8 Year Old Keiko Survived Nuclear War - 70 Years Since

Keiko Ogura felt the explosion of the world's first atomic bomb in her own body. She tells her story so that no one else ever should have to go through the same thing.

Keiko didn't go to school on August 6 with the other students because her father felt that something bad was about to happen that day. I was unhappy as all my classmates had gone, she recalls. She had celebrated her 8th birthday two days before.

Keiko Ogura the year after Hiroshima

I remember everything clearly as if it had happened yesterday. I stood on the street near our house when a blinding flash suddenly appeared in the sky. I was thrown to the ground and lost consciousness, says Keiko Ogura on the phone from Hiroshima where she has lived all her life. Keiko was a second grade elementary school student, the bomb exploded at 8.15 a.m.

She does not know how long she was unconscious, but when she woke up the whole world was black and from the sky came a black rain. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t stand, there was debris falling on me and all over and I couldn’t hear anything.

“When I went home, it was smashed and some of it had blown up, I could see the ceiling and tiles gone and hundreds of pieces of window glass on the wall. My father was lucky. He was between the open glass doors and the pantry and he was alright. My sister and brother were bleeding from the head, but it wasn’t serious. When I stepped out, I saw black rain, what’s this I thought - it was charcoal colour and it was very sticky and I touched it,” she narrates.

National Georgraphic Channel Reenactment

There was a complete calm around. The house was 2.4 kilometers from the place where the atomic bomb was dropped. I strongly remember all the terrible smells that hovered in the air during the following days. At first there was the smell of burnt hair which was then mixed with the smell of burned bodies.

Near our home was a Shinto shrine that was made to a first aid station. Therefore it came injured people to our area and I saw hundreds of sick and dying people. They were walking like ghosts. I only saw dark figures who stretched out their arms and legs. Many people's skin was severely burned.

The family miraculously survived

Keiko saw how skin hung from human body parts and especially from the fingers. They were swollen due to radiation damage.

Some people were completely soaked in black rain and developed health complications and diseases. Some foreigners died. 25,000 including Koreans, Chinese, Japanese, Americans, foreign students and around 10 American prisoners. It was one of the reasons Hiroshima was chosen - it had few prisoners at that time in the city, she says.

It was horrible

“In Ushita where I lived, each home was an air raid shelter. Usually in the mornings there is an air raid warning but on that day August 6, 1945, there was a warning but no air raid.” Strangely, the night before, Keiko says people couldn’t sleep as they kept going in and out of air raid shelters after the sirens kept blaring. B-29s appeared above Hiroshima accompanied by air raid sirens. “We went home and tried to sleep. All the time we kept wondering why no air raid despite the siren. On August 6 there was one air raid warning. We thought Hiroshima would be skipped. We had heard that Tokyo and Kobe were destroyed, maybe God decided to spare our city. That morning people didn’t worry why there was a warning and no raid,” she says.

Hiroshima on the morning of August 6, 1945. Photo: EPA / Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum

It was a miracle her own family got saved. No family member died that day 70 years ago when an unprecedented terror spread out over the world.

Keiko's father began working at the crematoria in which the bodies were burned. He burned hundreds of bodies the days after the atomic bomb fell.

“After the bombing, everyday someone died, they didn’t have any scars but they died, we were wondering if it was poison gas, we didn’t know then that it was radiation,” she says. Now the survivors “the hibakusha” as they are called, fall into four categories. Keiko says those who helped in cremating bodies also became sick. “Everyday I saw lines at the cemetery, of people to be buried and we wondered who would be next. One of my friend’s who was living out of the city, was exposed to radiation when she came here and fell sick and her younger brother died after a six-hour exposure in Hiroshima."

People told me that all of Hiroshima had been destroyed. Our own house was full of broken glass but the walls were still standing.

A few days after Keiko began to do short trips to the horrific battlefield.

