When Nagasaki was bombed. "I saw the ranks of the dead": what the survivors of the hell of Hiroshima and Nagasaki say

10 Sep 2012

The strategic bombing of Japan was carried out by the US Air Force from 1942 to 1945. During the last 7 months of the campaign, emphasis was placed on firebombing, which caused extensive destruction of 67 Japanese cities, resulted in the deaths of about 500,000 Japanese, and made about 5 million people homeless. For Emperor Hirohito, seeing Tokyo's destroyed squares in March 1945 was the impetus for personal involvement in the peace process that culminated in Japan's surrender five months later.
Japan, separated from its main opponents by thousands of kilometers of seas and oceans, did not know what a war on its own territory was until 1945. Having defeated the American and British fleets in 1941 and seized vast territories, the Japanese made it impossible to carry out serious air strikes on their territory. Although their aircraft bombed the cities of China, the Philippines and northern Australia.
Japanese strategic bombing mainly carried out against such Chinese cities as Shanghai, Wuhan and Chongqing. In total, about 5,000 raids were carried out from February 1938 to August 1943. The bombing of Nanjing and Guangzhou, which began on September 22 and 23, 1937, caused large-scale protests, which led to the adoption of a special resolution by the Far East Committee of the League of Nations. According to one of the British diplomats,
“These raids were directed against places far from the war zone. Their military purpose, where it was at all, seemed to be absolutely secondary. main goal the bombings appear to have been terrified by the massacre of the civilian population…”.

Victims of the mass panic during the Japanese air raid on Chongqing.
Bombing of Darwin on February 19, 1942 was the largest air raid ever undertaken by a foreign power against Australia. She dealt a strong psychological blow to the population of this state. The raid was the first of approximately 100 air raids launched by Japan against Australia in 1942-43.

At that time, the civilian population of the city was about 2,000 people (in peacetime, the population was about 5,000, but part of the population was evacuated deep into the mainland). In addition, in the vicinity of the city there were allied units of up to 15,000 people. Darwin itself was an important naval port and air base supplying ABDA troops in the Dutch East Indies.
This bombing is often referred to as the "Australian Pearl Harbor". Although it was a less significant target, more bombs were used in the attack on Darwin. As with Pearl Harbor, the Australian city met the attack unprepared, which resulted in massive destruction and a large number of casualties. And although the city was subjected to air raids another 58 times, the bombing on February 19 was the most massive and destructive.

Darwin was very poorly protected by anti-aircraft artillery. Of the air defense systems in the city, only anti-aircraft machine guns were installed. No one anti-aircraft gun caliber 20 mm or higher was not in service. The Australian Air Force fighters were mainly in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East fighting against the Germans. the only modern fighters there were 11 P-40s from the 33rd Air Force Squadron in the city. In addition, the city had 5 Wirraway training aircraft and 6 Lockheed Hudson patrol aircraft from the Australian Air Force. The experimental radar has not yet been put into service.

First U.S. air raid on Japan (Doolittle Raid) took place on April 18, 1942, when sixteen B-25 Mitchells launched from the aircraft carrier Hornet (CV-8) to attack a number of Japanese cities, including Yokohama and Tokyo, and land at airfields located in China. In a military sense, the results of the raid were insignificant, but had a noticeable propaganda effect. Due to a premature start, none of the bombers made it to the designated airfields, crashing during landing (except for one aircraft that landed in the USSR, where the crew was interned). Two crews were taken prisoner by the Japanese. It is estimated that up to 250,000 Chinese men, women and children died in retaliation against the Japanese army for assisting the US Air Force in carrying out this bombing.
Air raids from China.
A key factor in the bombing of Japan was the creation heavy bomber the B-29, which had a range of 2,400 kilometers; almost 90% of the tonnage of bombs dropped on Japan fell on this type of bomber (147,000 tons).

Bomber B-29.
The first B-29 raid on Japan from China took place on 15 June 1944. This raid also did little damage to the Japanese. Only 47 of 68 B-29s hit their intended targets; four returned due to technical problems, four crashed, six dropped bombs out of place due to technical problems, and the rest hit secondary targets. Only one B-29 was shot down by enemy aircraft. The first raid on Japan from the east took place on November 24, 1944, when 88 aircraft bombed Tokyo. The bombs were dropped from a height of about 10 kilometers and it is estimated that only about 10% of them hit their intended targets.
The first raids were carried out by the US 12th Air Force from air bases in mainland China as part of Operation Matterhorn. This was never seen as a satisfactory solution, not only because of the difficulties of supplying Chinese airfields (supplies went through the "Hump" - an air bridge from India to China over the Himalayas), but also because the B-29s could only reach Japan by replacing parts bomb load on additional fuel tanks.
Raids from the Marianas.
When Admiral Nimitz's "island-hopping" strategy led to the capture of the Marianas, which were within B-29 flight range of Japan, the 12th Air Force moved its bases there (especially on Guam and Tinian). Now B-29s could fly to bomb Japan with a full bomb load.

Mariana Islands (in red rectangle).
Just as in Europe, the US Air Force tried to stick to the practice of daylight precision bombing. This, however, turned out to be impossible due to the presence of strong winds in the stratosphere near the coast of Japan, which made it impossible for targeted bombing. Li Mei, who at that time commanded the 12th Air Force, ordered a switch to the tactics of massive night bombing using incendiary bombs from heights of about 2 kilometers across the main metropolitan area, including Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka and Kobe. Despite limited initial bombing success, especially against Nagoya, Li Mei continued to use this tactic against Japanese cities. Attacks against strategic targets were also carried out by daytime bombing from lower altitudes.
The first successful firebombing raid was carried out on Kobe on February 3, 1945: almost half of the city's main factories were damaged, and production at one of the city's two shipyards more than halved.
Most of the armor and armament of the bombers was removed to increase the bomb load; the Japanese air defense system in terms of the number of night fighters and anti-aircraft guns was so weak that this was quite possible.
The first raid of this type on Tokyo took place on the night of February 23-24, when 174 B-29s destroyed about 3 sq. km. cities. On the night of March 9/10, 334 B-29s carried out a second raid on Tokyo, dropping about 1,700 tons of bombs. About 40 sq. km. the square of the city was destroyed; over 100,000 people died in the resulting firestorm. Damage was greatest in the part of the city to the west of the Imperial Palace. It was the most destructive conventional air raid in history.. The city was predominantly made of wood and paper, and Japanese firefighting methods proved ineffective. The fires went out of control, heating the water in the canals to a boil and causing entire neighborhoods to spontaneously combust. The results of the incendiary bombing of Tokyo confirmed the fears expressed by Admiral Yamamoto back in 1939: “Japanese cities, being made of wood and paper, will catch fire very easily. The army can self-praise all they want, but if the war starts and there are large-scale air raids, it’s scary to imagine what will happen then.”

In the next two weeks, 1,600 sorties were made against four cities, during which 80 sq. km. the urban area was destroyed at the cost of the loss of 22 bombers. By June, over 40% of the urban area of ​​Japan's six largest cities (Tokyo, Nagoya, Kobe, Osaka, Yokohama and Kawasaki) had been destroyed. Under the command of Li Mei there were almost 600 bombers, which managed to destroy dozens of smaller cities and industrial centers before the end of the war.
Before the bombing, leaflets were dropped over the cities, warning Japanese residents and urging them to leave the city. Although many, even within the US Air Force, saw this as a form of psychological warfare, a significant motive was nonetheless a desire to alleviate concerns in the US about the extent of the devastation caused by the bombing.

Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki(August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively) - the only two examples of the combat use of nuclear weapons in the history of mankind. Carried out by the US Armed Forces at the final stage of World War II (the officially declared goal is to hasten the surrender of Japan).

On the morning of August 6, 1945, the American B-29 Enola Gay bomber, under the command of Colonel Paul Tibbets, dropped the Little Boy atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima with the equivalent of 13 to 18 kilotons of TNT. Three days later, on August 9, 1945, the atomic bomb "Fat Man" ("Fat Man") was dropped on the city of Nagasaki by pilot Charles Sweeney, commander of the B-29 "Bockscar" bomber. The total death toll ranged from 90 to 166 thousand people in Hiroshima and from 60 to 80 thousand people in Nagasaki.

Nuclear "mushroom" over Nagasaki, August 9, 1945.

Japanese "answer" to American atomic bombs.

Toward the end of World War II, Japan was going to give America a "second Pearl Harbor." Only not on the Hawaiian Islands, but on the continent, and not against the navy, but against the civilian population. A key role in this operation with the use of biological weapons was assigned to the secret "detachment 731" from the Kwantung Army.

