From the 78th Commemoration of the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Columbus Campaign For Arms Control Peace Concert
August 13th, 2023

For far too many, the names “Hiroshima” and “Nagasaki” have been relegated, diminished, beatified, and locked away into the ever palatable and thus, readily ignorable conceptual box known as history. History with a capital H. Tragic history, yes, but past history: something that “happened.”

We learn the facts: that in 1939, Leo Szilard and Albert Einstein warned FDR of the theoretical yet highly likely possibility of weaponizing nuclear fission via uranium chain reactions; and that as a result, the United States Government, in the first of many atomic races - this one, against Germany -  developed the first atomic bombs with the Manhattan Project; that on July 16th, 1945, at 5:29 a.m. local time, our species entered a new stage of existence with the first successful detonation of the test bomb code-named “Trinity” in an explosion equivalent to 25 kilotons of TNT; that a few weeks later, on August 6th, 1945, at 8:15am local time, the USAF bomber the Enola Gay dropped the atomic bomb “Little Boy” on the city of Hiroshima, Japan, resulting in an explosion equivalent to 16 kilotons of TNT that destroyed everything within a 1 mile radius; spread fires across 4.4 square miles, and killed an estimated 66-up-to-140-thousand people; and that three days later, at 11:02 local time, the B-29 US bomber Bockscar dropped another Fat Man-design plutonium core atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki, Japan, detonating in an explosion with the equivalent energy of 21 kilotons of TNT, spreading destruction across a 1 mile radius and killing at least 35,000 and injuring another 60,000.

We learn these facts, and then we move on. We mourn the dead - somewhere between 129,000 and 226,000 people - we decry the tragedy; we denounce the murder, but we move on, having framed the events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as “PAST” history. But I think that we have lost sight of one of the most important and urgent facets of these events: The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki marked nothing less than the beginning of the end of our species.

Much has been written of the benefits of life within the Nuclear Age; and indeed, many of today’s technologies, technologies that are direct ancestors and derivatives of the insights of the same nuclear and quantum physics which created these weapons -   are truly remarkable - to the point of unfathomable -  when viewed with respect to the essential nature of human existence for the vast majority of our time on this planet. The rate of technological and scientific advancement from the late 19th century on has accelerated at an ever accelerating rate, to the point where it is not hyperbolic to state that there is a significantly greater difference in the basic reality of life between two people born 10 years apart now than between two people born 100 years apart anytime prior to the mid 1800s, or even 1000 years apart prior to the 1600s. Yet for all the good fruit these vines have wrought, even where we to forgive or at the least qualify the loss of life that was the price for these innovations, 78 years ago mankind simultaneously planted the seeds of its likely demise.

Today, the “nuclear club” - the nation-states that have either officially divulged their possession of nuclear weaponry or are heavily suspected to - consists of the US, Russia, the UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel. At the climax of nuclear proliferation during the cold war,  in 1986 there were 70,300 active nuclear weapons in existence across the planet. Over the course of Mankind’s Nuclear Age, we have conducted 2,056 nuclear tests of those weapons. After some efforts towards de-proliferation, as of 2019,  there are still approximately 3,750 active and deployed nuclear warheads,  and a heart-stopping 13,890 total nuclear warheads in existence.

And the power of these atomic bombs are several orders of magnitude greater than the comparably paltry explosions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or even the more powerful Trinity test explosion, which ranged from 16-25 kilotons. The US’s Operation Greenhouse tests of 1951 upped the yield of uranium core atomic bombs to 225 kilotons; Operation Ivy of 1952 saw the first successful test of a thermonuclear, or hydrogen bomb, named “Mike”, with a yield of 10,400 KTs  - or 10.4 megatons (500 times more powerful than the Nagasaki explosion); Operation Castle of 1954 would up this yield to 15 megatons; and in 1961, Russia set the world record with AN602 - a hydrogen bomb codenamed the “Tsar Bomba” with a yield of 58 megatons of TNT.

It is hard to fathom and comprehend this power. 58 megatons is almost 3,000 times as powerful as the explosion in Nagasaki. Perhaps these figures will help put the Tsar Bomba test explosion in context:

• The flash of light of the explosion was visible 620 miles away
• The mushroom cloud rose 42 miles high (that’s about 7 times the height of Mount Everest)
• Glass shattered in windows as far as 480 mi away
• The shock wave from the explosion generated a seismic wave in the earth's crust that circled the globe three times before dissipating.

And as a reminder, as of 2019, there are 13,890 total nuclear warheads in existence. Are, as in, present tense. This is our current threat; this is the dark cloud that shadows the present moment of which I hope we are all aware; we have stumbled into a situation where we have the power and ability- several times over - to destroy the entirety of humanity. And, the edifices of our civilization. And most of the animal life of the planet. And a great portion of the plant, fungal, and even a large portion of the bacterial life on this planet.

It is no surprise that our very language fails to adequately describe what it was we created even with that first Trinity test “bomb.” What are these devices? Are they merely “bombs?” It would seem we at least have realized that no, that doesn’t quite fully encapsulate what they are. So, we use new words:  “Weapons of mass destruction.” And what of the act of their deployment? Is it still a bombing? Murder? Mass Murder? Genocide?

It is fitting that Oppenheimer famously quoted a deity upon viewing the aftermath of that first successful nuclear test: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds”

For THAT is a more fitting description of the nature of our nuclear folly. These are not bombs, not weapons, not even the terms mass murder and genocide fully wrap around the totality, magnitude, and essence of atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and our capability to repeat this madness; these are acts of GOD; this is the destruction of Sadom and Gamorah - the wiping away of the First Earth by the flood. Never before in our history have we held this power, as a species. To wipe away a city and all of its inhabitants. Before 1945, this kind of power was the realm of mythos and religious belief, one held by gods, not men. But on August 6th and 9th, that power was released into the world; and the countdown to our destruction began.