Nagasaki-長崎

On 9 August 1945, a B-29 named Bock’s Car lifted off from Tinian and headed toward the primary target: Kokura Arsenal, a massive collection of war industries adjacent to the city of Kokura.

The primary target was the city of Kokura, where the Kokura Arsenal was located, and the secondary target was Nagasaki, where two large Mitsubishi armament plants were located.

The weather had been reported satisfactory earlier in the day over Kokura Arsenal, but by the time the B-29 finally arrived, the target was obscured by smoke and haze. Two more passes over the target still produced no sightings of the aiming point. As an aircraft crewman, Jacob Beser, later recalled, Japanese fighters and bursts of antiaircraft fire were by this time starting to make things “a little hairy.” Kokura no longer appeared to be an option as there was only enough fuel on board to return to the secondary airfield on Okinawa, making one hurried pass as they went over their secondary target, Nagasaki.

At 11:02 a.m., at an altitude of 1,650 feet, ‘Fat Man’ exploded over Nagasaki. The yield of the explosion was later estimated at 21 kilotons, 40 per cent greater than that of the Hiroshima bomb.

The Aftermath

Above: An ink wash drawing of four people carrying a stretcher with a man on it. Surrounding them were the still partly burning ruins of Nagasaki just after the atomic bomb had levelled the city to the ground. In the centre of the background, three figures pull a fourth out from under the rubble.

The photographs above are of Nagasaki before the bombing and after the fires had burned out.

Urakami Tenshudo (Catholic Church in Nagasaki) was destroyed by the bomb, the dome/bell of the Church, at right, having toppled off.

Partially incinerated child in Nagasaki. Photo from Japanese photographer Yōsuke Yamahata, one day after the blast and building fires had subsided. Once the American forces had Japan under their military control, they imposed censorship on all such images, including those from the conventional bombing of Tokyo; this prevented the distribution of Yamahata’s photographs. These restrictions were lifted in 1952.

(The photograph above) A rescue crew is searching for the injured throughout the burning streets and ruins of Nagasaki.

Above: A wounded woman and child

A pencil drawing (above) is of a man lying on a mat. The man has bandages around his head and right ankle. Near his head is a can with the words, “Whole milk,” written on it.

(Photo above) Two survivors of the atomic bomb attacks on Japanese cities at the end of World War II at the time, accompanied by two female Japanese doctors, visited London.

The two women walked past Buckingham Palace with their companions. From left to right: Mrs Shinobu Hizume, a 52-year-old housewife from Hiroshima; Miss Kikeu Ihara, a 43-year-old school teacher from Nagasaki; Doctor Kimiko Honda and Dr Sugiko Yamamoto. They stay in London to be questioned by doctors to investigate the effects of atomic bomb explosions. Mrs Hizume lost four members of her family, including her husband, in the bombing of Hiroshima. (Photo taken 15 March 1955.)

sources

https://beeldbankwo2.nl/nl/beelden/?mode=gallery&view=horizontal&q=nagasaki&rows=25&page=1

https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Events/1945/nagasaki.htm

Counting the dead at Hiroshima and Nagasaki

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#

Chernobyl Disaster

The Chernobyl disaster, also referred to as the Chernobyl accident, was a catastrophic nuclear accident. It occurred on 26 April 1986 in the No.4 light water graphite moderated reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near Pripyat, in what was then part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union (USSR).

During a late night safety test which simulated power-failure and in which safety systems were deliberately turned off, a combination of inherent reactor design flaws, together with the reactor operators arranging the core in a manner contrary to the checklist for the test, eventually resulted in uncontrolled reaction conditions that flashed water into steam generating a destructive steam explosion and a subsequent open-air graphite “fire”. This “fire” produced considerable updrafts for about 9 days, that lofted plumes of fission products into the atmosphere, with the estimated radioactive inventory that was released during this very hot “fire” phase, approximately equal in magnitude to the airborne fission products released in the initial destructive explosion.Practically all of this radioactive material would then go on to fall-out/precipitate onto much of the surface of the western USSR and Europe.

Radioactive steam plumes continued to be generated days after the initial explosion, as evidenced here on 3 May 1986 due to decay heat

The aftermath

Children undergoing cancer treatment against the effects of radiation from the accident

A funeral for a child named Andrea, a victim of the Chernobyl disaster

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