Little Boy was the name of the atomic bomb which was dropped from Enola Gay , over Hiroshima on August 6,1945. at 8.15 AM.The bomb exploded about 1,500 feet above the city with a force of 15,000 tons of TNT. The name of the plane was Enola Gay, named after the pilot’s mother. The pilot, attached to the 509th, was Col. Paul Tibbets. The copilot was Capt. Robert Lewis. Little Boy destroyed 5 square miles of the city and caused about 140,000 deaths by the end of 1945.
The gun-type weapon possessed the power of 26,000,000 pounds of high explosives. Nuclear fission was achieved by the collision of two parts of active material (Uranium-235). A U-235 projectile fired down a gun barrel collided with a stationary element, causing a mass increase leading to nuclear fission. Little Boy was dropped untested. Previously, on July 26, the bomb, along with “Fat Man” was transported to Tinian Island by USS Indianapolis (CA-35) for final assembly. Four days later, Japanese submarine, I-58, sank Indianapolis, northeast of Leyte. the atomic attacks, the US Air Force dropped pamphlets in Japan. They advised the citizens of “prompt and utter destruction” and urged civilians to flee.
Prior to the atomic attacks, the US Air Force dropped pamphlets in Japan. They advised the citizens of “prompt and utter destruction” and urged civilians to flee.
The result of the Manhattan Project, begun in June 1942, “Little Boy” was a gun-type weapon, which detonated by firing one mass of uranium down a cylinder into another mass to create a self-sustaining nuclear reaction. Weighing about 9,000 pounds, it produced an explosive force equal to 20,000 tons of TNT.
The crew of the Enola Gay consisted of 12 men. Prior to the war in the Pacifc and taking command of the Enola Gay, Colonel Paul W. Tibbets Jr had flown the lead bomber ‘Butcher Shop'(aka Big Tin Bird) for the first American daylight heavy bomber mission on 17 August 1942, a shallow penetration raid against a marshaling yard in Rouen in Occupied France.
First Lieutenant Jacob Beser was the radar specialist aboard the Enola Gay, 3 days later, he was a crew member aboard Bockscar when the Fat Man bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. He was the only crew member to be on both missions.
Following the Hiroshima bombing on August 6, the Soviet declaration of war and the Nagasaki bombing on August 9, the Emperor’s speech was broadcast at noon Japan Standard Time on August 15, 1945, and did reference the atomic bombs as a reason for the surrender.
The broadcast was recorded a day earlier but was broadcast on August 15 at noon. Below is the translated transcript of the broadcast.
“After pondering deeply the general trends of the world and the actual conditions obtaining in our empire today, we have decided to effect a settlement of the present situation by resorting to an extraordinary measure.
We have ordered our government to communicate to the governments of the United States, Great Britain, China and the Soviet Union that our empire accepts the provisions of their joint declaration.
To strive for the common prosperity and happiness of all nations as well as the security and well-being of our subjects is the solemn obligation which has been handed down by our imperial ancestors and which lies close to our heart.
Indeed, we declared war on America and Britain out of our sincere desire to ensure Japan’s self-preservation and the stabilization of East Asia, it being far from our thought either to infringe upon the sovereignty of other nations or to embark upon territorial aggrandizement.
But now the war has lasted for nearly four years. Despite the best that has been done by everyone – the gallant fighting of the military and naval forces, the diligence and assiduity of our servants of the state, and the devoted service of our one hundred million people – the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage, while the general trends of the world have all turned against her interest.
Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization.
Such being the case, how are we to save the millions of our subjects, or to atone ourselves before the hallowed spirits of our imperial ancestors? This is the reason why we have ordered the acceptance of the provisions of the joint declaration of the powers. We cannot but express the deepest sense of regret to our allied nations of East Asia, who have consistently cooperated with the Empire towards the emancipation of East Asia.
The thought of those officers and men as well as others who have fallen in the fields of battle, those who died at their posts of duty, or those who met with untimely death and all their bereaved families, pains our heart night and day. The welfare of the wounded and the war-sufferers, and of those who have lost their homes and livelihood, are the objects of our profound solicitude.
The hardships and sufferings to which our nation is to be subjected hereafter will be certainly great. We are keenly aware of the inmost feelings of all of you, our subjects. However, it is according to the dictates of time and fate that We have resolved to pave the way for a grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable. Having been able to safeguard and maintain the Kokutai,(basically the emperors position) We are always with you, our good and loyal subjects, relying upon your sincerity and integrity.
