87 Startling Facts About The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima & Nagasaki

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26Karl Bernd Esser

Karl Bernd Esser

Karl-Bernd Esser, the grandson of the woman who helped design Hitler’s bunker, was the chief designer of Saddam Hussein’s bunker. According to Esser, Hussein’s bunker could have “survived anything short of a direct hit from a Hiroshima-style nuclear weapon.”


27. After the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but before Japan's surrender, the United States was preparing 7 additional atomic bombs ready to use as early as August 19th, 1945.


28. The thermal energy released from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius which devastated Pompeii in AD 79 was 100,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bombing.


29. About thirteen-year-old Yoko Moriwaki the "Japanese Anne Frank," who kept a diary about her life during WWII. She was killed by the atomic bomb in her hometown of Hiroshima and her diary was later published by her brother.


30. A clock in a tower at Hiroshima University stopped at 8:15 (the time of the Atomic Bombing) 3 days before the bombing.


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31Horton Hears a Who

Horton Hears a Who

"Horton Hears a Who" was an allegory about Hiroshima and the American occupation of Japan and may have been Dr. Seuss's way of apologizing for his support of Japanese Internment.


32. US President Harry S Truman believed that Hiroshima was a "purely military" target when he authorized its bombing in 1945 and was surprised to learn of the many resulting civilian casualties.


33. A single US stealth bomber can carry 16 B83 nuclear bombs. Each of those bombs can produce 75 times the yield of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.


34. More than 100,000 people working on the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge Tennessee in the 1940s had no idea what they were working on. It wasn't until the local newspaper printed the bombing of Hiroshima were the workers told what they had been working on for the last several years.


35. It is estimated that 1 in 5 victims of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima were Korean conscripts, brought over as forced labor.


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36Atom bomb impact

Atom bomb impact

When the Atom Bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the light from the fireball was so intense that it melted the copper of the surrounding buildings


37. It took Tokyo 3 hours to realize Hiroshima had been bombed


38. Kyoto was high on the list of targets for the atomic bomb, but was removed after the intervention of Henry L. Stimson, the American Secretary of War during WWII. He visited Kyoto during his honeymoon in 1920s and was aware of its historical and cultural significance for the Japanese people.


39. A survivor (Shigeki Tanaka) of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima finished first in the 1951 Boston Marathon


40. Ranald Macdonald a Chinook/Scottish man, ventured to Japan despite knowing of the strict isolationist policy. He pretended to shipwreck on an island, where he was caught and sent to Nagasaki. There, he managed to convince the Daimyo that he could be of value as Japan’s first English teacher.


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41Nagasaki tour

Nagasaki tour

The US aircrew that atom-bombed Nagasaki took a tour of the nuked city a month later and spoke to local Japanese but kept who they were a secret.


42. Japan didn’t surrender World War II under false assumptions. The US actually had seven more atomic bombs, the first of which was to be ready within ten days of the Nagasaki bombing.


43. During the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, a 16-year-old boy (Sumiteru Taniguchi) survived being 1800 meters away from the center of the blast, and after recovered from severe burns.


44. The Japanese city Kokura was the primary target for the "Fat Man" bomb on August 9, 1945, but on the morning of the raid, the city was obscured by clouds and the mission commander diverted to the secondary target, Nagasaki.


45. On December 7, 1963, 22 years after Pearl Harbor, a Japanese court ruled that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were, in fact, war crimes, but that Japan had waived its right to pursue the matter under the terms of the Treaty of San Francisco.


46Comet

Comet

The comet that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was the equivalent to released as much energy as 100 trillion tons of TNT, more than a billion times more than the atom bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.


47. An American POW named Joe Kieyoomia not only survived the Bataan death march but also the Nagasaki atomic blast


48. In 1976, a Princeton student named John Aristotle Phillips successfully designed a nuclear weapon similar to the Nagasaki bomb for his physics term paper. The paper was classified by the US Government.


49. The Atomic Bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War 2, used Uranium from the Congo, Africa.


50. On August 9th, 1945, a B-29 bomber left the island of Tinian intending to drop a plutonium bomb on the city of Kokura. On arriving at the target, the plane found it obscured by clouds. It turned south and went to its secondary target: Nagasaki.

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