The larger map shows the location of the bacteriological strike in California (USA). On the smaller square is the location of Detachment 731 in Manchuria.

During World War II, the Japanese military developed samples of biological weapons designed to mass-drop specially prepared plague carriers - infected fleas. When developing samples of biological weapons special squad 731, headed by General Ishii Shiro, deliberately infected civilians and prisoners of China, Korea and Manchuria for further medical research and experiments, studying the prospects for the use of biological agents as weapons of mass destruction. The group developed a plague strain 60 times more virulent than the original plague strain, a kind of absolutely effective weapon of mass destruction with natural distribution. Various aerial bombs and projectiles have been developed to drop and disperse infected carriers, such as bombs to infect the ground, aerosol bombs, and fragmentation projectiles that affect human tissue. Ceramic ("porcelain") bombs were popular, taking into account the peculiarities of the use of living organisms - fleas and the need to maintain their activity and viability under discharge conditions, for which special life support conditions were created (in particular, oxygen was pumped).

The flea Xenopsylla cheopis is the main plague vector, SEM image.
From 1939 until the summer of 1945, that is, almost until the very end of the war, numerous experiments were carried out at the test site near the Anta station on the use of ceramic bombs stuffed with Pulex irritans fleas. Masses of fleas infected with plague and dropped on the Chinese front in the area south of Shanghai caused small outbreaks of plague, but not epidemics, as expected. The Japanese repeated experiments on flea dissemination, changing their conditions almost until the very end of the war, but there was no clarity about what happened to them after the bomb was detonated.

By the beginning of the war with the USSR, the detachment was not ready. When on August 9, 1945, i.e., after the start of the war with the USSR, Ishii demanded that Onoue Masano (the head of the Mudanjiang branch of "detachment No. 731") deliver all available fleas to the detachment's headquarters, he was able to collect only 25 g of these insects.
For Soviet intelligence, the location of the detachment and its activities were not a secret from the moment of its organization. On the night of 9 to 10 August Soviet aircraft dropped lighting bombs in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe detachment's deployment. The next night, a Soviet parachute landing was dropped in the vicinity between Harbin and "detachment No. 731", but the Japanese destroyed it using tanks. On August 9, the Japanese killed the experimental people. On the morning of August 10, the Ro block was blown up, but all of them failed to leave. More than a thousand members of the detachment, including 4 generals, were captured by Soviet troops.

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Nagasaki and Hiroshima are two long-suffering cities of Japan included in world history as the first site for testing a nuclear bomb on living people. During World War II, the US military used a new type of weapon of mass destruction on innocent civilians without knowing that this act would have repercussions for decades to come. and lethal rays of radiation will claim and maim thousands of lives, deprive hundreds of thousands of people of health, and kill an unknown number of children in the wombs of their sick mothers. How could such a brutal event happen? Why once blooming developing cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki turned into scorched ruins, littered with charred corpses?

To this day, disputes on these issues continue. Politicians, historians and people who are simply interested in searching for the truth are trying to get to the bottom of the truth, which is classified in secret military archives. Different opinions and versions are united by one thing: ordinary Japanese, workers, women, children, old people did not deserve such torment.

The phrase "Hiroshima and Nagasaki" is known to people all over the world. But behind the well-known fact that there was a nuclear attack on Hiroshima, most of the inhabitants no longer have any information. But behind these words lies a centuries-old history of the formation and development of cities, hundreds of thousands of human lives.

In the southwestern part of the island of Honshu, the Chugoku region is located, which in Japanese means "region of the middle lands." His central part is a prefecture with the same name of the capital - Hiroshima. It is located on the "sunny side" of a mountain range that divides the region in two. This is a picturesque area, overgrown with dense forests, alternating hills and valleys. Among the beautiful island vegetation on the banks of the Ota River Delta lies the city of Hiroshima. In literal translation, its name is interpreted as "wide island". Today, Hiroshima can rightly be called the largest city in the region, with a developed infrastructure, revived, like a Phoenix bird, after a sizzling explosion atomic bomb. It is because of its location that Hiroshima was included in the list of cities in Japan on which a new bomb will be dropped. In 1945, the day will come when a catastrophe will occur in a beautiful and flourishing city. Hiroshima will turn into burnt ruins.

The second target of an American bomber carrying an atomic bomb was located at a distance of 302 km southwest of the city of Hiroshima. Nagasaki, which literally means "long cape" is the central city of Japan, located around the bay of the East China Sea Nagasaki. The modern districts of the metropolis rise in terraces on the slopes of the mountains, covering the port city from cold winds on three sides. Today, as in those distant years of the Second World War, the city on the island of Kyushu was one of the largest shipbuilding and industrial centers in Japan. Location, strategic importance and dense population will be the decisive factors that will put Nagasaki on the list of potential victims of a nuclear attack.

A little about the past

The history of Hiroshima originates from ancient times. Even in the period of more than 2 thousand years BC. on the territory of this modern city there were sites of primitive tribes. But only in the middle of the XVI century japanese samurai Mori Motonari, uniting the entire population of the Chugoku region under his leadership, founded the settlement of Hiroshima off the coast of the bay, built a castle and made this place the center of his possessions. Over the next two centuries, one ruling family was replaced by another.

During the 19th century, settlements near the castle grew rapidly, the area received the status of a city. Since the beginning of the 20th century, Hiroshima has become the center of the General Staff of the Japanese Armed Forces, the base of the Imperial Navy and even the seat of the Parliament. Gradually, Hiroshima turned into one of the largest political and administrative centers of Japan.

The city of Nagasaki was founded by the samurai ruler Omura Sumitada in the second half of the 16th century. Initially, this settlement was an important trading center, where merchants from different countries arrived. Many Europeans, admiring the beauty of Japanese nature, authentic culture and great economic prospects, took root there and stayed to live. The city developed rapidly. By the middle of the XIX century it was already the largest port international importance. By the time the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima, followed by the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese, Nagasaki was already the stronghold of the Japanese steel industry and the center of shipbuilding.

Developed infrastructure, the location of the main shipbuilding and automotive plants, weapons and steel production, dense buildings, these factors met all the conditions that the US military put forward to the proposed facility for testing the destructive effect of the atomic bomb. Like the city of Hiroshima, tragedy befell Nagasaki in the late summer of 1945.

The Day Hiroshima and Nagasaki Died

Only three days that separated in time the moment of the destruction of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the context of the history of the whole country can be called insignificant. The bombing operations carried out by American military pilots were carried out almost identically. A small group of aircraft did not cause concern. Item Observers air defense Japan considered them just reconnaissance, and so deeply mistaken. Without fear of bombardment, people continued to go about their daily business. Having dropped its deadly cargo, the bomber immediately retires, and the planes going a little behind record the results of the explosions.

This is what the explosion looked like from the official reports:

Hell Survivors

Surprisingly, after the nuclear explosions in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were supposed to destroy all life at a distance of a radius of up to 5 km, people survived. What is even more surprising, many of them survived to this day and told what happened to them at the time of the explosions.

Report of the Ambassador of the USSR on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

A month later, after what happened in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the leadership of the USSR instructed a group of representatives of the Embassy to get acquainted with the consequences of the explosions. Among the declassified documents of the Archive foreign policy Russia, which was provided by the Historical Society, is the report of the Soviet ambassador. It tells about the sightings of eyewitnesses, press reports, and also describes the consequences of Hiroshima.

According to the ambassador, the destructive power of the bombs is greatly exaggerated in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The consequences of an atomic explosion are not significant for him. For example, the ambassador considered absurd the rumor that it was dangerous to be in the immediate vicinity of the explosion site, and a long stay in the city threatens with infertility and impotence. He accused American radio, which reported the impossibility of life in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for another seventy years, of fueling confusion and panic.

The group went on September 14, 1945 to the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to see with their own eyes what a nuclear bomb is capable of. Representatives of the Embassy and a correspondent of the TASS news agency arrived in the city, which was a scorched desert. Here and there one came across reinforced concrete buildings miraculously standing with windows smashed inwards and "swollen" ceilings.

One old man told them that after the explosion, a huge fire spread even against a strong wind. Observing the visible destruction, how the completely burnt-out vegetation begins to revive in places, the representatives of the embassy concluded that some rays were spreading from the explosion, but not evenly, but as if in beams. This was confirmed by the doctor of the local hospital.

IT IS IMPORTANT TO KNOW:

Having been in the hospital, they saw the terrible wounds and burns of the victims, which they described in detail. The report spoke of deep wounds in exposed areas of the body, scorched head hairs that began to grow back in small tufts a month later, a lack of white blood cells that caused profuse bleeding, high fever and death. The hospital doctor said that protection against the rays of a uranium bomb could be rubber or electrical insulation. Also, from a conversation with doctors, it became known that it was impossible to drink water for several days after the explosion and be near that place, otherwise death would occur in a couple of days.