When someone died, we said that they died of "the light"

A special memory from the day after

“There was a bad smell, their hair and flesh were burnt and they were lying down, squatting and suddenly someone grabbed my ankle, and asked for water. Till then everyone was silent but suddenly there was a cry for mizu or water. Some thanked me after I got water for them but to my horror some died. It is said that people shouldn’t be given water when in shock, but I didn’t know that as a little girl. I ran home and got it from the well. I was shocked and I thought there was some poison. My father said you shouldn’t give people water and I kept silent. Keiko thought she killed people by giving them water. She was so scared that she did not tell anyone about the water until decades later, when her father had passed away. That became my trauma. I had nightmares and I cried. It took me a long time to recover,” she explains.

Typical symptoms of radiation injuries include high fever, loss of appetite, bleeding and hair loss. Keiko had almost no symptoms at all except that she got nosebleeds.

I could not connect the bleeding with the atomic bomb until decades later, when I heard that it was common among the children who lived near the area affected by the nuclear disaster at Fukushima.

She also suffered from anemia, but otherwise her health has been good.

But the most fearful thing for her was that babies were born with deformities, with microcephaly or small heads. Keiko later met a girl in her forties who was like a three-year-old. She wouldn’t say anything and watched TV all day, and could recognise only the faces of movie stars. People were worried about having handicapped children.

Many children died, many were orphaned or maimed. By the end of 1945, the number of dead had risen to 140,000,” she adds.

Her brother was behind Hiroshima station working to break down houses and clear fire lanes among the debris. He and others had heard the sound of the airplane - there were three planes - but from one he saw a tiny black thing (the Americans called it Little Boy) that was released. As the planes turned, the black dot exploded and they were all thrown to the ground unconscious. “There were people lying on the ground all over and my brother’s classmate was so severely burnt that he took off his shirt and all of them had severe burns as they tried to go home. There were so many dead bodies on the road. He decided to climb up the hill and go another way to avoid the bodies. My brother said the cloud was like ice cream, and he saw the whole city destroyed. It was my brother who came and told us the whole city was burnt,” Keiko says.

We did not understand what had happened. No one spoke to us about the atomic bomb. We thought that tens or hundreds of bombs were detonated. Only much later did we realize that our city had been destroyed by the force of a single bomb.

Right after the bombing, the question was how to overcome it and not think of revenge, she says. There was nothing to eat, everyday was so hard, everyday people died. “Right after the bomb our thoughts were - how could we overcome it? What can we eat? Nothing was there. Some vegetables and rice. We caught grasshoppers or insects and ate them after cooking. Everyday was so hard and we were so afraid of dying.”

Shame joins Hiroshima and Fukushima

Many so-called "hibakushas", those who survived the atomic bomb, has for decades kept secret where they were when the bomb detonated.

We were afraid of discrimination. For example, no one wanted to marry someone who had been near the site where the bomb struck. Maybe one feared that there would be something wrong with the descendants, the now 78-year-old Keiko wonders.

Survivors are seemingly okay but get easily tired, didn’t have 100 per cent energy. We used to think survivors are lazy, they catch a cold easily, develop stomach ache, she says. “People are worried about getting married or getting jobs. The first thing I was asked by a young man from Tokyo whether I was from Hiroshima and exposed to radiation. There was denial too. Most people didn’t want to admit to being survivors, “she points out.

Keiko says she was also stunned by the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in 2011.

The people in Fukushima have the same fate as us. People are afraid of them and they are discriminated against in Japanese society. People begin to distort the truth, telling lies about the past and keeping secrets about disabled children who are born.

Keiko Ogura - Photo: Keiko Ogura

Because the atomic bomb have so much association with secrecy and shame, Keiko Ogura have decided to tell her own story to the world. She has devoted her life to preserving the historical memory and are grateful to all who would listen to her story.

“Survivors at first hated America, especially the President of the USA for ordering the bombing, but there was guilt too that we couldn’t save our children. There was always regret. Why did I survive many people wondered but later we felt hope when elementary school children visited us and wanted to hear our stories. For the first time, people felt hope that they had survived. There was a feeling that before we all died our stories would be told to the world,” she adds.

She tells of the shock when she heard that the United States continued it's nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean even in the 1950s. There, began her work for peace.

Among other things, Keiko founded a small group of hibakushas, the Hiroshima Interpreters for Peace, who tries to explain to the world what happened in Hiroshima 70 years ago.

So that no one should have to experience the same thing.

