Terror in Hiroshima: 71,000 killed instantly

On August 6, 1945, at 08.16 in the morning, Little Boy, the first bomb, was thus dropped by an American airplane and exploded above the city of Hiroshima, razing the agglomeration to the ground and causing the immediate death of over 71,000 people (2). Three days later, Fat Man, the second bomb, destroyed Nagasaki, killing 70,000 people on the spot and, without a doubt, causing nearly as many deferred deaths. The decision to use nuclear weapons against not exclusively military targets and thus putting at risk a great number of civilians was taken deliberately by the United States. The targets were designated in order to provoke such a shock which would suffice to definitively call to a halt Japanese will to continue the war. Objective reached: on August 15, 1945, the Japanese Emperor Hirohito announced his nation’s surrender.

The die had thus been cast. The entire world discovered with stupefaction the up until then unimaginable destructive power of an atomic weapon. And also immediately understood the unparalleled strategic and political advantage given to those who held the keys to its fabrication. Because of this, the possibilities resulting from nuclear fission appeared to be above all military. And the development of any use with civil or peaceful ends was considerably handicapped by being shrouded with suspicion. In effect, through the close links it has with the technology required to build an atomic bomb, any development of a civil nuclear programme would be hindered by fears that it was camouflaging the development of a weapon the monopoly over which the United States in 1945 wished to maintain. A brief jump to contemporary events illustrates this issue of mistrust, this atmosphere of suspicion: a few years ago the Islamic Republic of Iran resumed a nuclear programme which was begun in the 1950s-1960s under the regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, with the assistance of the United States. Tehran insists that this programme is following only civil goals, and mainly electricity production, which it has a complete right to do so. Israel, another country in the Near and Middle East, claims that on the contrary Iran’s civil programmes mask its desire to equip itself with an atomic weapon. Other Western countries, including the United States, have fallen in behind it. Between phases of negotiation and Israeli, or American, threats to bomb Iran – ‘before it is too late’ – the Iran-Western trial of strength has been continuing for some years, without it being yet possible to determine with certainty which of the arguments best matches reality.

Cold War and nuclear escalation

But, after 1945, the world needed energy. For reconstruction, and to meet the goals of economic expansion, the quantity of electricity necessary in the mid and long term would far outweigh the needs experienced before the conflict. It thus seemed hardly reasonable economically and politically hardly tenable to restrict access to the considerable potential of nuclear power to a single country or a few privileged States. But at the same time the civil-military ambivalence of nuclear knowledge raised concerns that a technology and material exchange would contribute, directly or indirectly, to the emergence of a new atomic power.

To resolve this dilemma, the solution considered was to set up a nuclear knowledge and material transfer authorisation system, combined with monitoring mechanisms guaranteeing respect for authorised use. But the effectiveness of the system required its uniform and universal application, a hardly realistic demand given the geopolitical situation which had emerged from the Second World War. Tensions were constantly rising between the two ‘great winners’ of yesterday, the United States, the Soviet Union and their respective allies. The political confrontation between the two great ‘East-West’ blocs was taking shape; the Cold War was established on a background of ideological conflict and strategic alliances. International negotiations got bogged down due the lack of mutual trust and, in August 1949, Washington lost its monopoly on atomic weapons: the USSR exploded its first nuclear weapon. The United States constantly strove to re-establish its contested supremacy, and the Soviet Union strove constantly to outdo it: this escalation of the arms race would only really end during the transition from the 1980s to the 1990s, with the end of the  Cold War and the end of a bipolarisation of the world. At the same time as the two super powers were engaged in their one-upmanship, other countries were throwing themselves into the atomic arms race. That was the case first of all for the United Kingdom: in exploding a nuclear weapon off the coast of Australia in 1952, London demonstrated the ineffectiveness of American policy to hold back knowledge, even from its allies, with a view to avoiding nuclear proliferation.

(2)  But, according to sources, some 60,000 to 130,000 other people died subsequently, following injuries or burns caused by the impact, or some time later, due to being exposed to the radiation generated by the explosion.