On the occasion of 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, PAYAM SOLHTALAB reflects upon the terrible events of that day, its immutable lessons, and continuing resonance amid the current febrile international climate and renewed drumbeat to war.
At this time* on the morning of 6 August 1945, the United States Air Force detonated an atomic bomb over the city of Hiroshima in Japan.
The explosion wrought devastation upon the city and its population, killing as many as 80,000 people instantly – the intense heat and light of the blast famously leaving behind only shadows where people had been standing or sitting at that moment – and destroying more than six square miles of the city outright.
The bombing unleashed an intense firestorm that burned for three days, trapping and killing many of those that had survived the initial blast.
A beautiful bright summer morning soon turned to night as darkness from the widespread destruction engulfed the city. In the hours that followed, black rain contaminated with radioactive fallout poured from the skies – poisoning many of the survivors as they desperately attempted to quench their thirst in the aftermath of the bombing.
The overall death toll, including those who died from the long-term effects of radiation sickness, is estimated to be at least 135,000 people. Many of the survivors (hibakusha) also suffered significantly increased rates of cancer and other illnesses owing to their initial exposure.
It is testament to the sheer abomination of what was inflicted upon Hiroshima that fateful morning that the list of horrors pertaining to it far exceed the constraints of this statement. Suffice to state that the reverberations of this event are still keenly felt by the people of this city 80 years later, even as the numbers of hibakusha continue to dwindle.
Hiroshima was the first on a shortlist of target cities chosen by the US, having previously avoided the intense bombings meted out to other Japanese population centres – including Tokyo, the carpet firebombing of which on the night of 9-10 March 1945 killed around 100,000 people. The US were keen to test their new armament as well as map out and gauge its impact with relative ease.
Even the realisation of its devastating effects did not serve to deter the US from repeating the atrocity three days later, on 9 August 1945, this time on Nagasaki. The intention had originally been to hit the city of Kokura, which was second on the aforementioned list of targets, but this plan was aborted owing to heavy cloud cover. Therefore, the crew flew on to Nagasaki where they encountered similar adverse weather conditions and could not establish visuals on their target but made the decision to drop the device regardless – killing an estimated 40,000 people immediately, with an overall death toll of 70,000 factoring in those who later succumbed to their injuries and radiation poisoning.
One of the great fallacies perpetuated, chiefly by the US, regarding the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was that they were a necessary means to ending the Second World War. However, Japan was by that point on the verge of surrender, already urgently suing for peace, having suffered defeat after devastating defeat on the battlefield and been pushed back on every front in the Pacific and Southeast Asia.
Notwithstanding the brutality and egregious crimes committed by the Imperial Japanese Forces, the bombings are legitimately viewed by many to have constituted acts of state terrorism and war crimes primarily given that they involved the blanket targeting of civilian populations.
Furthermore, the Soviet Union was also poised to declare war on Japan, raising the real possibility of not only the quick overcoming of the latter’s forces in Manchuria and South Sakhalin, which took place in due course, but the invasion of Hokkaido – the northernmost of Japan’s main islands – which would have amounted to a drastic alteration of that country’s postwar scenario.
While the official justification for the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was to force Japan’s surrender and avoid a costly invasion of its main islands, it would be far from a cynical take to argue, as many academics indeed have done, that the bombings were as much an assertion of US military power intended for consumption by the USSR.
Thus, not only did the atomic bombings serve as the frightening opening salvo of 80 years of US imperialist aggression on the world stage, which continues to this very day, but also the starter pistol for what would become the Cold War – the 45-year period which, however fraught, saw the US’ mal-designs countered and at least kept in check by a USSR whose interests and vision were diametrically opposed to those of Washington.
Since 1991 and the dissolution of the USSR, the US’ position as the surviving superpower of the Cold War – and still-preeminent power internationally – has largely afforded it an environment in which it feels less inhibited in aggressively pursuing its interests, attempting to bully various sovereign countries into pliancy if not submission, and increasingly thumbing its nose at international law and any semblance of a rules-based order.
It is therefore no mere happenstance that this sombre milestone anniversary takes place amid increased instability and dangerously escalating tensions, not least in the Middle East.
It would involve no trivialisation to state that much of Gaza, after 22 months of fierce and unrelenting bombardment by the criminal apartheid regime of Israel, resembles a hellscape not unlike those witnessed and photographed in the aftermath of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Indeed, several analysts and academics have drawn this very comparison, estimating that the combined tonnage of weapons dropped on the territory since October 2023 is equivalent to severalfold of the device dropped on Hiroshima, but spread out over a wider area – with the level of carnage and destruction unparalleled in the post-World War II era.
In October 2024, Toshiyuki Mimaki, a leader of the Nihon Hidankyo organisation that represents hibakusha and campaigns for the abolition of nuclear weapons, attracted the ire of Israel for making the comparison between the devastation in Gaza and Hiroshima following his group being announced as the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.
The anniversary also comes barely a month on from the cessation of a 12-day-long bombardment of Iran by Israel and latterly the US – ostensibly to curtail Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme, but in reality a thinly veiled abortive attempt to instigate regime change – again committed in flagrant contempt for international law.