Keiko confessed that the people she loved most in the world were teachers and the media. “They conveyed our stories. One time I was on TV and my son’s friend said he didn’t know I was a survivor. The only time I didn’t like the media was when I went to the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. in 2003. I was supposed to work as an interpreter. I started to cry. I didn’t want to see the Enola Gay, the B-29 which dropped the bomb. They took pictures of me crying and everyone in Japan saw it,” she says regretfully.

That’s the dilemma of the survivors. Without staying on the story, the world wouldn’t be better but then they will be identified as survivors. Keiko, like other survivors, was afraid of the stigma but she was clear on one thing - “If we think of revenge, the world will be unhappy. This is my message.”

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The 1995 Experiment That Could Have Ended Civilization

It wasn't an international group of mad scientists back in 1995 that announced that they will go ahead with plans to activate their latest world-destroying device and try to create miniature black holes that could consume the entire earth and spell the end for civilization. Unlike CERN (Central Evil Research Node) "please correct me if I got the name wrong in the chat", with their Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Rocket fired at Northern Lights Norway

Back in 1995 the experiment that almost ended our civilization was something quite the opposite and the scientists had no idea that their experiment could spell the end of civilization.

On Jan. 25, 1995, Norwegian and American researchers fired a rocket into the skies of northwestern Norway to study the Northern Lights. But the four-stage rocket flew directly through the same corridor that American Minuteman III missiles, equipped with nuclear warheads, would use to travel from the United States to Moscow.

The rocket's speed and flight pattern very closely matched what the Russians expected from a Trident missile that would be fired from a US submarine and detonated at high altitude, with the aim of blinding the Russian early-warning system to prepare for a large-scale nuclear attack by the United States. The Russian military was placed on high alert, and then President Boris Yeltsin activated the keys to launch nuclear weapons. He had less than 10 minutes to decide whether to issue the order to fire.

Yeltsin left the Russian missiles in their silos, probably in part because relations between Russian and the United States were relatively trusting in 1995. But if a similar incident occurred today, as US arms expert Theodore Postol warned recently, it could quite possibly lead to nuclear catastrophe.

For more on this topic visit the following links:
Read about the 1995 Norwegian rocket incident 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_rocket_incident

Nuclear Specter Returns: 'Threat of War Is Higher than in the Cold War'
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/munich-conference-warns-of-greater-threat-of-nuclear-conflict-a-1018357.html
By Markus Becker in Munich

Russian General Calls for Preemptive Nuclear Strike Doctrine

With things heating up with the conflicts in Ukraine and with the pressure from the US and Europe a Russian general has called for Russia to revamp its military doctrine, the military doctrine was last updated back in 2010, to clearly identify the U.S. and NATO allies as Moscow's enemy number one and spell out the conditions under which Russia would launch a preemptive nuclear strike against the 28-member military alliance.

Source: The Moscow Times www.themoscowtimes.com/article/506370.html

Tverskaya Central Moscow May 2014 - Photo By Vladmir Filonov

Russia's military doctrine is a strategy document through which the government interprets military threats and crafts possible responses, is being revised in light of threats connected to the Arab Spring, the Syrian civil war and the conflict in Ukraine, the deputy chief of the Kremlin's security council told RIA Novosti on Tuesday.

But within the Defense Ministry there are voices calling for different priorities.

"First and foremost, the likely enemy of Russia should be clearly identified in this strategic document, something absent from the 2010 military doctrine. In my view, our primary enemy is the U.S. and the North Atlantic bloc," General Yury Yakubov, a senior Defense Ministry official.

The 2010 doctrine defines NATO expansion as a threat to Russian national security and reaffirms it's right to use nuclear weapons in a defensive posture, but stops far short of declaring NATO as Moscow's primary adversary and laying preemptive nuclear strike scenarios on the table, a posture unmistakably reminiscent of the Cold War.

Yakubov said the information war being waged over the crisis in Ukraine, where the West accuses Russia of arming separatists fighting the government in Kiev, and NATO's announcement that it would establish a permanent military presence in Eastern Europe have validated earlier fears that the alliance's claims of non-aggression toward Russia were insincere.