Although the information collected about the consequences of Hiroshima did not convince the ambassador of the danger of a uranium bomb, the first results of the deadly effect of radiation were visible.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Strange Stories

Many documents have been studied by historians in order to restore a complete and reliable picture of what actually happened in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. But there are still blank spots in the history of these cities. There are also unconfirmed official documents and just incredible information.

There is a conspiracy theory that during the Second World War, Japanese scientists conducted an active study of the sphere nuclear energy, and were already on the verge of discovering nuclear weapons of mass destruction. Only the lack of time and the consumption of the country's economic resources prevented the Japanese from finishing them before the United States and Russia. The Japanese media reported that secret documents were found with calculations of uranium enrichment to create a bomb. The scientists were supposed to complete the project before August 14, 1945, but apparently something prevented them.

The intelligence of the countries participating in the largest military confrontation worked perfectly. This is evidenced by the fact that their leaders knew about the nuclear developments of their rivals and were in a hurry to activate their own. But at that moment, the United States was head and shoulders ahead of the rest of the world. There is evidence of a man who in 1945 attended a school for the children of high-ranking Japanese military officials. A few weeks before the day when the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki took place, the leadership received a secret message. All staff and students were evacuated immediately. It saved their lives.

On the day when Hiroshima was attacked by an American plane carrying an atomic bomb, amazing things happened. For example, one of the eyewitnesses saw three parachutes descending from the sky. One of them was carrying a bomb, which exploded. Two others were also carrying cargo, apparently two more bombs. But they didn't explode. They were picked up by the military for study.

But the most mysterious event of that month, when Hiroshima and Nagasaki choked in fiery tornadoes from the explosion of the atomic bomb, were the appearances of UFOs.

Unidentified lights in the sky

As you know, August 1945, when there was Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was marked by many historically significant events. For their study long years scientists did not notice inexplicable oddities in the documents. It wasn't until 1974 that the Japanese ufology magazine UFO News first published a photograph in which an unidentified flying object was accidentally captured over the ruins of Hiroshima. Although the quality of the picture left much to be desired, there could be no fake. A disk-shaped UFO was clearly visible in the sky.

An active search began for new evidence of the presence of aliens at that time over Japanese cities. And surprisingly, there was a lot of evidence that Hiroshima and Nagasaki attracted the attention of extraterrestrial visitors.

So, in the report of the captain of the anti-aircraft battery Matsuo Takenaka dated August 4, it is said that several luminous dots appeared in the night sky over Hiroshima. They were mistaken for reconnaissance aircraft and tried to be taken into the beams of searchlights. However, objects, making absolutely unthinkable turns, constantly moved away from the rays of light. Similar reports are found in other military reports.

The pilot of the Enola Gay escort aircraft carrying the Baby bomb reported strange movements in the clouds near the side. At first, he thought that these were Japanese army intercept aircraft, but, not noticing anything again, he did not raise the alarm.

Information about the observation of obscure objects in the sky over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in those days came from ordinary residents. Usari Sato claimed that when a mushroom cloud grew over Hiroshima, she saw at its top strange object, which flew through the "cap". So she realized that she was mistaken in mistaking it for a plane. The disappearance of patients from hospital wards remains a mysterious phenomenon. After careful research, ufologists came to the conclusion that more than a hundred people officially disappeared from hospitals without a trace after the explosions. At that time, little attention was paid to this, since so many patients died, and even more missing people did not end up in medical institutions at all.

Conclusion

There are many black pages in the history of mankind, but August 6 and 9, 1945 is a special date. Hiroshima and Nagasaki on that summer month fell victim to human aggression and pride. American President Truman issued a cruel and cynical decree: to drop atomic bombs on the densely populated Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The consequences of this decision, even for him, were not fully known. In those days, ominous nuclear mushrooms hovered over these Japanese cities.

Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled. A few hours after the explosions, black, sticky raindrops rained down on the ground, poisoning the soil. Radiation and fiery whirlwinds burned out human flesh. Nagasaki and Hiroshima the day after the bombing were littered with burnt and charred corpses, the whole world shuddered from the horror committed by people against people. But, even 70 years after the atomic strikes on Japan, no apologies were made.

There are absolutely opposite opinions about whether Hiroshima and Nagasaki suffered from the nuclear bomb in vain. That such a decision was made by Truman is not surprising. The desire to get ahead of the USSR in the arms race was justified. He justified the atomic strike by the fact that fewer American soldiers and residents of Japan would die this way. Did it really happen? It's impossible to know.

Prerequisites for big war in the Pacific region began to emerge as early as the middle of the 19th century, when the American Commodore Matthew Perry, on the instructions of the US government at gunpoint, forced the Japanese authorities to stop the policy of isolationism, open their ports to American ships and sign an unequal treaty with the United States, giving serious economic and political advantages Washington.

At a time when most of the Asian countries were completely or partially dependent on the Western powers, Japan had to carry out lightning-fast technical modernization in order to maintain its sovereignty. At the same time, a feeling of resentment against those who forced them to one-sided "openness" took root among the Japanese.

By its own example, America demonstrated to Japan that with the help of brute force it is supposedly possible to solve any international problems. As a result, the Japanese, who for centuries practically did not go anywhere outside their islands, began an active expansionist policy directed against other Far Eastern countries. Korea, China and Russia became its victims.

Pacific Theater of Operations

In 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria from the territory of Korea, occupied it and created the puppet state of Manchukuo. In the summer of 1937, Tokyo launched a full-scale war against China. In the same year, Shanghai, Beijing and Nanjing fell. On the territory of the latter, the Japanese army staged one of the most heinous massacres in world history. From December 1937 to January 1938, the Japanese military killed, using mostly edged weapons, up to 500 thousand civilians and disarmed soldiers. The murders were accompanied by monstrous torture and rape. Rape victims, from young children to older women, were then brutally murdered as well. The total number of deaths as a result of Japanese aggression in China amounted to 30 million people.

• Pearl Harbor
• globallookpress.com
• Scherl

In 1940, Japan began to expand into Indochina, in 1941 it attacked British and American military bases (Hong Kong, Pearl Harbor, Guam and Wake), Malaysia, Burma and the Philippines. In 1942, Indonesia, New Guinea, Australia, the American Aleutian Islands, India and the islands of Micronesia.

However, already in 1942, the Japanese offensive began to stall, and in 1943 Japan lost the initiative, although it military establishment were still strong enough. The counter-offensive of British and American troops in the Pacific theater of operations progressed relatively slowly. Only in June 1945, after bloody battles, the Americans were able to occupy the island of Okinawa, annexed to Japan in 1879.

As for the position of the USSR, in 1938-1939, Japanese troops tried to attack Soviet units in the area of ​​​​Lake Khasan and the Khalkhin Gol River, but were defeated.

Official Tokyo was convinced that it was facing too strong an opponent, and in 1941 a neutrality pact was concluded between Japan and the USSR.

Adolf Hitler tried to force his Japanese allies to break the pact and attack the USSR from the east, but Soviet intelligence officers and diplomats managed to convince Tokyo that this could cost Japan too much, and the treaty remained in de facto force until August 1945. The United States and Great Britain received the fundamental consent to Moscow's entry into the war with Japan from Joseph Stalin in February 1945 at the Yalta Conference.

Manhattan Project

In 1939, a group of physicists, enlisting the support of Albert Einstein, handed over a letter to US President Franklin Roosevelt stating that Nazi Germany in the foreseeable future could create a weapon of terrible destructive power - the atomic bomb. The American authorities became interested in the nuclear issue. In the same 1939, the Uranium Committee was created as part of the US National Defense Research Committee, which first assessed the potential threat, and then began preparations for the United States to create its own nuclear weapons.

• Manhattan Project
• Wikipedia

The Americans attracted emigrants from Germany, as well as representatives of Great Britain and Canada. In 1941, a special Bureau of Scientific Research and Development was created in the United States, and in 1943, work began under the so-called Manhattan Project, the purpose of which was to create ready-to-use nuclear weapons.

In the USSR, nuclear research has been going on since the 1930s. Thanks to the activities of Soviet intelligence and Western scientists who had left-wing views, information about the preparations for the creation of nuclear weapons in the West, starting in 1941, began to massively flock to Moscow.

Despite all the difficulties of wartime, in 1942-1943, nuclear research in the Soviet Union was intensified, and representatives of the NKVD and the GRU actively engaged in the search for agents in American scientific centers.