Beware most strictly of any outbursts of emotion which may engender needless complications, or any fraternal contention and strife which may create confusion, lead you astray and cause you to lose the confidence of the world. Let the entire nation continue as one family from generation to generation, ever firm in its faith in the imperishability of its sacred land, and mindful of its heavy burden of responsibility, and of the long road before it.
Unite your total strength, to be devoted to construction for the future. Cultivate the ways of rectitude, foster nobility of spirit, and work with resolution – so that you may enhance the innate glory of the imperial state and keep pace with the progress of the world.”
Although the Emperor did not mention the word ‘surrender’ once, there could be no doubt about it, this speech was the surrender of Japan.
Despite this some Japanese officers still felt compelled to execute a British Pilot, even after the surrender.
Sub-Lieutenant Frederick (Fred) Hockley was an English Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm fighter pilot who was shot down over Japan while taking part in the last combat mission flown by British aircraft in the Second World War.
Hockley was born in 1923,in Littleport near Ely in Cambridgeshire. His father was a foreman for the water board and a bell ringer in the parish church. Fred attended Soham Grammar School and was a keen swimmer.
Commissioned in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve he was posted as a Supermarine Seafire pilot to HMS Indefatigable.
On the 15th of August 1945 he took off leading five Seafires of 894 Squadron to escort Firefly and Avenger fighter bombers attacking airfields in Tokyo Bay. They were diverted to a chemicals factory in Odaki Bay.
The 15 aircraft diverted to the alternate target which was a chemicals factory in Odaki Bay. Hockley’s radio was not functioning and he bailed out of his aircraft after it was attacked by Mitsubishi Zero fighters, parachuting to the ground near the village of Higashimura (now Chōnan). The formation, now led by Victor Lowden, bombed the target and completed their mission.
Hockley surrendered to an air raid warden who took him to the local civil defence HQ. The commander there handed him over to the 426th Infantry Regiment, stationed in Ichinomiya.
At regimental headquarters the commanding officer, Colonel Tamura Tei’ichi, having heard Emperor Hirohito announce the Japanese surrender at 12 noon, called divisional headquarters for advice on what to do with the prisoner. The 147th Division’s intelligence officer, Major Hirano Nobou, responded with words to the effect that he was to shochi-se (finish him off) in the mountains that night, despite the fact that Tamura had sought no authority to do so.
Tamura claimed that he was shocked by the order, which he felt was “unkind”, but he could not ignore an order from divisional command. He therefore told his adjutant, Captain Fujino Masazo, that Hockley had to be executed, adding that Fujino should do it so that no one could witness it. Fujino then ordered Sergeant Major Hitomi Tadao to move Hockley to regimental headquarters. There Hitomi was ordered by another officer to take six soldiers into the mountains to dig a grave with pickaxes and shovels. At about nine o’clock at night, nine hours after the Emperor had announced the surrender, Hockley was taken to the grave blindfolded, his hands were tied and he was told to stand with his back to the hole. He was then shot twice and rolled into the hole, where Fujino stabbed him in the back with a sword to ensure that he was dead. His body was later exhumed and cremated after Colonel Tamura began to fear that it might be found.
Hockley’s fate was revealed when Allied Occupation forces investigated and Fujino told the truth about what had happened, though Tamura had implored not to do so. Tamura, Hirano and Fujino were transferred to British custody and put on trial as war criminals in Hong Kong between 30 May and 13 June 1947. Tamura and Fujino cited superior orders in their defence, and Hirano maintained that he had ordered that Hockley be dealt with in accordance with intelligence service regulations and claimed that he had not anticipated that Hockley would be killed. Following differing accounts of the precise wording of the orders, Tamura and Hirano were convicted, sentenced to death and hanged on 16 September 1947, and Fujino was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment.
I think Takuma’s claim that he was shocked was quite a hollow statement. His supreme superior ,the Emperor, had clearly indicated that all hostilities were to cease on noon that day. Also exhuming the body and then cremating it, is a clear sign he knew that the execution was the wrong thing to do.