The general added that special attention should be paid to integrating the functions of the newly created Air and Space Defense Forces with Russia's land, sea and air based nuclear forces. "In addition, it is necessary to hash out the conditions under which Russia could carry out a preemptive strike with the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces," he said.

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Video WW3 - Red Alert Armageddon Warning

Tomahawk missile

This is a very indepth video decribing the effects of Nuclear WW3. Here are some excerpts from the video 35 min long below.


"14 of the 18 warshpis are equipped with 24 trident missiles each. Trident 1's and Trident 2's. The remaining 4 are armed with 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles which can be outfitted with Nuclear Warheads"


"The fleet as a whole repersents half of the United States strategic nuclear Capability"


"A single Trident 2 missile, is equipped at up to 8 Nuclear Warheads aboard a multiple independently targeted reentry vehicle or MIRV"


"A single W88 warhead delivers the equvalent of 475 kilotons (kt) of TNT. In the case of a full deployment the United States could unleash over 400 such missiles with between 6 to 8 of such warheads each."

Video below - Red Alert Warning..

NK Underground Nuclear Test 2013 M5.1 Quake

Hello

It's been on the news, leaders have talked about what to do now. South Korea talk about the crazy people up north (did they forget the crazy people in the East?.. Japan).

An unusual geological event was reported in North Korea on Tuesday, 12 February, 2013 at 04:00 (04:00 AM) UTC. The epicenter of the seismic activity, which was only one kilometer below the Earth’s surface, was close to the North’s known nuclear test site. The seismic activity recorded an M5.1 earthquake.

U.S. intelligence officials say North Korea's nuclear test yielded an explosion of "approximately several kilotons." In a statement Tuesday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said North Korea "probably conducted an underground nuclear explosion in the vicinity of P'unggye." It said the explosion yield was "approximately several kilotons" and that analysis of the event is continuing. South Korea's Defense Ministry said it detected an estimated explosive yield of 6-7 kilotons.

China's 3000 Nuclear Warheads - Underground Tunnels

Chinese media had a public discussion of the 2nd artillery’s multiple underground facilities. They said it’s underground bases can withstand multiple nuclear strikes on a single location, and that it would require perhaps thousands nukes to destroy an entire facility. On top of that reports have come out that say that the amount of nuclear warheads China have, far exceeds what they tell the world.

Professor Philip Karber, 65, of Georgetown Univeristy along with his students has conducted a three-year study on China’s Second Artillery Corps. They pointed out in the unpublished informal report that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has dug up to 3,000 miles of underground tunnels, which house nuclear warheads.

The number of nuclear warheads that China has far exceeds what they tell the world. The U.S Department of Defense and this private teatcher-student think tank are very concerned. Experts believe that China’s military expansion is not only about competing with Western democracies on a military basis, the CCP also wants to compete with West on an economic basis, too. On November 29, the Washington Post reported that Kappa and his students translated and studied many writings, including Chinese military secret documents, satellite images, and online resources. They then wrote their conclusions. Kappa believes that China’s Second Artillery Corps has excavated up to 4,828 km (3,000 miles) of underground tunnels, equal to the distance from Boston to San Francisco. 

It’s there that they hide 3,000 nuclear warheads, far more than the 80-400 that they tell the world they have. Although this 363-page informal report has yet to be officially announced, it’s message has reached the Pentagon and U.S. think tanks. The U.S. Congress is expected to invite Kappa to a formal hearing. In August 2011, the U.S. Department of Defense announced China’s military assessment report, citing some of Kappa’s research. Current affairs commentator, Wu Fan, believes that what the CCP has done has caused friction between China and United States, as well as neighboring countries and Western countries.

Wu Fan: “At whom are they pointing 3,000 missiles at? With whom are you getting ready to fight? Who will attack you? If all these missiles are strictly for defense, and you (CCP) won’t fire the first shot, it does not mean the CCP won’t expand outwards, of infringe on other people’s interests.”

Wu Fan pointed out that regarding economic interests, 15% of China’s oil imports come from Iran. The CCP has also made investments in Iran, and provides them with nuclear weapons technology. The two countries continue to trade weapons and technology for oil. According to Chinese Customs data, in the first half of 2011, China’s crude oil imports from Iran increased by 50% over last year, reaching 13.5 million tons.