By the summer of 1945, the United States had three nuclear bombs- plutonium "Thing" and "Fat Man", as well as uranium "Kid". On July 16, 1945, a test explosion of the Stuchka was carried out at the test site in New Mexico. The American leadership was satisfied with his results. True, according to memoirs Soviet spy Pavel Sudoplatov, just 12 days after the first atomic bomb was assembled in the USA, its scheme was already in Moscow.

On July 24, 1945, when US President Harry Truman, most likely for the purpose of blackmail, told Stalin in Potsdam that America had weapons of "extraordinary destructive power," the Soviet leader only smiled in response. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who was present at the conversation, then concluded that Stalin did not understand at all what was at stake. However, the Supreme Commander was well aware of the Manhattan project and, after parting with the American president, told Vyacheslav Molotov (USSR Foreign Minister in 1939-1949): “It will be necessary today to talk with Kurchatov about speeding up our work.”

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Already in September 1944, an agreement in principle was reached between the United States and Great Britain on the possibility of using the nuclear weapons being created against Japan. In May 1945, the Los Alamos target selection committee rejected the idea of ​​launching nuclear strikes on military targets because of the "miss possibility" and the "psychological effect" that was not strong enough. They decided to hit the cities.

Initially, the city of Kyoto was also on this list, but US Secretary of War Henry Stimson insisted on choosing other targets, since he had fond memories of Kyoto - he spent his honeymoon in this city.

• Atomic bomb "Baby"
• Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory

On July 25, Truman approved a list of cities for potential nuclear strikes, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The next day, the Indianapolis cruiser delivered the Baby bomb to the Pacific island of Tinian, to the location of the 509th mixed aviation group. On July 28, the then head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, George Marshall, signed the combat order on the use of atomic weapons. Four days later, on August 2, 1945, all the components needed to assemble the Fat Man were delivered to Tinian.

The target of the first strike was the seventh most populous city in Japan - Hiroshima, where at that time about 245 thousand people lived. On the territory of the city was the headquarters of the fifth division and the second main army. On August 6, a US Air Force B-29 bomber under the command of Colonel Paul Tibbets took off from Tinian and headed for Japan. Around 08:00, the plane was over Hiroshima and dropped the "Baby" bomb, which exploded 576 meters above the ground. At 08:15, all clocks in Hiroshima stopped.

The temperature under the plasma ball formed as a result of the explosion reached 4000 °C. About 80 thousand inhabitants of the city died instantly. Many of them turned to ashes in a split second.

Light emission left dark silhouettes from human bodies on the walls of buildings. In the houses located within a radius of 19 kilometers, glass was broken. The fires that arose in the city united into a fiery tornado that destroyed people who tried to escape immediately after the explosion.

On August 9, an American bomber headed for Kokura, but there was heavy cloud cover in the city area, and the pilots decided to strike at the alternate target - Nagasaki. The bomb was dropped by taking advantage of a gap in the clouds through which the city stadium was visible. The Fat Man exploded at an altitude of 500 meters, and although the explosion was more powerful than in Hiroshima, the damage from it was less due to the hilly terrain and the large industrial area, in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bwhich there was no residential development. Between 60 and 80 thousand people died during the bombing and immediately after it.

• Consequences of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima by the American army on August 6, 1945

Some time after the attack, doctors began to notice that people who seemed to be recovering from wounds and psychological shock began to suffer from a new, previously unknown disease. The peak of the number of deaths from it came three to four weeks after the explosion. So the world learned about the consequences of exposure to radiation on the human body.

By 1950, the total number of victims of the bombing of Hiroshima as a result of the explosion and its consequences was estimated at about 200 thousand, and Nagasaki - at 140 thousand people.

Causes and consequences

In the mainland of Asia at that time there was a powerful Kwantung Army, on which official Tokyo had high hopes. Due to the rapid mobilization measures, its number was not reliably known even to the command itself. According to some estimates, the number of soldiers of the Kwantung Army exceeded 1 million people. In addition, Japan was supported by collaborationist forces, in the military formations of which there were several hundred thousand more soldiers and officers.

On August 8, 1945, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. And the very next day, with the support of the Mongolian allies, the USSR advanced its troops against the forces of the Kwantung Army.

“At present, the West is trying to rewrite history and reconsider the contribution of the USSR to the victory over both fascist Germany and militaristic Japan. However, only the entry into the war on the night of August 8-9, the Soviet Union fulfilling its allied obligations, forced the leadership of Japan to announce surrender on August 15. The offensive of the Red Army on the forces of the Kwantung group developed rapidly, and this, by and large, led to the end of the Second World War, ”said Alexander Mikhailov, a historian of the Victory Museum, in an interview with RT.

• Surrender of the Kwantung Army
• RIA News
• Evgeny Khaldei

According to the expert, over 600,000 Japanese soldiers and officers surrendered to the Red Army, including 148 generals. The influence of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the end of the war Alexander Mikhailov urged not to overestimate. “The Japanese were initially determined to fight to the end against the United States and Great Britain,” he stressed.

As the senior noted Researcher Institute of the Far East of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Associate Professor of the Institute foreign languages MGPU Viktor Kuzminkov, the "military expediency" of a nuclear strike on Japan is only a version officially formulated by the leadership of the United States.

“The Americans said that in the summer of 1945 it was necessary to start a war with Japan on the territory of the metropolis itself. Here the Japanese, according to the US leadership, had to put up desperate resistance and could allegedly inflict unacceptable losses. american army. And the nuclear bombing, they say, should have nevertheless persuaded Japan to surrender, ”the expert explained.

According to the head of the Center for Japanese Studies at the Institute of the Far East of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Valery Kistanov, the American version does not stand up to scrutiny. "No military necessity this barbaric bombardment did not have. Today, even some Western researchers recognize this. In fact, Truman wanted, firstly, to intimidate the USSR with the destructive power of a new weapon, and secondly, to justify the huge costs of developing it. But it was clear to everyone that the entry of the USSR into the war with Japan would put an end to it, ”he said.

Viktor Kuzminkov agrees with these conclusions: "Official Tokyo hoped that Moscow could become a mediator in the negotiations, and the entry of the USSR into the war left Japan no chance."

Kistanov stressed that simple people and members of the elite in Japan speak of the tragedy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in different ways. “Ordinary Japanese remember this disaster as it really was. But the authorities and the press are trying not to pedal some of its aspects. For example, in newspapers and on television, atomic bombings are very often spoken about without mentioning which particular country carried them out. Current American presidents long time did not visit the memorials dedicated to the victims of these bombings at all. The first was Barack Obama, but he never apologized to the descendants of the victims. However, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe also did not apologize for Pearl Harbor, ”he said.

According to Kuzminkov, the atomic bombings changed Japan very much. “A huge group of “untouchables” appeared in the country - hibakusha, born to mothers exposed to radiation. They were shunned by many, the parents of young people and girls did not want hibakusha to marry their children. The consequences of the bombings penetrated people's lives. Therefore, today many Japanese are consistent supporters of a complete rejection of the use of atomic energy in principle,” the expert concluded.

An American B-29 Superfortress bomber called "Enola Gay" took off from Tinian Island in the early hours of August 6 with a single 4,000 kg uranium bomb called "Little Boy". At 8:15 a.m., the "baby" bomb was dropped from a height of 9,400 m above the city and spent 57 seconds in free fall. At the moment of detonation, a small explosion provoked the explosion of 64 kg of uranium. Of these 64 kg, only 7 kg passed the splitting stage, and of this mass, only 600 mg turned into energy - explosive energy that burned everything in its path for several kilometers, leveling the city with a blast wave, starting a series of fires and plunging all living things into radiation flux. It is believed that about 70,000 people died immediately, another 70,000 died from injuries and radiation by 1950. Today in Hiroshima near the epicenter of the explosion is memorial museum, the purpose of which is to promote the idea that nuclear weapons cease to exist forever.

May 1945: selection of targets.

During its second meeting at Los Alamos (May 10-11, 1945), the Targeting Committee recommended as targets for the use of atomic weapons Kyoto (the largest industrial center), Hiroshima (the center of army warehouses and a military port), Yokohama (the center of military industry), Kokuru (the largest military arsenal) and Niigata (military port and engineering center). The committee rejected the idea of ​​using these weapons against a purely military target, as there was a chance of overshooting a small area not surrounded by a vast urban area.
When choosing a goal, great importance was attached to psychological factors, such as:
achieving maximum psychological effect against Japan,
the first use of the weapon must be significant enough for international recognition of its importance. The Committee pointed out that the choice of Kyoto was supported by the fact that its population had more high level education and thus better able to appreciate the value of weapons. Hiroshima, on the other hand, was of such a size and location that, given the focusing effect of the hills surrounding it, the force of the explosion could be increased.
US Secretary of War Henry Stimson struck Kyoto off the list due to the city's cultural significance. According to Professor Edwin O. Reischauer, Stimson "knew and appreciated Kyoto from his honeymoon there decades ago."

