In the predawn morning of August 6, 1945, an American B-29 bomber called the Enola Gay piloted by Col. Paul Tibbets flew past the Tinian Island in the Marianas toward the city of Hiroshima in the Empire of Japan. In its bay the Boeing carried a secret cargo dubbed "Little Boy." Though innocently named, "Little Boy" was actually a weapon of mass destruction unseen before in the annals of human history. And when released upon the citizens of Hiroshima at 8:15 that morning, it unleashed an explosive force equivalent to 15,000 tons of TNT and plunged the world into a new era.

Three days later on August 9th, 1945 a second B-29 called the Bock's Car took off for the Kokura Arsenal on the southwest Japanese island of Kyushu. Due to harsh weather the pilot of the Bock's Car decided to divert to a secondary target, Nagasaki. A second and larger weapon of mass destruction code-named "Fat Man" was dropped on the military manufacturing and civilian populace.

Exact figures are always disputed, but together the bombings killed somewhere in the number of 110,000 Japanese instantly, mostly civilian, and injured another 130,000. Within five years radioactive fallout had claimed another 230,000 Japanese lives, again mostly civilian.

By August 14, a psychologically traumatized Japan accepted the terms of surrender. By Sept. 2, 1945 the last major event of WWII was officially ended as the Empire signed the surrender agreement.

But the controversy and legacy of August 6th and 9th still trouble and haunt the world.

Today (August 6th) on the 58th anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States, the debate yet rages on whether the action was necessary.

Those who supported the action and yet defend it often state that if the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had not been carried out, over one million American soldiers would have died in trying to take down the Empire of Japan and near the same amount of Japanese. This has bolstered many veterans groups and those who have refused to apologize for what has been deemed by supporters a regretful but wholly necessary act.

Yet, where did these statistics of projected American deaths come from? And can they be relied upon?

It actually began in 1947 when former Secretary of War Henry Stinson, trying to defend the action upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki, claimed there would have been over one million American "casualties." President Harry Truman later said a half million lives were at "risk." As can be seen the number problems begin instantly, as they aren't even in agreement, one claiming a projected one million American dead and the other half that amount. Even more noteworthy, both are postwar estimates that were used in rebutting critics. This hasn't stopped both the general media and many WWII veterans groups from stating the "one million dead" hypothesis repeatedly however, even though many historians have disputed such figures.

So what are the real numbers according to the best known evidence?

Well wartime statements by US generals like Douglas MacArthur, George C. Marshall and numerous joint chiefs of staffs show that postwar projected estimates of the loss of a half million American deaths was much too high. None of them ever came up with such a figure. One million was simply out of the question. The real numbers probably lay around many tens of thousands of dead, perhaps 30 to 50 thousand.

Many may say that tens of thousands of dead is a high number. And indeed it is. To be humanitarian and idealistic about the matter, it would be better if there was no war and not one human life was ever lost. But dealing with the reality of the situation and putting things into perspective, tens of thousands is a very long and winding road away from a half million. One million isn't even on the map. Taking this into account with the fact that hundreds of thousands of Japanese, again mostly civilian, died in the atomic bombings makes the old projected American war dead claim ring very hollow.

And there are other troubling bits in the historical record.

At the time not everyone in the American defense department was equally "gung-ho" about dropping Fat Man and Little Boy. In the summer of 1945 leading US military figures argued that a combination of blockade and consistent bombing campaigns had already heavily weakened Japan. With the other Axis powers mopped up and Japan on its own, they argued that its meager forces could not hold out much longer. Its armies were in constant retreat and its once large air and naval fleet had been decimated. Top navy admirals at the time thought a continued blockade would force Japan to stop fighting while army and air force generals said bombing would do the job. All estimated that the war would be over by November of 1945 as Japan was literally pounded, exhausted and starved into surrender.

Truman's chief of staff Admiral William D. Leahy was skeptical the bomb would even work. And by 1950 he denounced the acts upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki as approaching "ethical standards common to barbarians in the dark ages."

In fact, pulling on Leahy's postwar analysis, was the dropping of the bombs a violation of the rules of war? Throughout WWII the Allies had denounced the Axis powers of terror-tactics in attacking civilian populations. The Germans had done it in everywhere, from Barcelona to the Blitz of London. The Italians had done it years earlier in Ethiopia. Japan had committed such acts upon China. Generals from Eisenhower to Marshall, though later closing ranks to support the atomic bombings, had reservations about targeting civilians.

Furthermore, if one is going to use such a powerful weapon that could possibly violate ethical standards of warfare (a seeming oxymoron, but there it is) then why was no advance warning given? Why not carry out a demonstration on a less populated area as a show of force? Though a later supporter of the atomic bombings, in May of 1945 Marshall had argued the bomb should only be dropped on a definite massive military target. If it was going to be a civilian target he said, a warning should be given beforehand so the populace could flee. Postwar defenders of the atomic bombings have argued that a warning would have endangered Allied servicemen and a demonstration would have not worked. We'll never know in either case, because Marshall's suggestions were never tried. Furthermore when we're talking about hundreds of thousands of dead civilians, weighed against the threat to a few Allied servicemen going up against a near non-existent Japanese air defense, that hollow ring surfaces again.

And while we're here, we might as well delve into race. What implications did "Yellow Peril" have on the decision to use Fat Man and Little Boy? It's not as if 1940s America was some bastion of racial tolerance. While the Germans were debased with ethnic slurs such as "Krauts" throughout WWII, full blown racial caricatures and claims of sinister "Japs" out to steal white women were all part of the wartime US propaganda.