Wu Fan: “It is good to expose this issue, and let the world know where the CCP’s interest lie.”

On November 8, the United Nations fist openly accused Iran of developing nuclear weapons technology and described the evidence in detail, adding that Iran continues to cover up the development of atomic bombs. Evidence shows that Iran has already exceeded it’s own energy and medical research goals in atomic bomb research. This has made international leaders very worried. However, the CCP has opposed international sanctions against Iran’s nuclear research and development. Jia Shaye, Iran’s armed forces deputy chief of staff has warned Israel that if it attacks Iran, it will be digging it’s own grave. And Iran’s retaliation would not be limited to the Middle East. China refuses to agree to levying sanctions against Iran, which is not a decision based soley on the CCP’s own economic interests, but also because CCP wants to use Iran’s authoritarian regime to compete politically with democratic Western countries.

Shi Mingkai, former chief of the China Branch in the U.S. Department of Defense said, there is no doubt CCP has spent huge amounts of funds digging these tunnels, so we need to pay attention to this and question it. It has been reported that Kappa served in the U.S. Department of Defense during the Cold War. During the Wenchuan earthquake, he learned that numerous radiation experts in China entered the disaster area and noticed a large number of broken concrete pillars sticking out of the top of a collapsed mountain.

He suspected that a local underground nuclear arsenal could have been damaged in the earthquake. It was at that time that Kappa became interested in doing research into the excavation of underground tunnels by the Second Artillery Corps.

Fukushima Mini-Nuclear Bomb German Radiation Expert Warns

Given the reports of an uncontrolled nuclear fission reactor accident in Japan's Fukushima Munich radiation expert Professor Edmund Lengfelder warns of the possibility of a nuclear explosion ....

It would be "a kind of mini-nuclear bomb in the scale," said Lengfelder the dpa news agency. "The probability, however, I can not estimate at all." Nobody knows how much enriched uranium had flowed together in the manner in which the derelict nuclear power plant units.

This text have been partly translated with Google translate:

Lengfelder had after the meltdown at Chernobyl 25 years ago the Society for Radiological Protection and the Munich-based Otto Hug Radiation Institute. He cared for people with thyroid cancer today in the former Soviet disaster area.

Eight months after the meltdown in Fukushima the isotopes 133 and 135 of the gas xenon has been found, said Lengfelder. Since these isotopes are products of nuclear fission and only have a half life of about five days and nine hours, they could not come from the time of the accident in March. "There is a spontaneous fission - because of this anything can happen, even if one says, it is not likely. But what is to be kept of statements about probabilities, we have on 11 March saw. "At that time, had a severely damaged in this earthquake and unexpected strength of a tsunami and the nuclear power plant caused the meltdown.

In a functioning reactor control rods keep the chain reaction under control. "But in a meltdown this contol is no longer found," said Lengfelder.

As for the actual radiation exposure was given the total load since the accident, the recent nuclear fission is not of great importance. "But it does mean that (the operator) Tepco is even further away than previously claimed from getting things back under control." How long such a nuclear fission, was not foreseen. Depending on the amount and location of the fissile uranium, it could also last for years - and the quantity in Fukushima is very large, it go to tons.

In any case, the partial exclusion zone of 50 km is far too low. You must be at least 100 kilometers in the main northwest. In addition, the Japanese government has raised the limit for children to 20 millisieverts per year. "This is in Germany the maximum radiation dose for a nuclear power plant workers - but not for a child," criticized Lengfelder. It is expected that the cancer rate will rise sharply in the children, including birth defects in newborns are to be feared.

The treatment of the population was "inhumane," said Lengfelder. "For me, it is also inhumane, that in such a wealthy country like Japan, people still live in the gyms. . That there was not even on the Soviets, "The evacuation after Chernobyl have worked much better - and the limits are in Belarus today about three times more severe than in Germany.

Among the volunteers who have used the operator Tepco to clean up in Fukushima, it would be premature deaths in the coming years. "Chernobyl must proceed in analogy to one of them. But I'm skeptical that they will have more clarity on the Japanese as victims in the Soviet Union. "The Japanese government had lied to the people of Japan and the world about the extent of the disaster long. "Japan wants its technical aura not to bet on the game." Now we have the Japanese people decide whether they wanted to live with this risk the threat continues.

