Question: Any History buffs in the house?

[tonikoro]

I was sitting at my machine last night reading an article I came across while googling some info on Hiroshima. I came upon a few good bits of info about the time of the Abomb, but I was curious-

Does anyone know of any reading or links on how Hiroshima and Nagasaki were reconstructed? Particularly the clean up efforts of the time following into the occupation era?

Strange question perhaps, but I often research things like this at times as a storyteller. But as one can imagine, I would have imagined that the clean up of the Abomb cities would have been a monumental task having been irradiated with gamma radiation, and that it's not as easy as flipping top soil.

[AssKissinger]

I'm sorry to follow up your question with a question but I was wondering something similar. I wonder how they went about redistributing property in cases where entire families were killed. If we could add that to the discussion.

[FG Lurker]

Very little was understood about radiation and fallout at that time... It was not long before that they made US soldiers stand in atomic winds as tests, etc.

With this in mind I doubt that much cleapup effort took place.

[AssKissinger]

Very little was understood about radiation and fallout at that time... It was not long before that they made US soldiers stand in atomic winds as tests, etc.

With this in mind I doubt that much cleapup effort took place.

I was in Hiroshima city a couple days ago. Someone must have cleaned it up.

[FG Lurker]

Very little was understood about radiation and fallout at that time... It was not long before that they made US soldiers stand in atomic winds as tests, etc.

With this in mind I doubt that much cleapup effort took place.

I was in Hiroshima city a couple days ago. Someone must have cleaned it up.

You mean the cleanup of the physical wreckage? I mean the cleanup of the atomic fallout.

Radioactivity fades over time... The dome is still more radioactive than normal levels though, if memory serves. I don't think there was enough knowledge of the long-term danger of residual radioactivity in 1945 to prompt any sort of fallout cleanup efforts.

[tonikoro]

From the reading I did last night, alot of post-war Japan was formed in a programmed fashion influenced by GHQ at the time albeit oversight of a new formed gov, and there was an effort to redo some of Japan's domestic land distribution so that insted of some 50% of land or so became more like 80-90% of the land (as I can recall) was alotted so that persons could have or cultivate rural land(s). Along with that and a few other democratic intitutions that were put into place as former enemy was relatively quickly turned into an allied country as cold war concerns mounted. But a lot of what I found and read didn't seem to address Fallout cleanup protocols as we might think of it today. It only seemed to mention that an effort, more like relief effort, took place. I'm curious as to how both the Japanese proceeded and what part the allied GHQ took in the reconstruction of both cites.

[Taro Toporific]

It was an "air burst" not a "ground burst" so the soil was less contaminated.
Yes, today there would have been a massive radiation clean-up but the thinking at the time was the flash and concussion did the job and radiation lofted off in the wind. There was no "clean up" of radiation, just a lot of monitoring to see its effects.
The fact is Japanese hate moving and are used to rebuilding after disasters, so a proper Chernobyl type dead zone of 20km was out of the question.

[tonikoro]

Yes- I read that part, about it being an air blast.
the article I linked in my first post by a group of Euros on a missonary in Hiroshima. He went into a lot of detail about the effects and what happened before he revealed in his account when they realized it was an Abomb. From what it seems, ground zero seem to get the grunt of the rads. The following air burst shockwave stepped in for wide damage, then the following fires, wind, and black rain pretty much finalized the devastation.

Heh- speaking on the thinking of the time, I guess all that lack of thought must have wised up by the time they lit up the Bikini Islands. Talk about cluster fucking the pacific. Or all the testing they did in Nevada before treaties in the 60's against above ground testing. Makes one wonder where and what weather systems picked up fallout, and what damage it actually did.

I heard someone once say that it would take only 3 proper nukes to royally screw the planet. I assume maybe if they were something like 3 multiple warhead nukes, sure.

[Charles]

I always thought that Nagasaki got far too little attention compared to Hiroshima. So here's an interesting link, Remembering Nagasaki, from the San Francisco Exploratorium, featuring an exhibit of digitally scanned and restored photos taken shortly after the blast.

[Mulboyne]

This picture from Charles' link is very odd:

[GuyJean]

This picture from Charles' link is very odd:

Whoa! I thought the exact same thing.. Probably at the same time!

She's smiling because she's alive?..

GJ

[Charles]

This picture from Charles' link is very odd:

Whoa! I thought the exact same thing.. Probably at the same time!

She's smiling because she's alive?..

GJ

Somewhere on that site is some commentary by the photographer, I couldn't find it, but I recall it's a pretty astonishing story. I couldn't believe they could even take photos that soon after the bombing, I figured the radiation would have fogged all the film. There's a whole book full of these photos, this site is just a small sampler.
The whole Nagasaki story is quite amazing. The bomb missed the target due to bad weather, and landed in an industrial suburb. A ridge of hills shielded the city center from the brunt of the blast, reducing casualties immensely. The suburb (Amagasaki IIRC) was a ghetto for Korean slave laborers and exiled Japanese christians, who all got incinerated.