Compare Europe to Japan. In Europe US air power kept up precision attacks on military targets, or at least claimed to try. Even the infamous Dresden bombing was disavowed by US military leaders. Yet only days after this denouncement of the use of such tactics in Europe, US forces under General Curtis E. LeMay began a consistent campaign of napalm bombardment on Tokyo. More Japanese civilians were killed in these firebombings in five months than were killed by the Allied bombings in Germany in five years. So can the atomic bombings be partially explained by the belief that many Americans held Asian lives less valuable than European lives? No definite answers, but certainly a lot of suspicions.

Then there is the grand troubling issue, the political one. Was the use of atomic weapons in Japan not simply meant for the Japanese, but a flex of nuclear muscle towards what was seen as a greater looming threat?

Signed agreements by the US with the Soviet Union called for the invasion of Japan by Russian forces in the waning days of WWII. Russia in fact, sticking to the script, officially declared war on Japan two days after the destruction of Hiroshima on August 8. Some historians have suggested that the rush to use atomic weapons on Japan was meant to intimidate Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Even during the war, the US had watched warily as the USSR pushed into Eastern Europe, with no intentions on leaving. Is it possible that Truman, fearing the possibility of Soviet dominance in postwar Asia, ordered the atomic bombings to both quicken the surrender of Japan and as a lightly veiled threat against Stalin? Most scholars do not accept this as a primary reason, but admit it cannot be ruled out as part of the puzzle.

Mind you in all this it should be stated that Imperial Japan was not exactly an innocent. The Japanese Empire willingly joined the Axis powers of Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy to carve up the world to their liking. The Japanese bombing of cities in China resulted in the deaths of untold thousands. The use of mass rape and sex slaves by those deemed to be "lesser Asians" was practiced by the Japanese military. There were massacres of civilians, the use of biological weapons on at least 11 Chinese cities and bizarre medical experiments upon non-Japanese hauntingly familiar to those a continent away at Dachau and Buchenwald under Nazi physicians.

Yet despite such horrors, a differentiation must be made between elements of Japan's military and the civilian population. Whatever crimes the Japanese Empire committed was carried out by military figures, not its civilian population. And it was everyday civilians---men, women and children---who paid the greatest price at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nagasaki for instance was only targeted because of a Mitsubishi plant that manufactured torpedoes. Yet by August of 1945 the Japanese navy was for all intents and purposes null and void, having been crippled at battles like Midway and utterly destroyed at Leyte. By the time Fat Man was dropped on a naval weapons manufacturing complex, the Japanese fleet had been relegated to last ditch kamikaze attacks while most ships sat in harbors devoid of fuel and waiting to be picked off by US air power that dominated the skies. Thus an atomic bomb was dropped on a plant in the midst of a larger civilian population, even though the building was manufacturing weapons that couldn't be used by the Japanese navy. Nagasaki may tragically be a rather stunning case of using a hammer to crush a fly. 

So here we are on the 58th anniversary of events that would change the world forever. Since the US first dropped Fat Man and Little Boy on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it has fiercely guarded membership to the nuclear club. The effort has been less than successful as the weapons have proliferated around the world, leaving the fate of humanity always in doubt and worry. The Soviet Union would be the first to join, helping launch the already burgeoning Cold War and taking us a few steps away from Armageddon with incidents such as the Cuban Missile Crisis. Today membership has extended to the UK, France, China, Israel, India and Pakistan---the latter two seeming to come closer each moment to being the first to let loose the genie from its bottle. Others hoping for membership have included Libya, Iraq, Iran and N. Korea, the latter of which is ruled by an unstable megalomaniac who extorts the world with threats to sell his weapons to the highest bidder. A few like Algeria, Argentina, Belarus, Brazil, Kazakhstan and Ukraine gave up on joining. Opting for sanity, South Africa actually returned its membership card. Today the US is equipped with about 11,000 nuclear warheads, all trained on someone. Russia's massive and crumbling arsenal stands at 22,000---that is if none have been sold on the black market yet---equally all trained on someone. Altogether there are probably 35,000 nuclear weapons in the world. But it really doesn't take much to do the job of global annihilation. The US Navy's 18 Trident Missile Submarines alone have enough nuclear firepower to end near all human life on the planet - twice. 

Beginning on Aug. 6th and continuing on to Aug. 9th, Hiroshima and Nagasaki will mourn the dead of the atomic bombings as well as the end of human innocence---if we ever had any to begin with. Names will be added to the register of dead who were found to have died from the fallout in later years. Paper Lanterns will be lit and doves will fly over Peace Memorial Park. Japan has disavowed its move towards Empire, militarily anyway, opting for non-nuclear principles after having witnessed the horror first hand. The US, who now hunts the world to make sure its creations aren't unleashed by others but at the same time seems ready to abandon set principles to stop proliferation, yet remains the only nation ever to use nuclear weapons of mass destruction against another. 

Fifty-eight years later the question begs to be asked if the dropping of the two bombs and sending the world into the age of nuclear uncertainty was worth it. Some will argue that we would have entered such an age anyway, that someone else would have figured how to create such weapons first. After all, the Germans had split the atom in 1939. So, perhaps. But that's history as it *could* have been. 

I only know history as it is. There's a clock that's kept by scientists. Its job is to record the current political climate to determine how close the world is to a nuclear holocaust. Noon is the furthest away from such a disaster. Each second past noon indicates the possibility of an approaching nuclear nightmare. In case you're wondering, the hands on the current clock are set at 7 minutes to midnight. 

Sleep tight.

Morpheus_Reloaded- Exposin' Fake Shyt

"In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose."---J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb and head of the Manhattan Project.

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