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Today marks the 74th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. So much has already been documented about this, so therefore I will focusing more on the lesser known facts about that fateful day and the aftermath
The crew of the Enola Gay consisted of 12 men. Prior to the war in the Pacifc and taking command of the Enola Gay, Colonel Paul W. Tibbets Jr had flown the lead bomber ‘Butcher Shop'(aka Big Tin Bird) for the first American daylight heavy bomber mission on 17 August 1942, a shallow penetration raid against a marshaling yard in Rouen in Occupied France.
First Lieutenant Jacob Beser was the radar specialist aboard the Enola Gay, 3 days later, he was a crew member aboard Bockscar when the Fat Man bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. He was the only crew member to be on both missions.
It was a common practice before the war for American Issei, or first-generation immigrants, to send their children on extended trips to Japan to study or visit relatives.There was, therefore, a sizable population of American-born Japanese living in their parents’ hometowns of Hiroshima. It is estimated that up to 11,000 Japanese-Americans died that day.
However about 3,000 of them are known to have survived and returned to the U.S. after the war.Like other survivors they were called Hibakusha-person affected by a bomb’ or ‘person affected by the exposition to a bomb.
Before the atomic attacks, the US Air Force dropped pamphlets in Japan. They advised the citizens of “prompt and utter destruction” and urged civilians to flee.
The Lonesome Lady was shot down on 28 July, 1945 while bombing the Japanese Battleship Haruna, in Kure Harbor. Only the pilot, Thomas Cartwright, and Tail Gunner, Bill Abel, returned home from that mission.
Three planes that were flying missions over Hiroshima were shot down in the days before the bombing, with the crew of Lonesome Lady all managing to bail out and survive the crash… before being quickly captured and imprisoned in a base in Hiroshima. the instructions given to captured airmen was to tell captors the truth, as the US assumed that Japanese already knew what was planned, and telling the truth would possibly limit torture. But despite Captain Tom Cartwright telling his captors the truth, he was not believed and he was shipped off to Tokyo for a more ‘rigorous’ interrogation. This actually saved his life, as when the bomb hit Hiroshima. But six of his crew men died as a result of blast wounds and radiation from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on 6 August, 1945.
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“Little Boy” was the codename for the atomic bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 during World War II by the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay, piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, Jr., commander of the 509th Composite Group of the United States Army Air Forces.
It was the first atomic bomb to be used in warfare. The Hiroshima bombing was the second artificial nuclear explosion in history, after the Trinity test, and the first uranium-based detonation. It exploded with an energy of approximately 15 kilotons of TNT (63 TJ). The bomb caused significant destruction to the city of Hiroshima and its occupants.
Little Boy was developed by Lieutenant Commander Francis Birch’s group of Captain William S. Parsons’s Ordnance (O) Division at the Manhattan Project’s Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II.
Parsons flew on the Hiroshima mission as weaponeer. The Little Boy was a development of the unsuccessful Thin Man nuclear bomb. Like Thin Man, it was a gun-type fission weapon, but derived its explosive power from the nuclear fission of uranium-235. This was accomplished by shooting a hollow cylinder of enriched uranium (the “bullet”) onto a solid cylinder of the same material (the “target”) by means of a charge of nitrocellulose propellant powder. It contained 64 kg (141 lb) of enriched uranium, of which less than a kilogram underwent nuclear fission. Its components were fabricated at three different plants so that no one would have a copy of the complete design.
After the war ended, it was not expected that the inefficient Little Boy design would ever again be required, and many plans and diagrams were destroyed, but by mid-1946 the Hanford Site reactors were suffering badly from the Wigner effect, so six Little Boy assemblies were produced at Sandia Base. The Navy Bureau of Ordnance built another 25 Little Boy assemblies in 1947 for use by the Lockheed P2V Neptune nuclear strike aircraft (which could be launched from, but not land on, the Midway-class aircraft carriers). All the Little Boy units were withdrawn from service by the end of January 1951.
Hiroshima before and after.
At the time of its bombing, Hiroshima was a city of both industrial and military significance. A number of military units were located nearby, the most important of which was the headquarters of Field Marshal Shunroku Hata’s Second General Army, which commanded the defense of all of southern Japan, and was located in Hiroshima Castle. Hata’s command consisted of some 400,000 men, most of whom were on Kyushu where an Allied invasion was correctly anticipated.
