![]() Nuclear weapons are so powerful that no individual - whether it's a bombardier on his birthday or the president of the United States - should make the decision to use them.ĮLAINE SCARRY: The idea that one person can, you know, initiate a launch that would kill, you know, tens of millions of people is just the opposite of anything that could be meant by governance.īRUMFIEL: There are alternatives involving Congress, for example, and requiring a declaration of war. Elaine Scarry of Harvard University says that's not really the answer. policy is that nuclear weapons can only be used if there is an explicit order from the president. He withdraws that blank check that he had originally authorized.īRUMFIEL: From then until today, U.S. WELLERSTEIN: He explicitly tells the military they cannot drop any more atomic bombs without his express permission. ![]() WELLERSTEIN: I'm not sure Truman actually understood that there were going to be two bombs ready to go at almost exactly the same time.īRUMFIEL: And when he'd authorized the bombing of Hiroshima, he'd also given the military the green light to use more weapons as they became available. When President Harry Truman learned that a second Japanese city had been bombed, he was shocked. The victims were international.īRUMFIEL: The plane - now nearly out of gas - limped to an airfield at Okinawa and made an emergency landing. HASEGAWA: The atomic bomb was international. It killed 40 to 70,000 people - including Korean forced laborers and scores of Chinese and allied prisoners of war. The bomb fell on a valley filled with schools, houses, churches. The crew later claimed there was a gap in the clouds, but Hasegawa and others think that they probably dropped it blind. And they decided to drop the bomb on Nagasaki.īRUMFIEL: Tsuyoshi Hasegawa is a professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara. TSUYOSHI HASEGAWA: There is a debate between the pilot and the bombardier. WELLERSTEIN: What are you going to be on your birthday - the guy who somehow figures out how to use the atomic bomb or the guy who had to drop it in the ocean? Wellerstein says the bombardier, Captain Kermit Beahan, had a decision to make, and it happened to be his birthday. They had to drop it either here or in the ocean. When they get to Nagasaki, there's still clouds at Nagasaki.īRUMFIEL: Fuel was now so low they couldn't get home with the bomb. WELLERSTEIN: So they fly to Nagasaki, which was the secondary target. So they were really on borrowed time.īRUMFIEL: The bomber made its way to Kokura and found the city was completely obscured by clouds. So it turned out that there were some problems with the fuel valves on this airplane, and it meant that they had a lot less fuel than they were intended to. WELLERSTEIN: They also had problems with the plane. Stormy skies separated it from one of its escort aircraft. Almost as soon as the bomber left the ground, it ran into trouble. Its mission was to drop America's second nuclear weapon.ĪLEX WELLERSTEIN: Its initial target was the city of Kokura, which was an arsenal, had a large, built-up military arsenal surrounded by worker's housing.īRUMFIEL: Alex Wellerstein is a historian at the Stevens Institute of Technology. GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: Less than 72 hours after an atomic bomb flattened Hiroshima, another plane took off from a tiny Pacific island. ![]() NPR's Geoff Brumfiel has the story of the bombing and why decisions made afterwards are still a problem today. It was the second time nuclear weapons were used in war and also the last. Tomorrow is the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki.
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