[AssKissinger]

I think the Nagasaki museum is more interesting than the Hiroshima one.

[vir-jin]

Truman diaries
http://www.doug-long.com/hst.htm

Hiroshima
http://www.xtec.es/~aguiu1/calaix/010hiros.htm

I have been to the Harry S. Truman museum as well as to Hiroshima and Nagasaki museums. I would recommend all the views. The triple pack tops anything I have seen in the category 'Very disgusting'. Did you know that the records to investigate and measure the damage on health caused by radiation and atomic bombing is still top secret documentary in the white house? I guess they will never see the public...

[Charles]

Did you know that the records to investigate and measure the damage on health caused by radiation and atomic bombing is still top secret documentary in the white house? I guess they will never see the public...

A surprisingly large amount of data is unclassified, and more is being declassified. The nuclear powers don't have any problem with releasing scary documents about the horrific effects of nuclear weapons. Just check out sites like The Federation of American Scientists for more declassified data than you could ever want to read.

But the nuclear powers do want to keep the documents about how to build a bomb classified. Unfortunately, it's too late, anyone could build an atomic bomb. In fact, EVERYONE who has accumulated sufficient weapons-grade material and wanted to build a bomb has succeeded. Hell, I could build you an atomic bomb if you gave me enough plutonium and some C-4. It's easy, the Little Boy weapon that destroyed Hiroshima is the prototype for everyone's first bomb, it's called a "uranium gun," it's so simple that even high-school physics students could make it.

As my favorite SF writer Stanislav Lem said, "you can't get the mushroom cloud back into the plutonium sphere."

[AssKissinger]

This picture from Charles' link is very odd:

Whoa! I thought the exact same thing.. Probably at the same time!

She's smiling because she's alive?..

GJ

Actually, I was underneath there giving her a reason to smile.

[GuyJean]

Actually, I was underneath there giving her a reason to smile.

That was my next guess.. You were trying to survive off nothing but her pussy..

GJ

[AssKissinger]

Actually, I was underneath there giving her a reason to smile.

That was my next guess.. You were trying to survive off nothing but her pussy.. ]

If she hadn't been on the rag I wouldn't be here to tell the story today.

[vir-jin]

Did you know that the records to investigate and measure the damage on health caused by radiation and atomic bombing is still top secret documentary in the white house? I guess they will never see the public...

A surprisingly large amount of data is unclassified, and more is being declassified. The nuclear powers don't have any problem with releasing scary documents about the horrific effects of nuclear weapons. Just check out sites like The Federation of American Scientists for more declassified data than you could ever want to read.

But the nuclear powers do want to keep the documents about how to build a bomb classified. Unfortunately, it's too late, anyone could build an atomic bomb. In fact, EVERYONE who has accumulated sufficient weapons-grade material and wanted to build a bomb has succeeded. Hell, I could build you an atomic bomb if you gave me enough plutonium and some C-4. It's easy, the Little Boy weapon that destroyed Hiroshima is the prototype for everyone's first bomb, it's called a "uranium gun," it's so simple that even high-school physics students could make it.

As my favorite SF writer Stanislav Lem said, "you can't get the mushroom cloud back into the plutonium sphere."

I was not talking about any data on effects. I was talking about the investigations on hiroshima victims, as far sa I know there are only 2 a-bombs that were actually used. It's a little different from simulation.
And who cares how to make an a-bomb? I'd be more interested in having knowledge about this
http://www.zeropaid.com/bbs/archive/index.php/t-1912

cause history tells us, inventions work two ways.

[dimwit]

A good link on the early reconstruction of Hiroshima can be found here

Hiroshima along with Chukoku and Shikoku were occupied by British Commonwealth forces (largely Australian) but I can't find any good links dealing specifically with reconstruction of the city.

[Charles]

I was not talking about any data on effects. I was talking about the investigations on hiroshima victims, as far sa I know there are only 2 a-bombs that were actually used. It's a little different from simulation.

After all the wailing by the Japanese about how they were the only country that atomic weapons were used on, most people don't stop to think that the country that has been subjected to the most atomic weapons is the United States. Just google on "atomic veterans" and you'll pull up tons of horrible stories about soldiers that were marched through bomb craters, sailors who died when their ships were too close to a test zone, etc. I think my favorite story is "Operation Teapot" where they put bottled and canned beer at various distances from a nuclear explosion and then had people drink it to see if it was still good.
Obviously I don't know the full extent of secret documents on the Japanese bombings, but the US is declassifying tons of WWII materials. I've seen some of the Hiroshima data that was always declassified, my high school physics teacher was a nuclear nut and had boxes full of the government reports, I used to rush through my lab work so I could hang out in the storeroom and read it. But I've been unable to find any of this data on the web.

[tonikoro]

Thanks again to those that took the time to post in some links on the topic, it's been real.

[jingai]