Pictured is Secretary of War Henry Stimson.

On July 16, the world's first successful test of an atomic weapon was carried out at a test site in New Mexico. The power of the explosion was about 21 kilotons of TNT.
July 24 during Potsdam Conference US President Harry Truman told Stalin that the United States had a new weapon of unprecedented destructive power. Truman did not specify that he was referring specifically to atomic weapons. According to Truman's memoirs, Stalin showed little interest, remarking only that he was glad and hoped that the US could use him effectively against the Japanese. Churchill, who carefully observed Stalin's reaction, remained of the opinion that Stalin did not understand the true meaning of Truman's words and did not pay attention to him. At the same time, according to Zhukov's memoirs, Stalin perfectly understood everything, but did not show it, and in a conversation with Molotov after the meeting he noted that "It will be necessary to talk with Kurchatov about speeding up our work." After the declassification of the operation of the American intelligence services "Venona", it became known that Soviet agents had long been reporting on the development of nuclear weapons. According to some reports, agent Theodor Hall, a few days before the Potsdam Conference, even announced the planned date for the first nuclear test. This may explain why Stalin took Truman's message calmly. Hall had been working for Soviet intelligence since 1944.
On July 25, Truman approved the order, beginning August 3, to bomb one of the following targets: Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata, or Nagasaki, as soon as the weather allowed, and in the future, the following cities, as bombs arrived.
On July 26, the governments of the United States, Britain, and China signed the Potsdam Declaration, which set out the demand for Japan's unconditional surrender. The atomic bomb was not mentioned in the declaration.
The next day, Japanese newspapers reported that the declaration, which had been broadcast over the radio and scattered in leaflets from airplanes, had been rejected. The Japanese government has not expressed a desire to accept the ultimatum. On July 28, Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki stated at a press conference that the Potsdam Declaration was nothing more than the old arguments of the Cairo Declaration in a new wrapper, and demanded that the government ignore it.
Emperor Hirohito, who was waiting for a Soviet response to the evasive diplomatic moves [what?] of the Japanese, did not change the decision of the government. On July 31, in a conversation with Koichi Kido, he made it clear that the imperial power must be protected at all costs.

An aerial view of Hiroshima shortly before the bomb was dropped on the city in August 1945. Shown here is a densely populated area of ​​the city on the Motoyasu River.

Preparing for the bombing

During May-June 1945, the American 509th Combined Aviation Group arrived on Tinian Island. The group's base area on the island was a few miles from the rest of the units and was carefully guarded.
On July 26, the Indianapolis cruiser delivered the Little Boy atomic bomb to Tinian.
On July 28, the Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, George Marshall, signed the order for the combat use of nuclear weapons. This order, drafted by the head of the Manhattan Project, Major General Leslie Groves, ordered a nuclear strike "on any day after the third of August, as soon as possible weather". On July 29, US Strategic Air Command General Karl Spaats arrived on Tinian, delivering Marshall's order to the island.
On July 28 and August 2, components of the Fat Man atomic bomb were brought to Tinian by planes.

Commander A.F. Birch (left) numbers the bomb, codenamed "The Kid", physicist Dr. Ramsey (right) will receive the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1989.

"Kid" was 3 m long and weighed 4,000 kg, but contained only 64 kg of uranium, which was used to provoke a chain of atomic reactions and the subsequent explosion.

Hiroshima during World War II.

Hiroshima was located on a flat area, slightly above sea level at the mouth of the Ota River, on 6 islands connected by 81 bridges. The population of the city before the war was over 340 thousand people, which made Hiroshima the seventh largest city in Japan. The city was the headquarters of the Fifth Division and the Second Main Army of Field Marshal Shunroku Hata, who commanded the defense of all of Southern Japan. Hiroshima was an important supply base for the Japanese army.
In Hiroshima (as well as in Nagasaki), most buildings were one- and two-story wooden buildings with tiled roofs. Factories were located on the outskirts of the city. Outdated fire equipment and insufficient training of personnel created a high fire hazard even in peacetime.
The population of Hiroshima peaked at 380,000 during the course of the war, but before the bombing, the population gradually decreased due to systematic evacuations ordered by the Japanese government. At the time of the attack, the population was about 245 thousand people.

Pictured is a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber of the US Army "Enola Gay"

Bombardment

The main target of the first American nuclear bombing was Hiroshima (Kokura and Nagasaki were spares). Although Truman's order called for the atomic bombing to begin on August 3, cloud cover over the target prevented this until August 6.
On August 6, at 1:45 am, an American B-29 bomber under the command of the commander of the 509th mixed aviation regiment, Colonel Paul Tibbets, carrying the atomic bomb "Baby" on board, took off from Tinian Island, which was about 6 hours from Hiroshima. Tibbets' aircraft ("Enola Gay") flew as part of a formation that included six other aircraft: a spare aircraft ("Top Secret"), two controllers and three reconnaissance aircraft ("Jebit III", "Full House" and "Straight Flash"). Reconnaissance aircraft commanders sent to Nagasaki and Kokura reported significant cloud cover over these cities. The pilot of the third reconnaissance aircraft, Major Iserli, found out that the sky over Hiroshima was clear and sent a signal "Bomb the first target."
Around 7 a.m., a network of Japanese early warning radars detected the approach of several American aircraft heading towards southern Japan. An air raid alert was issued and radio broadcasts stopped in many cities, including Hiroshima. At about 08:00 a radar operator in Hiroshima determined that the number of incoming aircraft was very small—perhaps no more than three—and the air raid alert was called off. In order to save fuel and aircraft, the Japanese did not intercept small groups of American bombers. The standard message was broadcast over the radio that it would be wise to go to the bomb shelters if the B-29s were actually seen, and that it was not a raid that was expected, but just some kind of reconnaissance.
At 08:15 local time, the B-29, being at an altitude of over 9 km, dropped an atomic bomb on the center of Hiroshima. The fuse was set to a height of 600 meters above the surface; an explosion equivalent to 13 to 18 kilotons of TNT occurred 45 seconds after the release.
The first public announcement of the event came from Washington, DC, sixteen hours after the atomic attack on the Japanese city.

A photo taken from one of two American bombers of the 509th Composite Group, shortly after 08:15, on August 5, 1945, shows smoke rising from the explosion over the city of Hiroshima.

When the portion of uranium in the bomb went through the fission stage, it was instantly converted into the energy of 15 kilotons of TNT, heating the massive fireball to a temperature of 3,980 degrees Celsius.

explosion effect

Those closest to the epicenter of the explosion died instantly, their bodies turned to coal. Birds flying past burned up in the air, and dry, flammable materials such as paper ignited up to 2 km from the epicenter. Light radiation burned the dark pattern of clothes into the skin and left the silhouettes of human bodies on the walls. People outside the houses described a blinding flash of light, which simultaneously came with a wave of suffocating heat. The blast wave, for all who were near the epicenter, followed almost immediately, often knocking down. Those in the buildings tended to avoid exposure to the light from the explosion, but not the blast—glass shards hit most rooms, and all but the strongest buildings collapsed. One teenager was blasted out of his house across the street as the house collapsed behind him. Within a few minutes, 90% of people who were at a distance of 800 meters or less from the epicenter died.
The blast wave shattered glass at a distance of up to 19 km. For those in the buildings, the typical first reaction was the thought of a direct hit from an aerial bomb.
Numerous small fires that simultaneously broke out in the city soon merged into one large fiery tornado that created strong wind(speed 50-60 km/h) directed towards the epicenter. The fiery tornado captured over 11 km² of the city, killing everyone who did not have time to get out within the first few minutes after the explosion.
According to the memoirs of Akiko Takakura, one of the few survivors who were at the time of the explosion at a distance of 300 m from the epicenter:
Three colors characterize for me the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima: black, red and brown. Black because the explosion cut off the sunlight and plunged the world into darkness. Red was the color of blood flowing from wounded and broken people. It was also the color of the fires that burned everything in the city. Brown was the color of burnt, peeling skin exposed to light from the explosion.
A few days after the explosion, among the survivors, doctors began to notice the first symptoms of exposure. Soon, the number of deaths among survivors began to rise again as patients who appeared to be recovering began to suffer from this strange new disease. Deaths from radiation sickness peaked 3-4 weeks after the explosion and began to decline only after 7-8 weeks. Japanese doctors considered vomiting and diarrhea characteristic of radiation sickness to be symptoms of dysentery. The long-term health effects associated with exposure, such as an increased risk of cancer, haunted the survivors for the rest of their lives, as did the psychological shock of the explosion.

