The Bombing of Hiroshima

Dangers and Injuries:

• The man-made structures and inanimate objects suffered everything from blasts, pressure waves, fires started instantaneously by the heat radiated from the explosions(“primary fire”), and fires resulting from collapse of buildings, and damaged electrical systems(“secondary fire”).
• Casualties were due to: Flash bombs (immediate burns from instantaneous explosions), flying debris, and radiation.
• All radiation effects occurred within the first minute of the initial blast, but mostly all of them happened within the first second.
• The central part of the city was for the most part totaled.
• The blast 100%destroyed everything that was within a mile of the explosion.

Selection of the Targets:

• Date for the first bomb was made in 1942. Between this time and 1945 an enormous amount of testing was done. The probabilities of success during the time rose from 60%-90%. The first full scale test was on July 16, 1945 in New, Mexico.
• Actual deliberation on the targets for the bombs was not started until 1945.
• Important considerations were:
1. The range an aircraft would carry the bomb.
2. Desirability of visual bombing to insure most effective use of the bomb.
3. Probable weather conditions in target areas.
4. Morale effect on the enemy.

· Weather was a big factor because the records from the last five years showed that there had never been two days in a row that were good visual bombing days over Tokyo. July and August were the months where the weather was supposed to improve from the bad previous months and the next months to come.

Total Casualties:

· It had been hard calculating the total casualties in the bombed cities because of:

1. The vast destruction of civil installations.

2. The extreme state of confusion that immediately followed the explosion.

3. The already uncertainty of the actual population before the bombings.

· The estimated pre-raid population was 255,000 people. 66,000 people died and 69,000 people were injured, so there were 135,000 casualties.

Other Types of Injuries:

• Mechanical: Included fractures, lacerations, contusions, abrasions, falling roofs, crumbling walls, flying debris, glass.
• Blast: Only people who were very near the center of the blast (within a few hundred feet at most), suffered from this type of injury.
• Radiation: There are two types of radiation that didn’t cause any casualties but one other type did. The two that didn’t were from scattered fission products and induced radioactivity from objects near the center of the explosion.

Effects of Atomic Bombings on the inhabitants of the Bombed Cities:

· This was obviously the worst attack ever in Japan. There was no significant construction work or repairing was done due to the slow recovery of the population.

· By the end of November 1945, Hiroshima had about 140,000 people. After the war people were slow to begin to get the city “picked up”.