Lengfelder is for an immediate shutdown of all reactors. "When they are not properly insured, it means in the case of a super-Gaussian: The citizen is sitting on his injury. First we had Chernobyl, now we have Fukushima - what we need ?"...

For example, there are the words of the Lengfelder because of safety concerns from environmentalists vehemently criticized Czech Temelin nuclear power plant across the Bavarian border, serious problems with the welds. "If there happens a meltdown, and the wind blows from the east, the exclusion zone to reach Munich ."...

Read the original story in German FOCUS Online

Fukushima Vs Atom Bombs - Putting Things In Perspective

Hi folks,

I read a comment on enenews talking about the amount of radioactive material stored at the Fukushima nuclear plant and how this compared to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. I have had this in the back of my mind for quite some time but other events taking place have put me off from doing a post about this. Well now is the time.

Lets start with how much radioactive material is stored at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Actually it would be more correct to say how much was stored until the explosions at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Because reports show that Plutonium and spent fuel along with other radioactive material have scattered around the plant and the surrounding area.

The spent nuclear fuel:

Reactor Building 1: 50 tons
Reactor Building 2: 81 tons
Reactor Building 3: 88 tons Uranium / Plutonium (UO2/MOX)
Reactor Building 4: 135 tons
Reactor Building 5: 142 tons
Reactor Building 6: 151 tons
Common Spent Fuel Storage Facility located at ground-level: 1,097 tons Uranium / Plutonium (UO2/MOX)
Dry Storage also located at ground-level: 70 tons

The reactor unit cores contain less than 100 tons of nuclear fuel.
Numbers given by Marvin Resnikoff, a radioactive waste management consultant.

Location	Unit 1	Unit 2	Unit 3	Unit 4	Unit 5	Unit 6	Central Storage
Reactor Fuel Assemblies	400	548	548	0	548	764	0
Spent Fuel Assemblies	292	587	514	1331	946	876	6375
Fuel	UOx	UOx	UO2/MOX	UOx	UOx	UOx	UO2/MOX
New Fuel Assemblies	100	28	52	204	48	64	N/A

Now lets put things in perspective. Little boy the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima had 150 lbs Uranium-235. While the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki, the Fat Man contained 13.6 lbs Plutonium-239.

Both bombs leveled the cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki and brought great destruction to the Japanese.

However Soviet Union's most powerful 50 megaton Tsar bomba the biggest nuclear bomb ever made weighed 27,000 kilograms (60,000 lb).

The explosion of the Tsar Bomba put out the equivalent of 1,400 times the combined power of the two nuclear explosives used in World War II the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Little Boy (13–18 kilotons) and Fat Man (21 kilotons). Tsar bomba alone had 10 times the combined power of all the explosives used in WWII. And one quarter of the estimated yield of the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa.

But still the 27 tons of radioactive material in the Tsar Bomba is nothing compared to the amount at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. It’s hard to try and imagine but I hope these numbers will give you a little more understanding of the situation.

Watch 24 Hours After Hiroshima Documentary

The documentary 24 Hours After Hiroshima premiered August 17, 2010 on the National Geographic Channel. This documentary is very well done and also give us real stories told by living hibakusha (the survivors and witnesses of the horrors to what the bomb did) The three hibakusha share their personal experiences and this is what makes this documentary stand out.

The Hiroshima Bomb was an experimental weapon and it was the first test. Three Japanese cities had been chosen as potential targets for the attack, the primary is the port city of Hiroshima, located on the delta of the Ōta river. A city of considerable military importance, it houses a communications center and an assembly area for troops. But it's far from just a military target, 80% of the people here are civilians. Since the previous March of 1945 almost every major city in Japan had been fire bombed. Yet Hiroshima remains untouched.

Richard Rhodes Author, The Making Of The Atomic Bomb: The people of the city worried about that, were they being chosen for something especially terrible?

