foto: ap
By Elizabeth Naranjo on August 9, 2025
“He was only two years old, perhaps too young to remember how devastating the bomb was in Hiroshima. I recently returned to Japan and we talked about that day, and for the first time in his 82 years, he said he vaguely remembered that after the bombing everything was destroyed.”
Tomoko Kondo told Granma that her father, Kenji Kondo, a hibakusha—as the survivors of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are called—today shows no major after-effects of the bombing, only a few small wounds on his back and abdomen. “My grandmother covered them with a futon (a Japanese quilt), which prevented them from being affected by direct radiation,” she explained.
After the first bombing on August 6 in Hiroshima, many Japanese, like Kenji and his family, thought there would be no more suffering, that it was impossible to live through such a catastrophe again.
On August 9, 1945, Kakura was the city in the crosshairs. That day dawned foggy. The instructions given to the pilots, directed from the White House, were to visually select the target that would maximize the bomb’s range.
The United States wanted only destruction, and Nagasaki where the skies were clear suffered the devastation. History repeated itself and the Japanese people suffered once again the effects of an atomic bomb, just three days after the disaster in Hiroshima.
The bomber, named the Bockscar, dropped the Fat Man bomb. It exploded just 500 meters above the ground in Nagasaki. Was it another nuclear test or the US’s thirst for power that overrode any consequences?
Fat Man carried a six-kilogram payload of plutonium, although it is estimated that only one kilogram fissioned, which was enough to release approximately the equivalent energy of more than 20,000 tons of TNT.
The destruction in Nagasaki (40%) was not as extensive as in Hiroshima (70%), although the explosion was stronger, the complex topography of the city, located between valleys, prevented this by absorbing some of the blast.
On that day, the land of the rising sun once again saw more death than birth. It witnessed how, in seconds, images were repeated in shades of gray, with the smell of burning flesh and screams of despair, like something out of the worst horror movie but it was real.
In 1989, the International Association of Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War published a report estimating that there were more than 73,000 deaths and 74,000 injuries in Nagasaki, although subsequent investigations have revealed even higher numbers.
That wound remains open for Japan and good part of humanity and instead of being a historical example never to repeat it remains a distinct possibility with the US under the direction of an unhinged megalomaniac who could once again use an atomic bomb, in complete disregard for the lessons of history and the future of humanity.
Source: Cuba en Resumen