Document ATM-NUCW-USE* UN 149436 - A-Bomb Terror

Dimensions: 19,1 X 13,1

There was a blinding flash of light, brighter and hotter than a thousand suns, a deafening roar and an explosion of radioactive fireballs whipped by hurricane winds into a raging firestorm. An ominous mushroom cloud rose thousands of feet into the air blotting out the sun and showering deadly ash and radioactive debris on what remained of the town and people of Hiroshima, Japan. Thousands of people were crushed or burnt to death or poisoned by radiation in minutes; thousands more died within the day, a month, a year. No one knows how many generations of the survivors will be deformed or die young because of the delayed effects of radiation poisoning. A single plane had flown over the town and dropped a single bomb. It was not a big bomb. But it was thousands of times more deadly than any weapon ever before used in warfare. It was an atomic bomb, an A-bomb. A second A-bomb was dropped a few days later on the town and people of Nagasaki, some 200 miles South and West. It was August 1945. Japan surrendered and the Second World War was over. But the sight of Hiroshima and Nagasaki reduced to radioactive ghost towns in minutes sent a shudder of fear and revulsion around the world. By the early 1980s the world's main military arsenals were filled with the equivalent of an estimated 1'350'000 Hiroshima size bombs. With that kind of killing power, it is not just our cities that are at risk. It is the whole of life on Earth. A new effort to achieve international security, not by the histpric route of possession of arms but by the untried route of disarmament, will be made when the UN General Assembly holds its Second Special Session on Disarmement, 7 June to 9 July 1982.
Smouldering ruins of Hiroshima, about 450 meters from the hypocenter.

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UN photo 149436

Image editing: B/W

Protection period to: 1945-08-07
Geographical information: Hiroshima

Protection period duration: 0

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Permission: No permission necessary.

Physical usability: Without limits

Term of protection: Accessible (0)