by Marian Pallister

On August 6, it will be 78 years since an American bomber dropped a five-ton atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The bomb - the first ‘atomic’ bomb employed in warfare – contained the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT and it destroyed four square miles of the city. The initial death toll was 80,000 people. In the aftermath, thousands more died from wounds and radiation poisoning.

Tired of a war that had begun in response to Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939 but grew to encompass the whole world, the world’s weary peoples accepted US President Harry Truman’s claim that his decision to order the bomb to be dropped was made after advisers said this would end the war quickly. There would no longer be a need to invade Japan and lose a million more US soldiers in the process.

Marian Pallister is Chair of Pax Christi Scotland