As the Enola Gay reaches Japan, Hiroshimas fate is still not final. It all depends on the weather. One of the requirements of the target is that it has to be visible from the air. Weather planes fly ahead to check the conditions over the three selected cities. As it happens it is a clear morning at Hiroshima. The cities fate is now sealed. 13 year old Shigeko Sasamori can feel the sun burning down on her on this hot cloudless morning. She runs to join schoolmates in their assignment to clear the streets for firebreaks in case of an attack.

Shigeko Sasamori: I look up at the sky, I saw the beautiful silver airplane, and the white long tail. And blue sky, it looks beautiful. And at the same time, I saw something drop.

Shigeko is less than a mile from the Enola Gays target, the distinctive T-Shaped Aioi bridge, running across the river in the center of downtown it can be spotted easily. Even at 3200 feet. 90 seconds before it was released the bombardier sets his sights on the target about 2 miles below, and makes careful last minutes maneuvers. Will they hit the target? And will it explode at the preset altitude of 190 feet over the city?

Morris Jeppson Weapons Test Officer, Enola Gay: They are hydraulic actuated doors, big long doors 12-15 feet long. They don't just slowly open they fly open.

Jeppson and fellow crew members had done the math and they expect the bomb to detonate at 42 seconds.

Morris Jeppson Weapons Test Officer, Enola Gay: That 43 seconds I was nervous, I was monitoring the test box, thinking and counting in my head.

The crew of the Enola Gay are not the only ones counting down at 8:15 on August 6, 1945. 8 year old Takashi Tanemori left home at 8 AM  to get to his school. He is looking forward to playing with his friends.

Takashi Tanemori: I was excited this particular morning for "hide and seek" because I was chosen as "it". So I was standing against the window, looking outside.

While Takashi counts, thousands of others are outside on route to work and school. As the lone Enola Gay flies overhead there is little alarm. It looks nothing like the bombing squadron most people fear.

Richard Rhodes: People assumed it was a weather plane and instead of doing what the scientists had assumed would happen which is that they would run into bomb shelters and be safe from the affects from the blast. People came outdoors to look.

Takashi Tanemori: All of a sudden, bang. Flash in the sky, pure white. I saw the bones in my fingers as though I was looking at an X-ray, so intense.

This is the only footage ever taken of this atomic explosion. Scant documentation of an event that changes the course of history. Within moments the mushroom could is ten miles high, it spreads three miles over the city, and it's more than 350.000 inhabitants. On the day of the attack the United States has been in the war for 4 years, and has lost over 100.000 men on the Pacific front alone. Despite loosing over 1 million men the Japanese continue to fight fiercely. Some fear that if the war goes on millions more will be lost on both sides.

Richard Rhodes: They saw the atomic bomb as an potential way of shock them into surrendering.

This radically new bomb reduces the living, breading downtown of Hiroshima to a wasteland. 70000 human beings are dead instantly, another 70000 injured. It's the highest death toll ever caused by a single weapon. Yet Japan continues to fight. 3 days later on August 9th, the United States drops a second atomic bomb, this time on the city of Nagasaki. Another 40000 die. Japan formally surrenders 3 weeks later. The worlds bloodiest war have ended.

Tons of Weapons-Grade Plutonium and Uranium Missing

U.S. Can’t Track Tons of Weapons-Grade Uranium, Plutonium

By Noah Shachtman  September 16, 2011 | 6:30 am |

President Obama has repeatedly said his top counterterrorism goal is to prevent terrorists from acquiring the building blocks to make nuclear or “dirty” bombs. In April of 2009, Obama announced a new international effort to “secure all vulnerable nuclear material around the world within four years.” Since then, the Department of Energy has dispatched scientists around the globe to collect hundreds of pounds of the stuff.

But according to a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), issued late last Friday afternoon to little fanfare, thousands of pounds of highly-enriched uranium and separated plutonium remain. American officials may never get a chance to ensure its security.

That’s because the U.S. can’t track or fully account for 5,900 pounds of “weapons usable” nuclear material that it once shipped overseas. Instead, U.S. officials have to rely on foreign governments’ assurances that the potentially cataclysmic stuff is safe. And when those officials occasionally visit the sites holding the nuclear material, nearly half the places “did not meet International Atomic Energy Agency security guidelines,” according to the GAO, Congress’ investigative arm.

