Statement reflects on civilian casualties, urges nuclear disarmament.
By P.C. Staff
The National JACL issued a statement today, eight decades to the day after the United States dropped the first of two atomic bombs on Japanese cities, first on Hiroshima and on Aug. 9, 1945, Nagasaki.
In its statement, JACL called for “nuclear disarmament” and “an immediate end to the use of any military arms against civilian populations.” The first atom bomb used on Hiroshima instantly killed an estimated 70,000 to 80,000 people, and the second one used on Nagasaki instantly killed an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 people.
Those who survived would have to deal with burns and radiation poisoning. According to JACL’s statement, by the end of 1945, “approximately 140,000 individuals in Hiroshima and up to 80,000 individuals in Nagasaki succumbed to atomic bomb-related injuries …”
Those who survived beyond 1945 would become known as hibakusha or “bomb-affected people.” The ranks of hibakusha who would die later of effects attributed to the atomic bombs upped the death toll to some 210,000.
The still-controversial decision to use the new, highly destructive weapons on civilian populations during wartime that killed tens of thousands in a flash is said to have compelled the then-militaristic Imperial Japan to formally surrender to Allied powers less than a month later on Aug. 5, 1945.
The bombings also augured the beginning of an arms race between the U.S. and the now-defunct Soviet Union, the proliferation of intercontinental ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads, long-range bombers that could deliver hydrogen bombs (more powerful than atomic bombs) and a decades-long Cold War. The stalemate led to the concept of MAD — mutually assured destruction — as a deterrent to the use of nuclear weapons, leaving the U.S. with the distinction of being the only nation to have ever used nuclear weapons.
To read the JACL’s statement, visit this link.
