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Hiroshima Bombing Effects

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When scientists discovered the power of nuclear fission, the new technology was applied to invent the atomic bomb in the early 1940’s. Only a few years later, it was utilized in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6, 1945. Due to the immense destruction it caused, there has been no use of nuclear warfare ever since. Though it seems that nuclear weapons are things of the past, “the threat of nuclear proliferation is one of the severest tests facing the international system in the early twenty-first century” (“Nuclear Weapons” 1898). The effects and strength of nuclear weapons are more powerful now than they were before. Dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was an extremely controversial decision by President Truman …show more content…

Substantial amounts of Japanese civilians near the impact zone suffered from radiation sickness and wounds. Chronicled by the book, Hiroshima, the author John Heresy retold first-hand accounts of people who experienced the bombings; he wrote that people “fell suddenly ill with a general malaise, weariness, and feverishness” from radiation sickness (68). In the later stages of the sickness, people suffered “blood disorders, gums bled, the white-blood-cell count dropped sharply, and petechiae appeared on the skin and mucous membranes. The drop in the number of white blood corpuscles reduced the patient's capacity to resist infection…” (Heresey 77). During that time many doctors couldn't instantly figure out treatments or what the exact cause of the disease was, so thousands died by being left untreated and undiagnosed. Even babies who weren't born suffered from the bomb, “Within a decade of the bombings, scientists had already documented fetal brain injuries and subsequent mental retardation in children born to mothers who were within 2,000 meters of ground zero when the bombs exploded” (Stolzenburg 70). Those babies, called “pika babies” suffered not only physically but mentally due to the fact that ”the label carries a severe stigma there. As adults, these individuals have difficulty finding employment, and some have been institutionalized…” (Solzenburg 70). Along with the babies, many of the survivors carried the same guilt and stigma in Japan. Even the environment received an even large blow from the bomb. It suffered several years from radioactive fallout, defined as the “dust and particles that fall to the earth after a nuclear explosion” (Newton 1155). Radioactive fallout had the ability to stay in the environment for years and could incorporate itself into organisms which would emit very harmful radiation (Newton

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