HIROSHIMA: 61 YEARS LATER

"My God, what have we done?"

-Robert Lewis,
co-pilot of the Enola Gay,
the B-29 that dropped the first atomic bomb.

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Today is the 61st Anniversary of the first atomic bomb attack; America dropping the A-Bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, which killed more than 140,000 people in the city. At 0816 hours, in an instant, 66,000 people were killed and 69,000 injured by a 10-kiloton atomic explosion.

The area of total vaporization from the atomic bomb blast measured one half mile in diameter; total destruction one mile in diameter; severe blast damage as much as two miles in diameter. Within a diameter of two and a half miles, everything flammable burned. The remaining area of the blast zone was riddled with serious blazes that stretched out to the final edge at a little over three miles in diameter.

An estimated 140,000 people were killed instantly or died within a few months after the bombing. Three days later, another U.S. warplane dropped a plutonium bomb on the city of Nagasaki, killing about 80,000 people.

About 45,000 survivors, residents, visitors and officials from around the world prayed for the bombing victims by observing a minute of silence in Hiroshima, 430 miles southwest of Tokyo.

Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba urged the government of Japan — the only nation to suffer atomic bomb attacks — to take a leading role in the effort to eliminate nuclear arsenals.

“Sixty-one years have passed since radiation, heat rays and an atomic blast created hell on earth,” Akiba said in a speech at Hiroshima Peace Park, near the bomb’s epicenter. “But the number of nations enamored of evil and enslaved by nuclear arms has increased. The only role nuclear weapons have is to be demolished.”

Ceremonies will also be held on Wednesday’s anniversary of the Nagasaki attack.

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Pic is of the Hiroshima bomb mushroom cloud and a child survivor.