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Remembering Hiroshima

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2010

François Bugnion
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Extract

The seventh largest city in Japan by population size, located on the mouth of the Ota River, whose muddy waters pour into the Inland Sea, Hiroshima had been almost spared by the bombing until the summer of 1945.

At dawn on 6 August 1945, four reconnaissance planes flew over the city and disappeared again without dropping any bombs. At 7:31 the sirens signaled the end of the alert. The inhabitants left their shelters and went about their business.

Type
Contributions to History
Information
International Review of the Red Cross (1961 - 1997) , Volume 35 , Issue 306 , June 1995 , pp. 307 - 313
Copyright
Copyright © International Committee of the Red Cross 1995

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References

1 There are major divergences as regards the number of victims of the disaster. The report from the US Commission on the effects of strategic bombing gives the figures of 80,000 killed and as many injured (The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, The Effects of Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Chairman's Office, 30 June 1946, Washington, United States Government Printing Office, 1946, p. 3). A survey carried out by the Hiroshima City Council up to 10 August 1946 arrived at the following figures, for a civil population of 320,081 inhabitants, on the day of the explosion: 118,661 killed, 30,524 seriously injured, 48,606 slightly injured, and 3,677 missing (Hiroshima and Nagasaki, The Physical, Medical and Social Effects of the Atomic Bombings, The Committee for the Compilation of Material Damage caused by the Atomic Bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, translated by Eisei Ishikawa and David L. Swain, New York, Basic Book Publishers, 1981, p. 113).

2 According to information supplied to the author by the Japanese Red Cross Society on 5 June 1995.

3 Fritz Bilfinger, telegramme dated 30 August 1945, copy, ICRC Archives, file No. G. 8/76.

4 DrJunod, Marcel, The Hiroshima Disaster, extract from the International Review of the Red Cross, 09–10 and 11–12 1982.Google Scholar

5 “La fin des hostilités et les tâches futures de la Croix-Rouge”(The end of the fighting and the future tasks of the Red Cross), 370th Circular to the Central Committees, 5 September 1945, Revue internationale de la Croix-Rouge (RICR), No. 321, 09 1945, pp. 657–662, ad, pp. 659–660 Google Scholar. The ICRC was to return to this issue in an appeal on 5 April 1950, entitled “Armes atomiques et armes aveugles” (Atomic weapons and non-directed weapons), RICR, No. 376, 04 1950, pp. 251–255.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Resolution XXIV, Seventeenth International Red Cross Conference, Stockholm, 1948.