Hiroshima was a minor supply and logistics base for the Japanese military, but it also had large stockpiles of military supplies. The city was also a communications center, a key port for shipping and an assembly area for troops. It was a beehive of war industry, manufacturing parts for planes and boats, for bombs, rifles, and handguns; children were shown how to construct and hurl gasoline bombs and the wheelchair-bound and bedridden were assembling booby traps to be planted in the beaches of Kyushu. A new slogan appeared on the walls of Hiroshima: “FORGET SELF! ALL OUT FOR YOUR COUNTRY!”. It was also the second largest city in Japan after Kyoto that was still undamaged by air raids.
The center of the city contained several reinforced concrete buildings and lighter structures. Outside the center, the area was congested by a dense collection of small timber-made workshops set among Japanese houses. A few larger industrial plants lay near the outskirts of the city. The houses were constructed of timber with tile roofs, and many of the industrial buildings were also built around timber frames. The city as a whole was highly susceptible to fire damage.
The population of Hiroshima had reached a peak of over 381,000 earlier in the war but prior to the atomic bombing, the population had steadily decreased because of a systematic evacuation ordered by the Japanese government. At the time of the attack, the population was approximately 340,000–350,000.
On August 6, 1945, a mushroom cloud billows into the sky about one hour after an atomic bomb was dropped by American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, detonating above Hiroshima, Japan. Nearly 80,000 people are believed to have been killed immediately, with possibly another 60,000 survivors dying of injuries and radiation exposure by 1950.
A Japanese woman and her child, casualties in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, lie on a blanket on the floor of a damaged bank building converted into a hospital and located near the center of the devastated town, on October 6, 1945.
It was shortly after midnight—on the 30th of July, 1945—when disaster struck.
After delivering the Hiroshima-bomb components to Tinian Island, the USS Indianapolis and her crew of 1,196 sailors were sailing west, toward Leyte (in the Philippines).
At 00:14 on 30 July, she was struck on her starboard side by two Type 95 torpedoes, one in the bow and one amidships, from the Japanese submarine I-58, under the command of Mochitsura Hashimoto.
The explosions caused massive damage. Indianapolis took on a heavy list, and settled by the bow. Twelve minutes later, she rolled completely over, then her stern rose into the air, and she plunged down. Some 300 of the 1,196 crewmen went down with the ship. With few lifeboats and many without life jackets, the remainder of the crew were set adrift.
As the sun rose on July 30, the survivors bobbed in the water. Life rafts were scarce. The living searched for the dead floating in the water and appropriated their lifejackets for survivors who had none. Hoping to keep some semblance of order, survivors began forming groups—some small, some over 300—in the open water. Soon enough they would be staving off exposure, thirst—and sharks.
The animals were drawn by the sound of the explosions, the sinking of the ship and the thrashing and blood in the water. Though many species of shark live in the open water, none is considered as aggressive as the oceanic whitetip. Reports from the Indianapolis survivors indicate that the sharks tended to attack live victims close to the surface, leading historians to believe that most of the shark-related causalities came from oceanic whitetips.
The first night, the sharks focused on the floating dead. But the survivors’ struggles in the water only attracted more and more sharks, which could feel their motions through a biological feature known as a lateral line: receptors along their bodies that pick up changes in pressure and movement from hundreds of yards away. As the sharks turned their attentions toward the living, especially the injured and the bleeding, sailors tried to quarantine themselves away from anyone with an open wound, and when someone died, they would push the body away, hoping to sacrifice the corpse in return for a reprieve from a shark’s jaw. Many survivors were paralyzed with fear, unable even to eat or drink from the meager rations they had salvaged from their ship. One group of survivors made the mistake of opening a can of Spam—but before they could taste it, the scent of the meat drew a swarm of sharks around them. They got rid of their meat rations rather than risk a second swarming.
The sharks fed for days, with no sign of rescue for the men. Navy intelligence had intercepted a message from the Japanese submarine that had torpedoed the Indianapolis describing how it had sunk an American battleship along the Indianapolis’ route, but the message was disregarded as a trick to lure American rescue boats into an ambush. In the meantime, the Indianapolis survivors learned that they had the best odds in a group, and ideally in the center of the group. The men on the margins or, worse, alone, were the most susceptible to the sharks.
