New Photos Reveal Horror Of Hiroshima (GRAPHIC IMAGES)

Sean Malloy, a professor at the University of California Merced, "recently unearthed 10 previously-unpublished photographs illustrating the aftermath on the Hiroshima bombing."

These photographs, taken by an unknown Japanese photographer, were found in 1945 among rolls of undeveloped film in a cave outside Hiroshima by U.S. serviceman Robert L. Capp, who was attached to the occupation forces. Unlike most photos of the Hiroshima bombing, these dramatically convey the human as well as material destruction unleashed by the atomic bomb.

Below, you'll find one of the photos from this collection. See the rest here. Warning: some of the images are graphic and will be difficult for some readers to view. (Via Danger Room)

Comments

[enilorac]

Huffp put the words Go Nuclear into Hilary' s mouth in a headline, which shows above your headline about Hiroshima.
This seems to be in really bad taste, as Hilary's campaign is a campaign and Hiroshima really was about going nuclear and raining death and lifetime mutilation upon so many.
The world nuclear needs to be used with more discretion. I don't imagine Hiroshima survivors enjoy seeing the word used so freely as a verb.

[BPCentrisAmerican]

HuffPost's Pick

This was my father’s war, in 1945 when the bombs were dropped, I’m sure he was dam glad, as were many war weary Americans, that Japan surrendered. By 1945 my father was in Northern Italy and the rumor was his division would be deployed to the Pacific.

Sadly, both cities were left intact to measure the full affect of the weapons; when both cities could have been laid waste by conventional bombing. Bombing civilians did little to contribute to the war effort, on both fronts, depriving the Germans and Japanese of fuel and raw materials proved more decisive. By 1945 the US had completely isolated Japan, depriving them of both. The Zero fighter, now obsolete, with few experienced pilots to fly them, could not effectively counter the B-29s.

The Japanese were trying to negotiate conditional surrender through neutral parties; everything was on the table including occupation, except trying the Emperor for war crimes, only he could order his people to stop fighting. Macarthur understood this and was able to convince Truman to accept surrender terms. Stalin declared war on Japan only weeks before the surrender to grab Japanese territory and Truman wanted to demonstrate the new weapon, ironically Stalin already knew.

I can’t pass judgment, in the context of a World War. With that said the use of these weapons is nothing to be proud of, and it would be an utter shame this country would have to bare, if any US administration uses them against, Iran.

[Tiran]

There are many things you could say about these images, but I suppose what comes to the top of my mind is that the human race was able to create so much destruction from a single roughly eight-foot bomb sixty years ago. Image what the human race can do now with a single 45 foot balistic missile with ten warheads, each much more powerful than this bomb dropped on hiroshima.

The human race has an awesome responsibility managing its knowledge and know-how. I hope we're up for the task.

[Oralloy]

Most of the errors in your message are inconsequential, but one is pretty important:

Japan didn't attempt to surrender until *after both* A-bombs had been dropped.

[Redrover666]

The same folks that are here calling the US criminal, will simply be on another thread saying the same thing about some other issue later. That is what they do. They love America and are doing their "patriotic" duty by speaking candidly about the truth of America's faults and crimes.

Like a big dog, America can tolerate a few fleas. They'll shake right out and disappear the next big attack on the US. However, you can bet they'll develop a limp or remember a relative in Canada.

[ImpressedByHonesty]

This is so horrific. And Hillary uses the 'obliterate them' comment without 'batting an eye'.

[sonofsamphm1c]

If the war had not ended when it did, tens of millions of Japanese civilians would have perished from starvation and disease. Tens of millions, which is significantly more than died in the atomic bombings. The number of buildings and homes that would have been reduced to splinters and ash would have far exceeded what was lost in the two atomic bombings. The country of Japan would have been reduced to ruble. The vast majority of that never happened because two atomic bombs were dropped.

Hillary's comments are disgusting and ignorant, but the situation at the end of WW2 bears no resemblance to today. Americans who threaten to use nukes are weak and pathetic.

[BeeOplentee]

Let's stop the crying and hand-wringing over a bunch of dead enemies, shall we? Those folks died quickly. They have been dead for 60+ years. They have long since not felt pain.

War is war. It always will be.

Be thankful your father or grandfather didn't have to die while invading the Japanese homeland. Because if he did die, you wouldn't be here to feel guilty about making the war end quickly and decisively, would you now?

So get over it, whiners!

[Durango]

Many of them did NOT die quickly.

Death from radiation poisoning is a horribly long and painful process. In fact it is one of the worst ways to go.

BTW My father WAS scheduled for the invasion of Japan.

And he always thought it was a crime.

