August 9

The world entered the atomic age when, on the 6th in 1945, the USAF bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb nicknamed Little Man on Hiroshima, Japan killing 80,000 immediately and an additional 60,000 by the end of the year. Ultimately, well over 200,000 people would die as a result of this bombing. On the 9th the bomber Bockscar dropped Fat Man, another atomic bomb on Nagasaki killing an estimated 90,000 people. It’s safe to say that well over a quarter of a million people were killed by these two bomb runs. Japan brought the war in the Pacific to an end when it surrendered five days after the Nagasaki bombing. It has been argued that the use of these two atomic weapons shortened the war and ended up saving more lives then they took. This argument may have some merit. If I may paraphrase Mick Jagger in the movie Performance, when you use an atomic weapon you open a door and you have to accept what walks through it. Viewed from the perspective of time, I am of the opinion that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused, and continues to cause, more and more deaths because of the widespread acceptance of the idea that the end justifies the means.