Hidden Travels of the Atomic Bomb

In 1945, after the atomic destruction of two Japanese cities, J. Robert Oppenheimer expressed foreboding about the spread of nuclear arms.

“They are not too hard to make,” he told his colleagues on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, N.M. “They will be universal if people wish to make them universal.”

That sensibility, born where the atomic bomb itself was born, grew into a theory of technological inevitability. Because the laws of physics are universal, the theory went, it was just a matter of time before other bright minds and determined states joined the club. A corollary was that trying to stop proliferation was quite difficult if not futile.

Researchers Discover Atomic Bomb Effect Results in Adult-onset Thyroid Cancer

Radiation from the atomic bomb blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945, likely rearranged chromosomes in some survivors who later developed papillary thyroid cancer as adults, according to Japanese researchers.

In the September 1, 2008, issue of Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, the scientists report that subjects who lived close to the blast sites, were comparably young at the time, and developed the cancer quickly once they reached adulthood, were likely to have a chromosomal rearrangement known as RET/PTC that is not very frequent in adults who develop the disease.

“Recent in vitro and in vivo studies suggest that a single genetic event in the MAP kinase-signaling pathway may be sufficient for thyroid cell transformation and tumor development,” said the study’s lead author, Kiyohiro Hamatani, Ph.D., laboratory chief, Department of Radiobiology and Molecular Epidemiology at the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF) in Hiroshima.

Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Survivor Calls for Complete Elimination of Nuclear Weapons

Antinuclear protesters gathered at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on the 63rd anniversary of the U.S. dropping the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. They were joined by Reverend Nobuaki Hanaoka, who survived that devastating attack and called for the “complete elimination of nuclear weapons from the face of the earth.”

So we never forget, story of atomic bomb must be told

I wondered if there would be any mention of it in the Aug. 6 edition of the AC-T. Finally, I found it, almost hidden away in section D:

“On Aug. 6, 1945, during World War II, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, resulting in an estimated 140,000 deaths in the first use of a nuclear weapon in warfare.”

How easily and conveniently we forget. How glibly we justify. How arrogantly do we propose to others that they should cease their efforts toward nuclear armament while we refuse to take the lead in disarming

Japan remembers Nagasaki atomic bomb victims

Japan marked the 63rd anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki with a solemn ceremony on Saturday and a call for world powers to abandon their nuclear weapons.

Thousands of children, elderly survivors and dignitaries in the city’s Peace Park bowed their heads in a minute of silence at 11:02 a.m. (10:02 p.m. EDT), the time the bomb was dropped, to remember the tens of thousands who ultimately died from the blast.

Japan marks anniversary of Hiroshima atomic bomb

Tens of thousands bowed their heads at a ceremony in the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Wednesday, the 63rd anniversary of the world’s first atomic attack, as the city’s mayor hit out at countries that refuse to abandon their bombs.

A bell tolled at 8:15 a.m. to mark the exact moment when the bomb dubbed ‘Little Boy’ was dropped on the city, killing tens of thousands immediately and many more later from radiation sickness.

Why Did We Drop the Bomb?

In 1945 on August 5th at 8 seconds past 8:16AM the atomic bomb, “The Little Boy”, exploded over Hiroshima , Japan . Fifty-one seconds previously, the bomb was dropped by the B-29 Enola Gay at a height of almost six miles. The explosion occurred at a height of 1,850 feet and created a huge fireball, which possessed for a fraction of a second, the temperature of a million degrees. “The Little Boy” had released the equivalent of 13,500 tons of TNT over the city.