[Snowspot]

Ahh, you're a fool. Unless we reflect, we could make the same mistake again. Say what you want but we decided to kill 70,000 people... sure it was after pearl harbor.. but that's an incredible amount of people to kill in one day, and all civilians... a terrorist act as Japan attacked our base in pearl harbor, not civilians.

[Oralloy]

Hardly all civilians. Hiroshima was a major military center, and Nagasaki was a city devoted to arms manufacturing. Hardly a terrorist act.

Pearl Harbor was attacked before war was declared, so it was hardly a legitimate act of war, and our POWs were not legitimate targets when Japan brutally murdered them (not to mention what they did to their Asian neighbors). The notion that Japan was following the laws of war in any way is ludicrous.

[BPCentrisAmerican]

I am thankful that my dad did not have been deployed in an invasion of the Japanese home islands. By 1945 Japan was isolated and they were using neutral diplomatic channels for surrender, with 1 condition, that the Emperor stay in place, an aspect of Japanese culture, Truman did not understand, which Macarthur understood very well. The Japanese would have scarified themselves by the millions to defend the Emperor; only he had the power to tell the Japanese military to lay dawn their arms, which was important, because the US did not have material to construct multiple bombs. Also the 2 cities could have been leveled at will with conventional bombing, with little or no opposition, yet were kept in tact as a science experiment, to measure the destructive power of the weapons.

In the late 40’s US troops were ordered to take cover in trenches during nuclear test to measure survivability of a nuke in battlefield conditions, even after scientist knew the effects of radiation sickness from the Hiroshima blast. Many of these men and their families, as well as the Japanese are still suffering the effects of radiation to this day in the form of cancers and birth defects. Considering that 80,000 people died in Tokyo in one night, was the envision of Japan even necessary or propaganda to justify the use of the A Bomb to send a message to Stalin, who conveniently declared war on Japan days before war ended.

[Oralloy]

Japan did not ask to surrender until after both A-bombs had been dropped.

The US did have material for multiple bombs.

Nagasaki in fact could not have been bombed by a large conventional raid, and use of conventional weapons at Hiroshima would not have killed nearly as many Japanese soldiers.

True that we did keep cities for the A-bombs, but the reason was so the A-bombs could be used to shock Japan into surrender.

[PlanetKansas]

The Pacific theatre was a demoralizing slog and Okinawa was was looking to be the worst of the campaign, with high US casualties, the Japanese army fighting to the death and civilians committing mass suicide. The US wasn't looking forward to the grimmer prospects of a mainland invasion, so the option of an atomic bomb was a final solution.

I'm not proud of bombing Hiroshima, but undersand the reasoning behind it. What I disapprove was the second bombing of Nagasaki, which used Plutonium instead of a Uranium based weapon. This seemed more like an unnecessary experiment on human subjects for mere research, when one bomb was probably enough. I hope the Japanese can forgive us.

[AlexNYC]

I agree with PlanetKansas. I can understand the reason for dropping the first bomb on Hiroshima, even though I am reluctant to agree with it. However, the second bomb on Nagasaki was rushed and very unnecessary. As usual in war, those who are responsible for it pay for it the least, and the innocent civilians suffer the most. May God forgive us all.

[Oralloy]

The reason for the second bomb was the fact that Japan was still refusing to surrender.

The use of plutonium didn't make the bomb any worse.

[suntzu]

The worst and most cynical aspect of Clinton's "we will obliterate them (Iran)" is not whether she really would do that in a crisis, but that she is willing to use that threat to win votes. That is as cynical as you can get, and her cynicism goes way beyond some of the thingsJermey Wright said, bad as they were. At least he was speakng his opinion, not just trying to win votes.

[sa]

no one is quite sure why it is,
but assholes rise to power.
the more of the asshole,
the quicker the rise.
world governments are full of assholes
all wanting to act assholish against others.
the bigger the arsenal,
the bigger the asshole.
it's some sick soul freak of macheavelian rule.
it sort of seems like hell.
all these assholes creating havoc in a beautiful world,
a blue planet.
(the red planet is mars, and i encourage all republicans to go there, soon.)
sometimes i wonder if i haven't died earlier in my life,
and gone to hell (everyone now quickly think if you had a near death experience -
maybe it was death!).

but chavez rose in venezula,
so there is hope that we don't
live on
asshole planet.

we live on the blue planet.

obama is rising now,
perhaps the blue planet will remain blue,
and not the red glow of republican nuclear war.

we are amidst a time of possible real change,
god's speed obama, god's speed.

[ecsiwingo]

So you are a Marxist or Socialist. If things are so bad here why don't you move to Venezula? I'm sure your kind would find it very nice. Do you think they have any pictures of the Batan Death March?

[wavydavy]

Just out of curiosity, what would you estimate as the number of civilians who were killed during the Bataan Death March? Somewhere around the 200,000 or so civilians killed in Hiroshiman and Nagasaki?