Over 1,000 Iranians, the majority of them civilians, were killed in the attacks – launched in the early morning of Friday 13 June, just 48 hours before Iran was due to sit down with the US for the sixth round of negotiations over its nuclear programme.
On Wednesday 18 June, the Nihon Hidankyo organisation openly decried Israel’s attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities stating, “We cannot help but feel strong indignation and anxiety over the attacks […] Attacks on nuclear facilities should never be tolerated, and hibakusha atomic bomb survivors call for a ceasefire […] The world must not repeat the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
In the early hours of Saturday 23 June, the US dropped 14 GBU-57A/B MOP “bunker buster” bombs, the largest and most powerful non-nuclear bomb in the US military’s arsenal, on the Fordow Uranium Enrichment Plant, the Natanz Nuclear Facility, and the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Centre.
In a stance eerily reminiscent of that adopted by former US President Franklin D. Roosevelt regarding Japan during World War II, Donald Trump has stated that nothing short of Iran’s “unconditional surrender” will be acceptable.
Most Iran analysts and watchers acknowledge that the very serious threats facing the country and its long-suffering people have far from abated.
Meanwhile, the Russia-Ukraine War, with its terrible human and societal toll on both sides, rages on with no sign of an end on the horizon – in fact quite the reverse. The bellicose rhetoric and escalating brinksmanship featured throughout this almost three-and-a-half-year war, have included threats of a recourse to nuclear arms.
On Monday 4 August, the Russian Federation announced it would be pulling out of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which placed a moratorium on the deployment of short and medium-range missiles between the two countries effectively eliminating an entire stratum of nuclear weapons with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometres. Trump had previously withdrawn the US from the agreement in 2019 during his first term in office.
There are an estimated to be in the region of 12,500 nuclear weapons in the world as of early 2024, around 9,500 of which are in active military stockpiles and almost 4,000 of which are deployed with operational forces. As of 2025, the Russian Federation and the United States possess approximately 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons, according to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).
The bomb dropped on Hiroshima (‘Little Boy’) had an explosive yield equivalent to around 15 kilotons of TNT. Most modern nuclear weapons are much more powerful, with many having yields exceeding 100 kilotons and some even crossing into the megaton (one million ton) range. To put this in perspective, the detonation of a 100-kiloton device over a city would likely cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of its inhabitants outright. The only plausible outcome of the deployment of such weaponry in the scenario of a schematic exchange would be mutually assured destruction.
Liberation, since its very inception as the Movement for Colonial Freedom (MCF) in 1954, has consistently opposed the existence let alone deployment of nuclear arms and has been a prominent supporter of the long-running campaign here in Britain for their abolition.
Amid drastically sharpening international tensions and a seemingly rapidly hardening world – one in which the cacophony of chauvinistic, militaristic, and even fascistic rhetoric abounds – Liberation firmly believes that real fortitude and honour instead rest with those that choose the more arduous path of advocating for peace, progress, and social justice!
Over the noise of bombast, Liberation chooses to heed the warnings expressed by the ever-diminishing group of elderly World War II veterans and survivors, including hibakusha, that there is no glory in war and that it represents humanity at its lowest ebb!
Liberation stands unashamedly and unequivocally on the side of the vast majority of international public opinion, ordinary people around the world, in rejecting the notion of ‘might is right’, imperialist aggression, and war – and calling instead for the prevailing of the international rules-based order and peace in our time!
In the decades since the atrocious events of the morning of 6 August 1945, Hiroshima has been rebuilt as a city of peace, a shining beacon against the darkness of war and lasting testament to the horror of nuclear arms.
May the light emitted from that beacon never be extinguished!
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* This article is published to coincide with the very moment the bomb was detonated over Hiroshima at approximately 08:15am Japanese Standard Time (GMT+9) on the 6 August 1945.
** Orizuru (ori – folded, tsuru – crane) is probably the most well-known of all origami (folded paper) models. The design is likely based on the Japanese red-crowned crane also known as the “Honourable Lord Crane” whose wings are believed in folklore to carry souls up to heaven. Cranes are seen as a symbol of good luck and longevity because they are said to live for 1,000 years. Accordingly, an ancient Japanese legend promises that when one folds and strings together 1,000 origami cranes, thus forming a senbazuru, they shall be granted a wish by the sacred crane. This ties in with the story of Sadako Sasaki who was diagnosed with leukaemia at the age of 12 as a result of her exposure to radiation in the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima. Sadako set out to fold 1,000 cranes in hope of being granted her wish for recovery, happiness, and a world of eternal peace. Although she was able to fold only 644 cranes before she died, her classmates folded the remaining 356 in her honour. Ever since then, the collective effort to complete a senbazuru has become synonymous with a wish for recovery from illness or a wish for peace.
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Payam Solhtalab is a law graduate and Left activist of Iranian background currently working as Communications and Operations Consultant for Liberation where he also sits on the Editorial Team for the organisation’s quarterly Liberation Journal. He is also a member of the National Executive Council of the Committee for the Defence of the Iranian People’s Rights (CODIR).
