Victims lie with charred skin and ash filled lungs, missing limbs and deformed figures. Yet they consider themselves the lucky ones. On August 6th 1945 horror struck in Hiroshima and three days later Nagasaki suffered the same fate. Dropped by the US army, these nuclear weapons were the newest terror of World War II. The atomic bombs dropped onto Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unjustified and their effects are inexcusable. Not only did the bombings kill hundreds of thousands of innocent lives, but they also set the nuclear arms race into motion. Maybe it would have been worth it to end the war, but these bombs did no such thing. Supporters of the bombing say the loss of Japanese lives was worth ending the war and saving thousands of allies’ …show more content…
Not only were hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians killed, but the few survivors are scarred for life both physically and mentally. “The immediate death toll of the two bombs [is] at 200,000 people” (Dahi). This shows the sheer scale of this catastrophe and that’s just the people who died. It is estimated that there were over one million casualties (Dahi). Only an estimate can be provided as the complete destruction assured it was impossible to find all the bodies and missing people. One survivor, Akihiro Takahashi, has missing ears, deformed fingers, and is weakened by chronic illness. A writer for the New York Times describes him as, “a living testimonial to the horrific results of the atomic bomb that exploded over Hiroshima” (Takahashi). Takahashi, who was only 14 at the time, described how the bomb was unlike any other terror in war. He said when the bomb is dropped, “a fireball is created with a temperature of millions of degrees Celsius… followed by a wind that reached 440 meters per second.” He then went on to say, “I myself was blown 10 meters by the blast, and the wind caused [my] skin to peel off, eyes to pop out, and intestines to be blown out of [my] stomach.” The excruciating physical pain caused by this is hard to even imagine, let alone the mental scaring of