Or do you just get off on the idea of lots of dead Asians?

[arydberg]

Some justify it. Some condemn it. The fact is that in any war at any time atrocities such as these or worse can be found. The real disaster is that the war started in the first place. We should be looking at the events that lead up to the war. Or even better how to get out of the mess dumbo has got us into.

[pointus]

Just horrendous.
I've always wondered why all the pictures we've seen of Hiroshima after the bomb mainly showed ruined buildings or the outline of a vaporized victim.
These photos put a real face on the horror of civilian massacre.
We are still as brutal a species as fire ants; scratch the surface and we're just vessels of rage and murder.
I think we may be doomed.

[tandrmcdonald]

I hope the people who looked at these terrible photographs keep in mind that John McCain and Hillary Clinton have both said they would consider the nuclear option. Maybe some of us haven't evolved as much as we had thought. The worst part of this whole barbaric display of warfare is that civilians, including children, were the victims.

[Nebris]

More partisan BS. What are they - or any other leader - supposed to say? "We'll never use our nukes under any circumstances." That would be stupid and irresponsible.

[njdon]

the choice was them dying or you dying. your choice. your cadaver would not look any better.

dropping the bomb was absolutely the right thing to do. this was not an intellectual exercise to be discussed at the faculty lounge.

[driven989]

Maybe someone should drop a bomb on your entire family...then come back and say something as stupid as "dropping the bomb was absolutely the right thing to do."

Not one ounce of humanity in your body...Get a clue, read history and understand why the bomb was really dropped...

Man, so many stupid people in this world...

[Nebris]

"Maybe someone should drop a bomb on your entire family"

Yeah, that's demonstrating your humanitarian enlightenment.

[messy]

Firebomb or nuclear? The bomb was really dropped to end the war IMMEDIATELY. It saved the lives of at least a million US soldiers and five million Japanese.

The "more Americans should have died in WWII" anti-nuke argument is disgusting.

[Redrover666]

Ironic, but contemporaneously that's just exactly what the Germans were working on.

As to whether his comment was stupid or not, his remark seems to agree with the greater majority of historians. As to your remark, you resort to ad hominem comments without a shred of evidence to counter a remark you had the gall to characterize as stupid.

How was it, Forrest Gump put it......

[Photofarm]

Why don't you talk to a survivor, or read accounts of the Bataan Death March, and see what type of humanity the Japanese soldiers were practicing in WWII

[CraigWilloughby]

I have to disagree that it was the right thing to do. However, in Truman's defense, he felt he had no choice. But killing that many people in a single second is in no way the right thing to do.

[broncofan]

I think war is horrible. Noone knew how awful the bomb would be but we did know that the enemy was entrenched in Japan and our boys were being horribly treated-my uncle was beheaded. And we did not start the war. I have been to Hiroshima-it was horrible- but the war ended ..everything was horrible...he was beheaded in oct. '42 and my family did not know he was dead until after VJ day well into '45. My family was one of thousands who did not get a phone call.

[divineorder]

Bullbutter, njon.

You suck.

Your logic and statement are absolutely wrong.

Faculty lounge was exactly where it should have been discussed.

Decision should not have been left to the few who did make it.

They all should have gone to jail. This was an unforgiveable crime against humanity, similar to the current administrations bombings which have killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians. God help us if we ever get our due as a society.

[shpilk]

Fire boming.

The British perfected it. The Nazis were leaving too much time between V2s. By staging massive waves, the British realized it was the fire brigades that had to be prevented from doing their work, thus overwhelming them.

100,000 people in Tokyo died, in one night, mostly civilians for US fire bombing. Dozens of other cities in Japan were attacked, many more than once. Dresden [think Kurt vonnegut] and many cities in Germany were subjected to firebombings .. the effect was to turn these cities into the moonscapes of death.

The attacks on Hiroshima could have been preceded by a 'demonstration' of the power of the weapon we had, done offshore to minimize civilian casualties. Or, a more suitable military target could have been chosen. However, Hiroshima was chosen because it was relatively pristine, having avoided much of the bombing; it was not a military stronghold. It was chosen as a 'demonstration'.

After the attack on Hiroshima, only three days were given before we launched another attack, this time on a slightly more military significant target. Given the chaos of the Aug 6th attack, there was not enough time given to the Japanese government to consider any terms.

Draw your own conclusions about how civilized the Allies behavior was with these tactics.

[Oralloy]

Hiroshima was Japan's largest military town. Hiroshima's military districts held tens of thousands of soldiers (giving it the highest soldier/civilian ratio of any Japanese city). Hiroshima Castle held the headquarters of the Japanese Second General Army, which was in charge of repelling any invasion in the southern half of Japan (which is where we were planning to invade). The entire city functioned as a major military center.

