The Spectre of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

In the late eighties, in Ilorin, I read an issue of American Way, a magazine brought back by a relative who had travelled to the US.

(I later found it was an inflight magazine of American Airlines. Do they still put it in their seatback pockets?)

The issue carried a story on the smelliest substance in the world—ethyl mercaptan—which was said to have the smell of rotten cabbage. Mercaptan gas is so smelly it's added in small amounts to odourless but highly flammable fuel gases for safety purposes. The unpleasant smell of your cooking gas is due to mercaptans.

It also featured the story of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. From that time, I’ve not forgotten three names in connection with that horrible event—Enola Gay, the plane from which the bomb was dropped; Paul Tibbets, the pilot who flew the plane; and Van Kirk, the navigator.

I knew the gory details for many years because I narrated them many times in arguments with friends in my university days.

On that fateful day—August 6, 1945—at 8:15 am, the city of Hiroshima, Japan, was shattered by an unprecedented force.

A US B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, dropped "Little Boy," a uranium-based atomic bomb, over the city.

1,900 feet above the ground, the bomb detonated, unleashing a blinding flash and a fireball hotter than the sun’s surface.

Within seconds, all structures within a 1.6 km radius of the hypocentre were blotted out of existence. Hiroshima’s bustling centre was obliterated. Approximately 80,000 people, roughly 30% of the city’s population, were killed instantly.

Tens of thousands more were injured, with many suffering horrific burns from the intense heat or wounds from the blast’s shockwave.

Buildings within a one-mile radius were reduced to rubble, and a firestorm raged across the city, consuming wooden structures and trapping survivors.

The explosion’s radiation poisoned the air, dooming many who initially survived to slow, agonizing deaths from acute radiation syndrome.

Acid rain—soot, dust, and fission products from the bomb, which had been sucked into the atmosphere by the fireball and mixed with water vapor—descended in less than an hour.

Three days later, on August 9, 1945, at 11:02 am, Nagasaki faced a similar fate. Another B-29, Bockscar, released "Fat Man," a plutonium-based bomb, over the city.

Detonating at 1,650 feet, it unleashed destruction on a slightly smaller scale due to Nagasaki’s hilly terrain, which partially contained the blast.

Still, approximately 40,000 people were killed instantly.

(It took almost a year to kill 40,000 people in the relentless bombardment of Gaza by Israel).

The city’s industrial heart, including the Mitsubishi shipyards, was devastated.

Fires spread, and the death toll climbed as radiation and injuries claimed more lives.

The immediate aftermath in both cities was chaos. It was Armageddon.

Survivors, known as hibakusha, wandered through apocalyptic landscapes, their skin peeling from burns, their bodies wracked by radiation sickness—vomiting, hair loss, and internal bleeding.

Hospitals were destroyed or overwhelmed, with few medical supplies or staff to treat the wounded.

In Hiroshima, an estimated 140,000 people had died by the end of 1945; in Nagasaki, the figure reached 74,000. These numbers included those killed by the initial blast, fires, and subsequent radiation effects.

The bombings’ impact extended beyond physical destruction. Japan, already battered by years of war, faced a psychological and political reckoning.

On August 15, 1945, Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s surrender, citing the "new and most cruel bomb" as a key factor.

The bombings, coupled with the Soviet Union’s declaration of war on August 8, ended World War II, sparing an estimated million casualties projected for a planned US invasion of Japan, with its brave and suicidal fighters.

Long-term, the bombings left deep scars. Hibakusha faced social stigma and health issues, including higher rates of leukaemia and other cancers linked to radiation exposure.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were rebuilt, but the cities became global symbols of nuclear devastation, fuelling anti-nuclear movements.

Today, in 2025, the hibakusha population has dwindled, but their stories and the cities’ peace memorials continue to advocate for a world free of nuclear weapons.

Earlier today, when I narrated the story to a group of friends, one of them said he visited the memorial museum at Hiroshima. He said, ‘Not a good story, bro’.

The bombings achieved their strategic aim, i.e., ending the war swiftly, but at a staggering human cost, reshaping global warfare and leaving an enduring legacy of horror.

I’ve encountered arguments, including in one of Thomas Sowell's essays, saying that more people would have been killed on both sides if the Allied forces had fought island after island to get to mainland Japan to conquer it.

So, what if the current conflict in Western Asia intensifies and the US or Israel decides to use it to prevent a protracted war like Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq?

After all, the US is the only country ever to have used an atomic bomb. In psychiatry, it is said that the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour, a notion grounded in a frequentist view of probability.

Modern nuclear bombs dwarf the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs in power, efficiency, and delivery precision.

A single contemporary warhead could replicate or exceed the devastation of 1945 across a much larger area, with global environmental consequences possible in a full-scale conflict.

While the 1945 bombs killed tens of thousands, modern arsenals could kill millions and disrupt civilization, underscoring the escalated stakes of nuclear warfare.

God forbid.