Nagasaki: Fat Man’s Massacre 

By Marcos Alfonso

Barely three days had passed after that traumatic day in August 1945. This time the Bock’s Car aircraft dropped another nuclear artifact, this time on the industrial Japanese city of Nagasaki.

The topography of that city made it possible for the so-called Fat Man artifact less devastating, but similar in destruction and number of innocent human lives lost.

What was the US game?

The high ranking Japanese army believed that the US had only one nuclear bomb and the catastrophe had already occurred.  They didn’t lay down their weapons.  Mistake, this was already calculated by the US and with 72 hours difference they launched the second devastating bomb.

Different from Hiroshima, located in a valley, the topography of Nagasaki helped in that the expansive wave was not able to extend beyond the surrounding mountains.

But the destruction and death did not wait and it was unleashed from the instant of the impact.

Survivors that narrated the disastrous incident said that no buildings were left in place several kilometers from impact and even the concrete structures were burned.

Glass windows blew out of the buildings located over 8 kilometers away from the impact. Trees were ripped from its roots and burned by the heat and 40 percent of the city disappeared.

Nagasaki was a city of some 250 000 inhabitants. During the impact of the bomb and in days and months later 70 000 Japanese died and thousands more years after the bomb. The international community felt for the suffering of the Japanese people and the horrors inflicted by the nuclear bomb.

Thanks to the campaign of the right wing media outlets, the surveys in the US revealed that 70 percent of the population was in favor of the launching of the genocidal bombs. The justification of the press, radio and television were that the bombs had facilitated the end of the war and avoided more Japanese and US deaths.

Nagasaki made the Japanese authorities believe that all their cities would be wiped out and that there was a possibility of a third bomb.

This was not the end; it was on course, the only thing left was to have enough fission material.

For Emperor Hirohito, prey of panic and drama, the highest official of the Japanese army did not have an option and informed and convinced its people (without ever mentioning the word ‘surrender’) that the war had ended.

The most destructive weapon known by humanity up until then had made its debut on Earth.

We all hope that this scene, born from the testimonies of survivors, can sensitize the souls of the planet: “In many surfaces, like the walls of different buildings the shadows of carbon of the people were left suddenly disintegrated by the explosion.” 

(ACN)