A Blast Over Hiroshima

The four-engine B-29 heavy bomber took off at 2: 45 A.M. from Tinian Island, a US military base in the Pacific Ocean. It was a Monday, August 6,1945. Piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets Jr., the Superfortress soared into the skies with a crew of eleven aviators. It flew in the dense darkness towards Japan on a top secret bombing mission. Shortly before the flight the colonel arranged to paint on the fuselage of the aircraft the name of his mother, Enola Bay. The aircraft carried a horrible explosive of mass destruction christened with the innocuously sounding code name 'Little Boy', Little Boy was a fission atomic bomb, filled with 64 kg enriched uranium 235. It weighed 4,400 kg. Its length was 3 meters and its diameter 71 centimeters. Little Boy's target was Hiroshima, a Japanese city with a population of approximately 350,000 people. The Pentagon chose Hiroshima as a target because the city was a center of Japanese war industry, had an important port and was an assembly area for troops. The flight crew armed the nuclear bomb only 30 minutes before the B-29 reached the target area. Visibility was quite good in the region. The Superfortress was flying at an altitude of nearly 10 km when the bombardier released Little Boy. It was 8: 15 A.M., Hiroshima time. Dropped from a height of 9,470 meters the nuclear bomb descended on a parachute for 53 seconds, and then,600 m high above the city, it suddenly exploded with a blinding flash that was much brighter than sunshine. The intense glare was followed by loud thundering boom. Enola Gay was at a distance of 18.5 km away from the blasting bomb. The shock wave pummeled the B-29 but did not damage it. Out of the 64 kg uranium filling of Little Boy only about 900 gram went into nuclear fission. Nevertheless, the results of the atomic detonation were horribly catastrophic. The explosion of the nuclear bomb incinerated an estimated 70,000 people and injured an untold number of others. Also, many died later of cancer associated with the radiation emitted by the atomic detonation. The nuclear blast scorched the city and Hiroshima became a gigantic pile of irradiated rubble. The radius of total destruction was about 1.5 km and resulting fires raged through an area of 11 square kilometers. Yet life refused to surrender. There were people who miraculously survived the nuclear explosion, even in the vicinity of the epicenter. Tsutomu Yamagochi, for example, was a 29 year old naval engineer in Hiroshima who was about 2 miles from ground zero but came out alive of the atomic blast. The detonation lifted him into the air and tossed him into a nearby potato field. He suffered severe skin and ear drum injuries but survived. Yamagochi's story sounds even more incredible because after the nuclear attack he escaped from Hiroshima to Nagasaki, where three days later the second atomic bomb exploded. He was 3 kilometers from ground zero when the blast occurred. Thus, he outlived two nuclear bomb blasts and died 65 years later in 2010, aged 93. A number of trees also refused to succumb. About 170 trees survived the atomic blast in Hiroshima. The Japanese call these trees hibakujumon. They belong to a variety of species, among them are weeping willows, camphor trees, bamboos, fig and cherry trees and eucalypts. Also, a few weeks after the nuclear attack, the weeds began to sprout from the earth. And quite astonishingly, in the summer of the following year colorful five-lobed oleanders, bright flowers of narium shrubs rose from the ashes blooming among the ruins in the devastated urban landscape. The white, pink and red oleander flowers, which the Japanese call kyochikuto, brought hope into the lives of the people of Hiroshima. They had encouraged and inspired them to rebuild their city. And surrounded by lotus blossoms, statues of Buddha whispered inaudible words of hope, heartening people, prompting them to find faith, strength and enlightenment; to rise above suffering and despair.