Nagasaki August 1945. Photo: library footage
Today is the 71st anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. Last week I was in Nagasaki, participating in a symposium on nuclear issues organised by Asahi Shinbun, Japan's second largest national newspaper. I met several survivors of the Nagasaki bombing (known as Hibakusha), including Michiko Kano, whose son has just published a book about her experiences "15 year old Hibakusha: So as not to erase history".
The death toll of 74,000 only counts those killed in the initial blast and first few days after the plutonium bomb "Fat Man" exploded at 11.02 that hot summer morning in 1945. But in the next five years Nagasaki lost a further 75,000 people due to bomb-related injuries, radiation sickness and various forms of cancer, with the youngest hit hardest. That one atomic bomb – less than one fifth of the explosive power of an average warhead for Trident – killed more than half of Nagasaki's population of 240,000 at the time.
