japanese society with the officially created term hibakusha – meaning “explosion-affected-people” or “bomb-affected-people”– used to distinguish them from other war-related casualties.
Today, we hear many hibakusha spending their lives dealing with illness, depression and societal prejudice, and their dwindling population serves as a constant reminder of the catastrophic consequences from nuclear weapons and the need for nuclear disarmament.
Today, their stories like that of Koko Kondo’s, only eight months old when the bomb blasted Hiroshima, cry for attention and action to eliminate nuclear weapons as they endure the long-term emotional and physical toll of nuclear weapons.
We hear again their syllables, which do not just echo suffering, for they also highlight resilience, advocacy for peace, and determined efforts to prevent future nuclear attacks.