[COLMustard159]

All right, folks. Here it is pure and not so simple. The bombing was wrong. Take a look at the pictures and you'll have an idea of what Hell is. Was it necessary to end war with less casualties? Most likely. The decision to inflict that much pain and suffering should always be a last resort.

To you war mongers who justify the atomic bomb as "we had to" and rant about how great America is but ignore the moral obligations this country has to bear: you're short sighted and you're the last people we should listen to when it comes to waging war and maintaining peace. This country has plenty to be proud of, but patriotism can never be blind to its sins. A true patriot acknowledges the blemishes of his country, learns from its history, and works to improve it faults. I'm sure we can all agree that we can't afford to ignore the lessons of the past as we look to a precarious future.

So which of you is salivating at the prospect of diplomacy failing with regard to Iran? I'd like to challenge those folks who would love to see Iranian versions of these pictures.

[BlackWidowPilot]

"All right, folks. Here it is pure and not so simple. The bombing was wrong."

To judge the past through modern eyes is the cardinal sin of the historian. The bombing was correct for the day in light of the fact that the Japanese leadership -fanatical fascists that would make the mullahs in Tehran look like prissy girl scouts- were preparing to defend their country from the planned Allied amphibious invasion set for the following year with every man, woman, and child they could organize and issue a bamboo spear. Conservative casualty estimates ran into the *millions,* including an estimated one million *dead* US personnel.

"A true patriot acknowledges the blemishes of his country, learns from its history, and works to improve it faults. I'm sure we can all agree that we can't afford to ignore the lessons of the past as we look to a precarious future."

Unit 731 and Shiro Ishii. That the US military brass spared this vile war criminal the noose is a real example of the sins of America's past from WW2. Shiro Ishii is one of those venerated by modern Japanese at the Yasukuni Shrine BTW.

END PART I

[Mandy85]

"To judge the past through modern eyes is the cardinal sin of the historian."

I'm not judging the US government through modern eyes but by using THE VERY SAME STANDARD established by the Nuremberg Trials of 1946 and used to RETROACTIVELY to sentence German war criminals: "every deliberate attack on civilians is to be considered a war crime." By this very definition, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are war crimes and the US government is the biggest hypocrite of the XX century.

[BlackWidowPilot]

PART II

"So which of you is salivating at the prospect of diplomacy failing with regard to Iran?"

I'm an independent, son of a WW2 US Marine, and Military Historian. I'm am also anything but salivating over the prospect of yet another war for oil and empire based upon endless lies about WMDs, and debunked connections between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.

" I'd like to challenge those folks who would love to see Iranian versions of these pictures."

I've seen what modern weapons do to the human body, including *children* in Iraq and elsewhere. To try and compare WW2 and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the Bushevik grab for corporate profits is apples and *bloody skulls.* The differences to anyone who actually studies the history of WW2 and the causes and aftermath would know the difference.

Your passionate desire to stop yet another bloody Bushevik debacle proves your patriotism and heart are in the right place. I would only strongly suggest that you better verse yourself in why such corporatist misadventures bear no resemblance to the US role in WW2, especially in light of how frequently the Busheviks have tried to spin the "war on terror" as another great crusade against fascism.

Leland R. Erickson

Citizen

[frump]

I'm also the son of a WWII Marine (China), and an Independent. With a Roosevelt (a family of bankers) as president, and WWII was NOT a corporate misadventure? The "military industrial complex" existed decades before Eisenhower warned America about its potential "unwarranted influence", it just didn't have the profile it has now (it is interesting to note that, as an attorney, FDR practiced corporate law). WWII was the war that SPAWNED the corporate misadventure. It is beginning to look as though FDR allowed Pearl Harbor to happen, giving America the cassus belli it needed to enter the war. WWII was the 4:00am feeding of the newly born military/corporate/industrial machine. The toothpaste was by this time already out of the tube.

Hiroshima & Nagasaki WERE wrong - but so was the Japanese rape of Nanking in 1937, Auschwitz, the purges and forced labor camps of the Soviet GULAG, England's massacre at Amritsar in 1919, ad infinitum. WE (the human race) are the perpetrators of these atrocities, not the tools we use. The Japanese exterminated nearly 3 times as many people as were killed in Hiroshima & Nagasaki in a little under 2 and a half years, without the use of so-callled "weapons of mass destruction". One way or another, we get the job done.

No, corporatism was not the reason for the war, but this was one of the unintended results, or blowback, to use the current phrase. The only true weapon of mass destruction is ourselves.

[messy]

The "more americans should have died" argument is not tenable. The poster tends to forget how we helped rebuild Japan in the 1940s and '50s.

If the firebombing of Tokyo was okay, than the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was too. If it wasn't, then we should have just given Hawaii and San Francisco to Tojo and sent us Jews to Germany for depisition.