The shadow of a man who was sitting on the steps of the stairs in front of the bank entrance at the time of the explosion, 250 meters from the epicenter.

Loss and destruction

The number of deaths from the direct impact of the explosion ranged from 70 to 80 thousand people. By the end of 1945, due to the action of radioactive contamination and other post-effects of the explosion, the total number of deaths was from 90 to 166 thousand people. After 5 years, the total death toll, including deaths from cancer and other long-term effects of the explosion, could reach or even exceed 200,000 people.
According to official Japanese data as of March 31, 2013, there were 201,779 "hibakusha" alive - people affected by the effects of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This figure includes children born to women exposed to radiation from the explosions (mostly living in Japan at the time of counting). Of these, 1%, according to the Japanese government, had serious cancers caused by radiation exposure after the bombings. The number of deaths as of August 31, 2013 is about 450 thousand: 286,818 in Hiroshima and 162,083 in Nagasaki.

View of the destroyed Hiroshima in the autumn of 1945 on one branch of the river passing through the delta on which the city stands

Complete destruction after the release of the atomic bomb.

Color photograph of the destroyed Hiroshima in March 1946.

The explosion destroyed the Okita plant in Hiroshima, Japan.

Look at how the sidewalk has been raised and how a drainpipe sticks out of the bridge. Scientists say this was due to the vacuum created by the pressure from the atomic explosion.

Twisted iron beams are all that remains of the theater building, located about 800 meters from the epicenter.

The Hiroshima Fire Department lost its only vehicle when the western station was destroyed by an atomic bomb. The station was located 1,200 meters from the epicenter.

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Nuclear pollution

The concept of "radioactive contamination" did not yet exist in those years, and therefore this issue was not even raised then. People continued to live and rebuild the destroyed buildings in the same place where they were before. Even the high mortality of the population in subsequent years, as well as diseases and genetic abnormalities in children born after the bombings, were not initially associated with exposure to radiation. The evacuation of the population from the contaminated areas was not carried out, since no one knew about the very presence of radioactive contamination.
It is rather difficult to give an accurate assessment of the extent of this contamination due to lack of information, however, since technically the first atomic bombs were relatively low-yield and imperfect (the "Kid" bomb, for example, contained 64 kg of uranium, of which only approximately 700 g reacted division), the level of pollution of the area could not be significant, although it posed a serious danger to the population. For comparison: at the time of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, several tons of fission products and transuranium elements, various radioactive isotopes accumulated during the operation of the reactor, were in the reactor core.

Terrible consequences...

Keloid scars on the back and shoulders of a victim of the Hiroshima bombing. The scars formed where the victim's skin was exposed to direct radiation.

Comparative preservation of some buildings

Some of the reinforced concrete buildings in the city were very stable (due to the risk of earthquakes) and their frame did not collapse, despite being quite close to the center of destruction in the city (the epicenter of the explosion). Thus stood the brick building of the Hiroshima Chamber of Industry (now commonly known as the "Genbaku Dome", or "Atomic Dome"), designed and built by Czech architect Jan Letzel, which was only 160 meters from the epicenter of the explosion (at the height of the bomb detonation 600 m above the surface). The ruins became the most famous exhibit of the Hiroshima atomic explosion and were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996, over objections raised by the US and Chinese governments.

A man looks at the ruins left after the explosion of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima.

People lived here

Visitors to the Hiroshima Memorial Park look at a panoramic view of the aftermath of the July 27, 2005 atomic explosion in Hiroshima.

A memorial flame in honor of the victims of the atomic explosion on a monument in the Hiroshima Memorial Park. The fire has been burning continuously since it was ignited on August 1, 1964. The fire will burn until "until all the atomic weapons of the earth are gone forever."

The Archive of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs stores documents that were previously available only to the top leaders of the USSR. These are reports on the trips of employees of Soviet foreign missions to the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki shortly after they were dropped on August 6 and 9, 1945, atomic bombs, the latest weapons of mass destruction. "Baby" and "Fat Man", as the Americans affectionately dubbed them. More than 200,000 people died during the bombing, died from wounds and radiation sickness in the next few months.

The nuclear bombings were a terrible tragedy for the Japanese. The official authorities at first did not realize the seriousness of what had happened and even announced that these were ordinary charges. But very soon the scale and consequences of atomic explosions became clear.

But for nuclear strikes the landing of American troops on the Japanese islands could also follow. What would this mean for a country that had never been subject to foreign intervention? This danger really hung over Japan only once, in the 13th century, when the naval armada of the Mongol conqueror Kublai Khan approached its southern shores. But then the "divine wind" (kamikaze) twice scattered the Mongolian ships in the Korea Strait. In 1945, the situation was completely different: the United States was preparing for a major and long-term (up to two years) military operation on the main territory of Japan, consecrated by religious covenants (according to the ancient chronicle "Kojiki", the entire Japanese archipelago was created by the ancestors of the Japanese emperor). Fighting for their country, the Japanese would have fought to the death. How they know how to do this, the Americans felt during the battles for Okinawa.

It remains only to guess what human casualties the continuation of hostilities would entail if Emperor Hirohito did not announce on August 15, 1945 the acceptance of the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, and if Japan did not sign the Instrument of Surrender on September 2 of the same year. At the same time, historical facts indisputably testify: it was not atomic bombs that, in the end, forced Tokyo to lay down its arms. The then Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki admitted that "we experienced a huge shock from the explosion of the atomic bomb," but the entry into the war of the Soviet Union put us in a "stalemate", making it impossible to continue it.

Let's add: this step of the USSR helped to save the lives of millions of ordinary Japanese.

The head of the Manhattan Project, Robert Oppenheimer, stunned by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (he said that he felt blood on his hands), was not reassured by the words of US President Harry Truman: "Nothing, it is easily washed off with water." Oppenheimer famously said that "we have done the work for the devil", and "if atomic bombs replenish the arsenals of the warlike world as a new weapon, then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and Hiroshima." Albert Einstein, who once called on the US government to develop nuclear weapons, radically revised his views and called for them to be abandoned in his dying will.

But what was before these insights to American politicians?

The use of new weapons by the United States was dictated primarily by political reasons. Washington demonstrated its power to the Soviet Union and the rest of the world, its claims to the role of a superpower that would determine the course of international development. The death of several hundred thousand civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not considered too high a price to pay for achieving this goal.

Members of the Soviet diplomatic mission in Tokyo were among the first foreign observers who saw firsthand the consequences of the nuclear disaster. Their personal impressions, the testimonies of eyewitnesses of the bombings recorded by them convey to us the echo of the tragedy, allow us today, 70 years later, to realize the depth and horror of what happened, serve as a stern warning about the terrible consequences of the use of nuclear weapons.

Some of these documents, which are still difficult to read today, we offer for publication to the Rodina magazine.

Spelling and punctuation preserved.

Note from the USSR Ambassador to Japan

tt. Stalin, Beria, Malenkov,
Mikoyan + me.
22.XI.45
V. Molotov

Materials on the consequences of the use of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki; descriptions of our eyewitnesses and data from the Japanese press).

September 1945

The USSR Embassy in Tokyo sent a group of employees to inspect and familiarize themselves on the spot with the consequences of the atomic bomb explosion in the city of Hiroshima (Japan). The employees managed to personally examine the site and the results of the explosion of this bomb, talk with the local population and eyewitnesses, visit the hospital where people who suffered from the explosion of the atomic bomb were being treated. All that they saw and heard, together with their personal impressions, these employees set out in a special brief review, placed in this collection.

The second group of employees of the Embassy and the Soviet Military Mission in Tokyo visited the city of Nagasaki in order to get acquainted with the consequences of the use of the atomic bomb there. The group also included a cameraman from Soyuzkinochronika, who filmed the site of the explosion of the atomic bomb and the destruction caused by this explosion. The report on the results of the inspection of Nagasaki is drawn up and must be submitted from Tokyo by Major General Voronov.

The embassy collected and translated into Russian the most significant articles from the Japanese press about the atomic bomb. Translations of these articles are also included in this collection.

Ambassador Y. Malik
AVPRF. F. 06. Op. 8. P. 7. D. 96.

"Only personal impressions"

Report of a group of Embassy workers who visited Hiroshima

The atomic bomb and the destruction it caused made a great impression on the people of Japan. Popular rumor picks up press reports, distorts them and sometimes brings them to the point of absurdity. There was even a rumor that at present the appearance of people in the area of ​​an atomic bomb explosion is fraught with danger to life. We have repeatedly heard from both the Americans and the Japanese that after visiting areas affected by the atomic bomb, women lose their ability to bear children, and men become ill with impotence.