As the days passed, many survivors succumbed to heat and thirst, or suffered hallucinations that compelled them to drink the seawater around them—a sentence of death by salt poisoning. Those who so slaked their thirst would slip into madness, foaming at the mouth as their tongues and lips swelled. They often became as great a threat to the survivors as the sharks circling below—many dragged their comrades underwater with them as they died.
After 11:00 a.m. on their fourth day in the water, a Navy plane flying overhead spotted the Indianapolis survivors and radioed for help. Within hours, another seaplane, manned by Lieutenant Adrian Marks, returned to the scene and dropped rafts and survival supplies.
When Marks saw men being attacked by sharks, he disobeyed orders and landed in the infested waters, and then began taxiing his plane to help the wounded and stragglers, who were at the greatest risk. A little after midnight, the USS Doyle arrived on the scene and helped to pull the last survivors from the water. Of the Indianapolis’ original 1,196-man crew, only 317 remained.
Estimates of the number who died from shark attacks range from a few dozen to almost 150. It’s impossible to be sure. But either way, the ordeal of the Indianapolis survivors remains the worst maritime disaster in U.S. naval history.
The USS Indianapolis, led by Captain Charles McVay, was ordered to head toward Guam by going through the Leyte Gulf. What the U.S. Navy didn’t tell him was the Leyte Gulf at the time was a haven for Japanese submarines, and that ships passing through should do so with extreme caution.
Lacking the intel that he was in unfriendly waters and exercising his order to perform evasive maneuvers “at his discretion,” McVay told the crew to just head straight forward, and bid them a good night. Unfortunately the Japanese submarine I-58, captained by Mochitsura Hashimoto, noticed the Indianapolis heading straight toward it and immediately sank it.
McVay survived and World War II ended, but soon thereafter he found himself in a court martial for negligence in the sinking of his ship (probably as a scapegoat to cover for the other Navy guys who completely botched the Indianapolis’ travel instructions and subsequent rescue.
In the trial, the U.S. Navy made the fairly unprecedented step of bringing in Hashimoto as a witness . He was brought in as a witness for the prosecution, expected to talk about the gross incompetence of the American captain, hoping he would seal McVay’s fate. Rather unexpectedly, when Hashimoto took the stand he outright defended McVay, stating that no matter what he had done, the Indianapolis still would have been hit by his torpedoes.
The U.S. Navy still found McVay guilty regardless of what Hashimoto said, demoting him and basically ruining his naval career. Though Admiral Nimitz would wind up promoting McVay back to his old rank soon thereafter, the trial decision still stood — that is, until Hashimoto decided to help McVay out again. Hashimoto sent a letter to Senator John Warner, an action that helped lead to McVay being exonerated.
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8.15 AM 6 August 1945 is the date that changed the lives for everyone in Hiroshima. This is the time when the first ever atom bomb’Little Boy’, was dropped.
The explosion wiped out 90 percent of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure.
Hiroshima, a manufacturing center of some 350,000 people located about 500 miles from Tokyo, was selected as the first target. After arriving at the U.S. base on the Pacific island of Tinian, the more than 9,000-pound uranium-235 bomb was loaded aboard a modified B-29 bomber christened Enola Gay (after the mother of its pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets). The plane dropped the bomb–known as “Little Boy”–by parachute at 8:15 in the morning, and it exploded 2,000 feet above Hiroshima in a blast equal to 12-15,000 tons of TNT, destroying five square miles of the city.American President Harry S. Truman called for Japan’s surrender 16 hours later, warning them to “expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth”.
By the time of the Trinity test(was the code name of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon) the Allied powers had already defeated Germany in Europe. Japan, however, vowed to fight to the bitter end in the Pacific, despite clear indications (as early as 1944) that they had little chance of winning. In fact, between mid-April 1945 -when President Harry Truman took office
-and mid-July, Japanese forces inflicted Allied casualties totaling nearly half those suffered in three full years of war in the Pacific, proving that Japan had become even more deadly when faced with defeat. In late July, Japan’s militarist government rejected the Allied demand for surrender put forth in the Potsdam Declaration, which threatened the Japanese with “prompt and utter destruction” if they refused.
Hiroshima’s devastation failed to elicit immediate Japanese surrender, however, and on August 9 Major Charles Sweeney flew another B-29 bomber, Bockscar, from Tinian.
