Great story! Cracked has a surprising amount of great articles and serious journalism...mixed with fart jokes! I hit that site almost over day. What a harrowing experience it had to be. On level it killed less people than the firbombing of Tokyo, but then the people that survived attacks like that didn't have to deal with radiation on top of the devastation.

I am at a loss for words after reading that poor woman's account of what she suffered as a teenage girl in the atomic explosion. I can only hope that no one will have to go through that again. It's going to really suck.

in 1971 I was stationed on Kyushu, Japan... I met a Japanese lady that had been a student nurse, living about 12mi outside of Nagasaki when the second bomb was dropped... she had burn scars on her arm and shoulder where the darkened flowered print of her kimono had absorbed the energy

We lived quite close to a British man who was a Japanese POW. He was in a work party in an air raid shelter some 1/4 mile from the GZ at Hiroshima. He was completely unharmed but did die from extensive cancers some twenty years ago. He was persuaded to gave a couple of lectures but in general would not talk about the experience.

In the article, I think the burns mentioned were really thermal burns, not radiation. Still not good for the recipient though.

I can't understand why, like so many others, she was not blinded when she watched the bomb actually explode.

It is rumoured that the US high command wanted to drop lots of coloured flares before the detonation so the maximum number of people were looking up at the sky on the clear day to maximise casualties.

Just an historical footnote - the A bombs rendered a land invasion of the Japanese mainland unnecessary. This event would have been as least as devastating, or even more so, than the nucs to the civilian population.

My father served in a medical unit due to be attached to one of the first wave divisions in the initial attack. I understand the battle plans made no mention of this division after the first few days of combat. Dad had said that the A-bomb probably saved his life

A lot of historians challenge the traditional assumption that the bombs ended the war. It seems there was an attempt by the military to depose the Emperor and continue to fight. Many feel it was the declaration of war by Russia, not he bombings, that forced Japan to capitulate. In fact the theory is that the Japanese were much more willing to be occupied by US forces than Russian ones.

I say it is a stretch to say "a lot of historians challenge."

The main and central theory is based on Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's book; "Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan" which I have on my bookshelf.

My interest from Hasegawa's work came from a former co-worker of Japanese ascent and distantly related to Hasegawa. He (co-worker) and I spent quite a bit of time discussing Hasegawa's theory of Japan decisions in surrendering to the USA instead of possibly at some point, surrendering to the Russians. And although the book makes a good argument, I did not come away totally convinced, but then again I am not a historian.

The end result is we may never know as the Japanese decision makers and military people in power at the time, are long gone. However the timing of the first A bomb drops then subsequent Japanese surrender in the days following makes a compelling reason for fear of more A bomb drops. That is not to say though that there may well of been some possible fear of being under Russian control that also hastened the surrender.

There is a fiction book (the name escapes me right now) that plays out in a fiction based on fact scenario of post war Japan and what would of happened if the Japanese indeed, came under Russian control.

Estimates at the time were for 750,000 to one million US casualties and minimum 5x Japanese casualties (and that seems low to me) in the invasion plan.


Many historians were actively researching such questions after the war; Gordon Prange, for example, interviewed every surviving decision maker and military leader, on both sides, after the war.

You can't really consider the events in isolation. Without them all surrender would have come later. The first bomb, then the Russian declaration of war, then the second bomb, left the Army command too paralyzed to stop the Emperor's surrender decision, or even decide if they wanted too.

The effects described above are from bombs much smaller than anything currently in inventory.

I don't think the atom bomb was what sealed the deal. I don't think the Japanese leadership fully understood what they were even facing. While I'm not an expert on WWII I do think that it's accurate to say lots of scholars feel that way and that the idea has gained a lot of traction. Still, it's not something I'm trying to pick a fight over, just pointing out that it's very complex issue. I think it's pretty clear that Japan never believed it could win a war with the US in the first place; rather they felt the American people had no appetite for war and could forced into settlement if hit hard at the outset.