Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.
Dresden, untouched by bombing just three months before the end of World War II, was bombed by two waves of British bombers on the night of 13 February 1945. The next day, and several times thereafter, US planes blasted the city. The following excerpts from a report at Wikipedia:
"The fire-bombing consisted of by-then standard methods; dropping large amounts of high-explosive to blow off the roofs to expose the timbers within buildings, followed by incendiary devices (fire-sticks) to ignite them and then more high-explosives to hamper the efforts of the fire services. This eventually created a self-sustaining 'fire storm' with temperatures peaking at over 1500 °C. After the area caught fire, the air above the bombed area became extremely hot and rose rapidly. Cold air then rushed in at ground level from the outside and people were sucked into the fire."
"Out of 28,410 houses in the inner city of Dresden, 24,866 were destroyed. An area of 15 square kilometers was totally destroyed, among that: 14,000 homes, 72 schools, 22 hospitals, 19 churches, 5 theaters, 50 bank and insurance companies, 31 department stores, 31 large hotels, and 62 administration buildings."
"The precise number of dead is not known. Estimates from most present day historians vary from 25,000 to more than 60,000."
America was the first country to drop a nuclear bomb on a city, heralding a new era. On August 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. The first time I read about the devastation was in my high school literature class where we read Hiroshima by John Hersey. I can still remember the deep impression it made on me mainly because of the many personal accounts of those who survived the initial blast. Highly recommended reading for anyone who still believes nuclear weapons have a place in any country's weapons arsenal.
Here are the events...
A nuclear bomb called "Little Boy" was dropped over the central part of the city and exploded with a blast equivalent to 12,000 tons of TNT. An estimated 80,000 civilians were killed immediately by the blast. Once again, from Wikipedia:
"By the end of 1945, it is estimated that 60,000 more people died due to radiation poisoning, bringing the total killed in Hiroshima in 1945 to 140,000."
Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.
Three days later, on August 9, 1945, a second atomic bomb, named "Fat Man", was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, Japan.
"Some 75,000 of Nagasaki's 240,000 residents were killed, followed by the death of at least as many from resulting sickness and injury. However another report issues a different residential number, speaking of Nagasaki's population which dropped in one split-second from 422,000 to 383,000, thus 39,000 were killed, over 25,000 were injured. If taken into account those who died from radioactive materials causing cancer, the total number of residents killed is believed to be at least 100,000."
Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.
These events should serve as vivid reminders of how cruel war can be. In a matter of seconds, tens of thousands can vanish.
Naturally occurring catastrophic events with large loss of life, as we have recently witnessed with the tsunami in the Indian ocean, remind us of how fragile our lives truly are. Yet, when compared with the above events, man-made and with lower loss of life in totality, these events are more horrific. They are brought about by man's own cruelness to man.
No excuse for such inhumanity.
RSS
No comments:
Post a Comment