75 years ago today.

[cee-dee]

The first Atom Bomb was used in war on the morning of August the 6th, 1945 in Hiroshima.

The devastation in Beirut has been likened to that in Hiroshima but thankfully there won't be the radiation to add to the misery.

It has been said that the force of the explosion in Beirut was a fifth of the power of that in Hiroshima.

It is to be hoped that the warmongers look at the devastation and never consider unleashing any modern nuclear weapons?

[dark_castle1]

Too true CD !

[m25jet]

When the American B29 bomber Enola Gay dropped the "Little Boy" bomb on Hiroshima - a uranium bomb weighing 9,700lb - the resulting explosion killed 70,000 people instantly within a radius of about a mile.  Many people who survived the actual blast subsequently succumbed to illnesses brought about by the bombing, ranging from radiation sickness, burns which ultimately proved fatal and various different cancers caused by the bomb.  A further study carried out in 1998 into the total number of casualties from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima put the final death toll at 202,118.

By comparison the death toll from the recent explosion in Beirut is nowhere near as high as that of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, but so long as the world has people in power like Kim Jong-Un and Donald Trump, both of whom have access to atomic weapons, we can never be completely sure that some silly idiot won't press the button and wipe us all out in the process.

[cee-dee]

It's 75 years ago today that the second Atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.

In the hope that such weapons are never used again, have a look here:-

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/04/world/gallery/hiroshima-nagasaki-atomic-bomb/index.html

[m25jet]

One thing that a lot of people don't know about the Nagasaki bombing was that Nagasaki wasn't actually the primary target.  The primary target for the second atomic bomb was actually Kokura, so after having been loaded up with the plutonium bomb (aka "Fat Man") the American B29 bomber Bockscar took off from its base on Tinian Island and flew to Kokura to drop the bomb on the target.  However, there was too much cloud over Kokura at the time to enable the crew of Bockscar to identify the target, and at 10:45am the mission to bomb Kokura was abandoned, at which point the crew of Bockscar gave up and flew south to the secondary target, Nagasaki.  At 11:02am local time on Thursday 9th August 1945 the atomic bomb exploded over Nagasaki, killing around 70,000 people almost instantly.  The blast, however, was not as destructive as it could have been, as due to Nagasaki's hilly valleys the impact of the blast was contained to two square miles.

Unfortunately, despite all of the death and destruction that resulted during the Second World War, there has never been world peace at any time since the end of the war.  It would be nice to think that it could eventually be achieved, but realistically I don't think it's something that's ever going to happen, at least not in our lifetime.

[cee-dee]

It could be that there's only one way to get world peace and that is for just one race to become dominant having "removed" all others!

In that scenario, how long would it be before the in-fighting started to kick it off all over again?

[m25jet]

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@cee-dee wrote:

It could be that there's only one way to get world peace and that is for just one race to become dominant having "removed" all others!

In that scenario, how long would it be before the in-fighting started to kick it off all over again?

---

Judging from the state the world's in at the moment I'd say that the fighting has already started, with several different groups battling to remove their enemies.  For example, you've got the recent example of two people having been convicted of stabbing a man to death on the London Underground because they didn't like the way that he looked at them, right through to nutters blowing themselves up at an Arianna Grande concert and killing and maiming several people in the process, including young children.  That kind of behaviour will never result in a peaceful solution to the problem - if anything, it could well bring about mankind's own demise sooner than would otherwise have been the case.  I really would like to be proved wrong on this next point, but personally I believe that there will never be world peace until mankind becomes extinct.

[cee-dee]

It's 75 years ago today that Japan surrendered. It's VJ day.

Some things that happened either only came out much later or have  never come to light. This has:-

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/12393263/ww2-japan-unit-731-disembowelled-pow-alive-plague-experiments...

[m25jet]

Although it's seventy-five years to the day since Emperor Michinomiya Hirohito broadcast the surrender of Japan to the Japanese people, in the early hours of Wednesday 15th August 1945 a military coup led by Major Kenji Hatanaka was attempted by a faction opposed to the surrender of Japan to the Allies.  The rebels seized control of the Imperial Palace and burned down the residence of the Japanese Prime Minister, Kantarō Suzuki; however, the coup was crushed shortly after daybreak.

At midday of Wednesday 15th August 1945 the Japanese Emperor went on radio for the first time to broadcast the Japanese surrender to the people of Japan.  However, although the Japanese Emperor verbally confirmed Japan's surrender via radio broadcast seventy-five years ago today, the official surrender did not come until Sunday 2nd September 1945, with the surrender being signed in Tokyo Bay aboard the USS Missouri, which was anchored there during the formal surrender of the Japanese to the Allies.