These conversations were fueled by radio transmissions from San Francisco, which said that in the areas of the explosion of the atomic bomb, nothing living could exist for seventy years.

Not trusting all these rumors and reports and setting themselves the task of personally getting acquainted with the effect of the atomic bomb, a group of Embassy employees, consisting of the TASS correspondent Varshavsky, the former acting military attaché Romanov and an employee of the naval apparatus Kikenin, left for Hiroshima and Nagasaki on September 13. This condensed essay is limited to recording conversations with the local population and victims and a summary of personal impressions, without any generalizations and conclusions.

"He said it's safe to live here..."

A group of Embassy staff arrived in Hiroshima at dawn on 14 September. Walked continuously heavy rain, which extremely interfered with the inspection of the area and, most importantly, prevented taking photographs. The railway station and the city were destroyed to such an extent that there was not even shelter from the rain. The stationmaster and his staff took shelter in a hastily built barn. The city is a scorched plain with towering 15-20 skeletons of reinforced concrete buildings.

At a distance of half a kilometer from the station, we met an old Japanese woman who got out of the dugout and began to rummage through the conflagration. When asked where the atomic bomb fell, the old woman replied that there was a strong flash of lightning and a huge impact, as a result of which she fell and lost consciousness. Therefore, she does not remember where the bomb fell and what happened next.

Having gone further than 100 meters, we saw a semblance of a canopy and hurried to take cover there from the rain. Under the canopy we found a sleeping man. He turned out to be an elderly Japanese man building a hut on the site of the ashes of his house. He told the following:

On August 6, at about 8 o'clock in the morning, the threatened position was lifted in Hiroshima. After 10 minutes, an American plane appeared over the city and at the same time there was a lightning strike, they fell and died. Many people died. Then there were fires. It was a clear day and the wind was blowing from the sea. The fire spread everywhere and even against the wind.

When asked how he survived while at home, which is located approximately 1-1.5 km from the bomb site, the old man replied that somehow it happened that he was not hit by the rays, but his house burned down, because fire raged everywhere.

For the time being, he said, it was safe to live here. On the outskirts of the city, several tens of thousands of people huddle in dugouts. It was dangerous for the first 5-10 days. In the first days, he noted, people who came to help the victims died. Even the fish died in shallow water. Plants are starting to come to life. I, said the Japanese, cultivated a vegetable garden and expect that shoots will soon begin.

Indeed, contrary to all claims, we have seen how in various places the grass begins to turn green and even new leaves appear on some scorched trees.

"The victim is given vitamins B and C and vegetables..."

One of our group members managed to visit the Red Cross hospital in Hiroshima. It is located in a dilapidated building and contains the victims of the atomic bomb. There are burnt and other wounded, and among them are the sick, delivered 15-20 days after the injury. Up to 80 patients are housed in this two-story building. They are in an unsanitary condition. They mainly have burns on exposed parts of the body. Many received only severe glass wounds. Burned people mostly have burns on the face, hands and feet. Some worked only in shorts and caps, so most of the body was burned.

The body is burnt dark brown with open wounds. All of them are bandaged with bandages and smeared with a white ointment resembling zinc. The eyes are not damaged. Severely injured with burned limbs did not lose the ability to move their toes and fingers. Many are wounded by glasses, they have deep cuts to the bone. Hair fell out of those exposed with their heads uncovered. Upon recovery, open skulls begin to grow hair in separate tufts. Patients have a pale wax complexion.

One injured man, 40-45 years old, was at a distance of 500 meters from the fall of the bomb. He worked at some electrical company. He has up to 2700 white blood cells left in one cubic cm of blood. He went to the hospital himself and is now recovering. We were not able to establish the reasons that he could be saved on such close range from the bomb site. It was only possible to establish that he worked with electrical equipment. He has no burns, but his hair has come out. He is given vitamins B and C and vegetables. There is an increase in white blood cells.

AVPRF. F. 06, op. 8, p.7, d.96

"The doctor thinks the defense against the uranium bomb is rubber..."

On the railway station our attention was attracted by a man with a bandage on his arm, on which was written "help to the victims." We approached him with a question, and he said that he was an ear, nose, and throat doctor and had gone to Hiroshima to help the victims of the atomic bomb. This Japanese doctor named Fukuhara told us that three atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima by parachute. According to him, he personally saw three parachutes from a distance of 14 km. Two unexploded bombs, according to the doctor, were picked up by the military and are now being studied.

Fukuhara arrived at the rescue site on the second day. After drinking water, he developed diarrhea. Others got diarrhea after a day and a half. He said that the rays of the atomic bomb cause, first of all, a change in the composition of the blood. In one cubic centimeter of a healthy person's blood, the doctor said, there are 8,000 white blood cells. As a result of the impact of the atomic bomb, the number of white blood cells is reduced to 3000, 2000, 1000 and even 300 and 200. As a result, severe bleeding from the nose, throat, eyes and in women uterine bleeding. In the victims, the temperature rises to 39-40 and 41 degrees. After 3-4 days, patients usually die. Sulfzone is used to lower the temperature. In the treatment of victims, they resort to blood transfusion, glucose and saline are also introduced. When transfusing blood, up to 100 gr. blood.

Victims who drank water, or washed themselves with water in the area where the bomb fell on the day it exploded, the doctor said further, died instantly. For 10 days after the bomb exploded, it was dangerous to work there: uranium rays continued to radiate from the ground. It is now considered safe to stay in those places, the doctor said, but this issue is not being studied. According to him, protective clothing against a uranium bomb is rubber and all kinds of insulator against electricity.

During our conversation with the doctor, an old Japanese man turned to him for advice. He pointed to the burned neck, which had not yet fully healed, and asked if it would heal soon. The doctor examined the neck and said everything was fine. The old man told us that at the moment the bomb exploded, he fell and felt a sharp pain. Didn't lose consciousness. The pain was felt in the future until recovery.

AVPRF. F. 06, op. 8, p.7, d.96

"Children sitting on the trees in the foliage survived ..."

On the way to Nagasaki, we chatted with two Japanese students. They told us that a girl, a relative of one of them, went to Hiroshima a few days after the bombing to find out about her loved ones. After a long time, on August 25, she fell ill, and two days later, i.e. She died on August 27th.

Driving around the city by car, we bombarded the Japanese driver with questions. He told us that there was no rescue work on the first day because fire was rampant everywhere. Work began only on the second day. In the area closest to the explosion of the bomb, no one survived. Prisoners of war, mainly Filipinos, who worked at the Mitsubishi Heiki military plant and Japanese workers at the Nagasaki Seiko plant, died. The atomic bomb, the driver said, fell in the area of ​​the university hospital (Urakami area). The skeleton of the hospital has been preserved. All patients of the hospital, along with the attendants, doctors and the director, died.

There is a strong putrid smell in the area where the bomb fell: many corpses have not yet been removed from under the ruins and the conflagration. The driver told us that there were cases when children sat on trees in the foliage and remained alive, and those who played on the ground nearby died.

AVPRF. F. 06, op. 8, p.7, d.96

American opinion: "The Japanese greatly exaggerate the effectiveness of the atomic bomb ..."

Most Japanese claim that the bomb over Hiroshima was dropped by parachute and exploded at a distance of 500-600 meters from the ground. In contrast, Commander Willicutts, the chief medical officer of Spruence's US Fifth Fleet, with whom we made our way back to Tokyo, claimed that the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki without a parachute. He also denied any possibility of an atomic bomb falling without exploding. He claimed that after the explosion of the bomb, it was safe in the area where it fell. In his opinion, the Japanese greatly exaggerate the effectiveness of the atomic bomb.

AVPRF. F. 06, op. 8, p.7, d.96

"Even moles and worms in the ground die"

Reports about the action of the atomic bomb that appeared in the Japanese press
"Mainiti" 15.8.

This study was compiled by Professor Asada on the basis of a report by a panel of experts. There are the following characteristic features of the radiation, much to say that the emitted rays are ultra-violet rays.

Persons who were behind glass windows were injured from the action of the blast wave, but did not receive burns. This is because ultraviolet rays do not pass through glass.

White clothing was not burned, but those wearing black or khaki clothing were burned. At the station, the black letters of the train schedule burned down, while White paper didn't get hurt. Further, three people who were in a reinforced concrete building located at the site of the explosion and were holding aluminum plates in their hands received very severe burns hands, while there were no injuries to other parts of the body. This can be explained by the position of the window, in which only this part fell under the action of the rays, and the rays were reflected from the aluminum surface.