Thick clouds over the primary target, the city of Kokura, drove Sweeney to a secondary target, Nagasaki, where the plutonium bomb “Fat Man” was dropped at 11:02 that morning. More powerful than the one used at Hiroshima, the bomb weighed nearly 10,000 pounds and was built to produce a 22-kiloton blast. The topography of Nagasaki, which was nestled in narrow valleys between mountains, reduced the bomb’s effect, limiting the destruction to 2.6 square miles.
The survivors of the bombings are called hibakusha , a Japanese word that literally translates to “explosion-affected people”. As of March 31, 2015, 183,519 hibakusha were recognized by the Japanese government, most living in Japan.The government of Japan recognizes about 1% of these as having illnesses caused by radiation. The memorials in Hiroshima and Nagasaki contain lists of the names of the hibakusha who are known to have died since the bombings. Updated annually on the anniversaries of the bombings, as of August 2015 the memorials record the names of more than 460,000 hibakusha; 297,684 in Hiroshima.
Hibakusha and their children were (and still are) victims of severe discrimination in Japan due to public ignorance about the consequences of radiation sickness, with much of the public believing it to be hereditary or even contagious.
This is despite the fact that no statistically demonstrable increase of birth defects or congenital malformations was found among the later conceived children born to survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A study of the long-term psychological effects of the bombings on the survivors found that even 17–20 years after the bombings had occurred survivors showed a higher prevalence of anxiety and somatization symptoms.
The medical effects of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima upon humans can be put into the four categories below, with the effects of larger thermonuclear weapons producing blast and thermal effects so large that there would be a negligible number of survivors close enough to the center of the blast who would experience prompt/acute radiation effects, which were observed after the 16 kiloton yield Hiroshima bomb, due to its relatively low yield:
Initial stage—the first 1–9 weeks, in which are the greatest number of deaths, with 90% due to thermal injury and/or blast effects and 10% due to super-lethal radiation exposure.
Intermediate stage—from 10–12 weeks. The deaths in this period are from ionizing radiation in the median lethal range – LD50
Late period—lasting from 13–20 weeks. This period has some improvement in survivors’ condition.
Delayed period—from 20+ weeks. Characterized by numerous complications, mostly related to healing of thermal and mechanical injuries, and if the individual was exposed to a few hundred to a thousand Millisieverts of radiation, it is coupled with infertility, sub-fertility and blood disorders. Furthermore, ionizing radiation above a dose of around 50-100 Millisievert exposure has been shown to statistically begin increasing ones chance of dying of cancer sometime in their lifetime over the normal unexposed rate of ~25%, in the long term, a heightened rate of cancer, proportional to the dose received, would begin to be observed after ~5+ years, with lesser problems such as eye cataracts and other more minor effects in other organs and tissue also being observed over the long term.
The burns on this survivor took on her kimono pattern; the lighter areas of the cloth reflected the intense light from the bomb, causing little to no burns. The tighter fitting parts of clothing, such as the shoulders, are the most severe. Loose fitting sections show no burning.
During the war, Japan brought many Korean conscripts to both Hiroshima and Nagasaki to work as slaves. According to recent estimates, about 20,000 Koreans were killed in Hiroshima and about 2,000 died in Nagasaki. It is estimated that one in seven of the Hiroshima victims was of Korean ancestry.For many years, Koreans had a difficult time fighting for recognition as atomic bomb victims and were denied health benefits. However, most issues have been addressed in recent years through lawsuits.
It was a common practice before the war for American Issei, or first-generation immigrants, to send their children on extended trips to Japan to study or visit relatives. More Japanese immigrated to the U.S. from Hiroshima than from any other prefecture, and Nagasaki also sent a high number of immigrants to Hawai’i and the mainland. There was, therefore, a sizable population of American-born Nisei and Kibei living in their parents’ hometown of Hiroshima at the time of the atomic bombings. The actual number of Japanese Americans affected by the bombings is unknown — although estimates put approximately 11,000 in Hiroshima city alone — but some 3,000 of them are known to have survived and returned to the U.S. after the war.
As of 2014, there are about 1,000 recorded Japanese American hibakusha living in the United States. They receive monetary support from the Japanese government and biannual medical checkups with Hiroshima and Nagasaki doctors familiar with the particular concerns of atomic bomb survivors. The U.S. government provides no support to Japanese American hibakusha.
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I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.
History of Sorts 
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