In a river with clear water, the backs of the fish were burned, many dead fish swam two days later. This is apparently due to the fact that ultraviolet rays pass through a water layer of several tens of centimeters.

The treatment of burns is exactly the same as the treatment of ordinary burns. As a rule, vegetable oil or sea water diluted twice or three times helps. Particular attention should be paid to the fact that a long stay at the site of an atomic bomb explosion has a very bad effect on the body due to the ongoing radiation.

AVPRF. F. 06, op. 8, p.7, d.96

Four radii of death

The destructive power of the atomic bomb
"Mainiti" 29.8.

In Hiroshima, all people and animals, as well as all living beings, were destroyed, killed or injured within a radius of 5 km. from the bomb site. As of August 22, the death toll in Hiroshima is over 60,000. The wounded are dying one by one, and this figure is increasing more and more. Most of the wounded suffered from burns, however, these burns are not ordinary burns: they destroy blood balls due to the special action of uranium. People who have received this kind of burns gradually die. The number of victims now stands at over 120,000; this figure is decreasing as these people gradually die.

Even moles and worms in the ground die; this happens because uranium penetrates the earth, emits radioactive rays. Those who appear in the affected area even after a raid, there is some disorder of the body. As the radio broadcast from the USA says: "None creature will not be able to live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki even after 70 years."

1. Within a radius of 100 m from the place of the explosion.

casualties among the population. Those who were outside were killed, the insides fell out, burned. Indoors: inside wooden buildings- killed; in reinforced concrete buildings received serious injuries (burns, bruises, cuts by glass fragments); in poorly made shelters - killed.

2. Destruction within a radius of 100 meters to 2 km.

Casualties among the population: those who were outside - killed or seriously injured, some had their eyes popped out. A lot of people got burned. Most of those who were inside were crushed and burned in their houses; with an iron frame - many were injured by glass fragments, received burns, some were thrown into the street. In shelters, they remained safe, but some were thrown away along with the chairs they sat on.

Area of ​​partial destruction within a radius of 2 to 4 km. from the break point.

Victims among the population: those who were outside received burns, inside the premises - minor injuries, in shelters - remained unharmed.

AVPRF. F. 06, op. 8, p.7, d.96

dead tram

Episodes of the aftermath of the bombing.

"Mainiti" 15.8.

In addition to official reports on the destructive power of the atomic bomb, the Japanese press published a description of a number of episodes, which cite various moments of the bombing and its consequences.

"Not far from the place of the rupture, there is a charred skeleton of a tram. If you look from a distance, then there are people inside the tram. However, if you come closer, you can see that they are corpses. The beam of the new bomb hit the tram and, together with the blast wave, did its job. Those those who sat on the benches remained in the same form, those who stood hung on the straps that they held on to while the tram was moving.Out of several dozen people, not one escaped death in this narrow tram car.

This is the place where people's volunteer detachments and detachments of students worked to demolish buildings intended for dispersal. The rays from the new bomb hit their skin and burned it in an instant. Many people fell on this spot and never got up again. From the fire that then broke out, they burned down without a trace.

There was a case when one group, wearing iron helmets, began to fight the fire. At this place, one could then see the remains of helmets, in which the bones of human heads were found.

One famous person burned down. His wife and daughter ran out of the house, which was destroyed by the blast. They heard the voice of the husband calling for help. They themselves could not do anything and ran for help to the police station. When they returned, pillars of fire and smoke were rising where the house had been.

AVPRF. F. 06, op. 8, p.7, d.96

"Until death, the wounded retain full consciousness ..."

Correspondence from Hiroshima Special Correspondent Matsuo

"Asahi", 23.8

At Hiroshima station, considered one of the best stations Tsyugoku district, there is nothing but railroad tracks gleaming in the moonlight. I had to spend the night in a field in front of the station; the night was hot and stuffy, but in spite of this, not a single mosquito was visible.

The next morning, they inspected a potato field located at the site where the bomb exploded. There is no leaf or grass on the field. In the center of the city, only the skeletons of large reinforced concrete buildings of the Fukuya department store, bank branches - Nippon Ginko, Sumitomo Ginko, the editorial office of the Chugoku Shimbun newspaper remained. The rest of the houses turned into piles of tiles.

The affected parts of those who received burns are covered with red ulcers. Crowds of those who fled from the place of fires resembled crowds of the dead who came from the next world. Although these victims received medical attention and drugs were injected into the outer parts of their wounds, they still gradually died due to the destruction of the cells. At first they said that there were 10 thousand killed, and then their number increased more and more and reached 100 thousand, as they say. Until death, the wounded retain full consciousness, many of them continue to beg "kill me as soon as possible."

AVPRF. F. 06, op. 8, p.7, d.96

"The wounded cannot be healed..."

"Asahi", 23.8

Since the burn occurs due to the action of ultraviolet rays, it is not felt at first. After two hours, water bubbles appear on the body. Despite the fact that immediately after the bombing, medicines were sent from Kure and Okayama and there was no shortage of them, nevertheless, the number of deaths is constantly increasing. American radio announced at the time: "Hiroshima has become an area in which neither people nor animals can live for 75 years. Actions such as sending experts to this area are tantamount to suicide."

As a result of the destruction of uranium atoms, countless particles of uranium are produced. The presence of uranium can be easily detected by approaching the affected area with a Geig Müller measuring tube, the arrow of which shows an unusual deviation. This uranium has a bad effect on human body and is responsible for this increase in deaths. The study of red and white blood cells established the following: the blood of soldiers employed in the restoration of the Western military training ground (at a distance of 1 km from the site of the bomb explosion a week after the bombing) was examined. Among the surveyed 33 people. 10 people had burns, 3150 white blood cells were found in the burnt ones, 3800 in healthy people, which gives a large reduction compared to 7-8 thousand balls in a normal healthy person.

As for the red blood globules, the burned ones had 3,650,000, the healthy ones had 3,940,000, while normal healthy people have from 4.5 to 5 million red blood globules. As a result, the wounded cannot be healed because they are in Hiroshima. They have headaches, dizziness, poor heart function, lack of appetite, bad taste in the mouth, retention of natural urination. The presence of uranium is a big blow to the reconstruction of the city of Hiroshima.

AVPRF. F. 06, op. 8, p.7, d.96

"You can see the brutal character used by American aviation ..."

Article by Professor Tsuzuki University of Tokyo.

"Asahi", 23.8

From the editor. From the article below, one can see the brutal character used by American aircraft in Hiroshima. The luminary of our medical world could not save the life of a young artist, wife famous artist Maruyama, who toured with his traveling troupe to Hiroshima. Of the 17 members of this troupe, 13 died on the spot, the remaining four were taken to the hospital at the University of Tokyo.

“The patient was a very healthy woman about 30 years old. She was admitted to the hospital on the 10th day after the injury. During these 10 days, except for the extreme lack of appetite, there were no pronounced signs of the disease. She was wounded in Hiroshima, and was on 2 on the 3rd floor of a building in the area of ​​the Fukuya house, near the site of the explosion of the atomic bomb.During the collapse of the house, she received a slight wound in her back, no burns or fractures.After the wound, the patient herself boarded the train and returned to Tokyo.

After arriving in Tokyo, weakness increased every day, there was a complete lack of appetite, the patient drank only water. After she was admitted to the hospital, a blood test was taken and large changes were found. Namely, an extreme lack of white blood cells was revealed; as a rule, should be in 1 cu. mm. from 6 to 8 thousand bodies, however, only 500-600 were found, only 1/10 of the norm. Their resistance has been significantly weakened. On the 4th day of admission to the hospital, just two weeks after the injury, the patient's hair began to fall out. At the same time, the abrasion on his back suddenly worsened. A blood transfusion was immediately done, other assistance was provided, and the patient became quite vigorous and healthy.

However, on August 24, on the 19th day after the injury, the patient died suddenly. As a result of the autopsy, remarkable changes were found in the insides. Namely, the bone marrow, which is the apparatus that produces blood balls, the liver, spleen, kidneys, and lymphatic vessels, was significantly damaged. It has been determined that these injuries are exactly the same as those resulting from the strong use of x-rays or radium rays. Previously, it was believed that the effect of an atomic bomb is twofold: destruction from the blast wave and burns from thermal rays. Now this is added to the damage inflicted as a result of the action of radiant substances.

AVPRF. F. 06, op. 8, p.7, d.96

A year after the trip of Soviet diplomats, in September 1946, another Soviet representative visited the site of the tragedy. We are publishing fragments of the written and photographic reports of an employee of the Soviet representative office in the Allied Council for Japan - senior assistant to the political adviser V.A. Glinkin.

(AVPRF F. 0146, op. 30, item 280, file 13)