“It’s amazing how completely cavalier the Department of Energy has been at tracking this. They’ve got nobody who worries about this on a day-to-day basis,” says Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear weapons analyst at the Monterey Institute of International Studies (and occasional contributor to this blog).

The Energy Department, not surprisingly, has a different perspective. Foreign governments have pledged to report on the security of the their fissile material. There are international inspectors to keep those governments honest. And the GAO hasn’t reported that any uranium or plutonium has gone missing — just that certain guidelines may not have been yet.

“Between the International Atomic Energy Agency inspections and the reporting requirements, we think those safeguards are effective and internationally sanctioned,” Josh McConaha, a spokesman for the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration, tells Danger Room.

Starting in the Eisenhower administration, the U.S. sold 17,500 kilograms, or 38,5000 pounds, of fissile material overseas, mostly to help with civilian nuclear energy programs. Those sales came with conditions, however: countries had to keep the dangerous material safe; they couldn’t use it for weapons; and the U.S. had the option of taking back the radioactive stuff — someday, somehow.

But 12,400 of those 17,500 kilograms can’t be returned. It’s mostly in the hands — and reactors — of close allies like Germany, France, and Japan. 1,160 kilograms have been accounted for, and another 1,240 kg have been secured by the Energy Department’s “Global Threat Reduction Initiative,” an effort to covert nuclear power facilities from highly-enriched to low-enriched uranium, which is far less dangerous.

Still, don’t assume that just because the nuke material is at our friends’ houses means it is completely secure. One source familiar with the report’s development says, “If this was in some former Soviet republic, we’d be there in a heartbeat.” Some of America’s closest allies may be the ones with the poorest nuclear security precautions.

And there’s just one other problem. Subtracting all the nuke material that’s been accounted for and secured still leaves 2,700 kg — nearly three tons — outstanding. And that’s enough material to make dozens of nuclear weapons.

Where that uranium and plutonium is located — or, where it’s supposed to be located — the GAO report doesn’t say. That information was considered too sensitive to disclose in a public document, and was instead laid out in a classified report sent to Congress over the summer. But it’s worth noting that the U.S. currently has 27 so-called “Nuclear Cooperation Agreements” with 27 countries, from China to Ukraine to Colombia. America previously had similar deals with 11 other countries — including Israel, Pakistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Iran.

“Theoretically, we know [where the nuclear material is kept]. But we don’t have a good accounting of where it all is. We’re relying on them. We’re not, to coin a phrase, trusting but verifying,” the source says.

Occasionally, American inspectors will travel to these sites, to make sure these sites have the proper fences and surveillance gear needed to keep their nuclear material safe. The track record wasn’t particularly encouraging. Of those 55 visits conducted between 1994 and 2010, “physical protection teams found the sites met IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] security guidelines on 27 visits, did not meet IAEA security guidelines on 21 visits, and the results of 7 visits are unknown because the physical protection team was unable to assess the sites, or agency documentation was missing,” the report notes.

Partially, this alarming GAO report is an outgrowth of shifting standards. The U.S. is demanding more security and more accountability, to cope with a world in which terrorists have nuclear ambitions — and 20 major atomic smugglers has been caught in the last two decades. Many countries haven’t caught up with those changes.

“The old way of doing business was: You bought it. We have some rights, but it’s fundamentally not our problem,” Lewis says. “Now, things are different.”

Story from Wired: https://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/09/uranium-mia/

☢ Two Tupolev TU-95 Strategic Bombers From Russia Circle Japan Fukushima Sep 8 2011 ☢

This is an interesting story that came out. It seems that the Russians are doing some radiation measuring of their own. Now they don't say why the had two strategic bombers to circle Japan but it is kinda obvious why they did it. Because they useed the TU-95 Strategic Bombers. The TU-95 was the aircraft used by the Russians (Sovjet) back in the 1950 to drop atomic bombs. The biggest nuclear bomb ever made was also dropped by the Tupolev TU-95. So it's a given that these aircraft would be stuffed with all kinds of measuring equipment.

Read the transcribed story or watch the news report.

Japanese defence officials say two Russian bombers took an unusual corse circling around Japan. The defence ministry say two Tupolev TU-95 Bombers from the Russian airforce approached Japanese airspace near the strait of Shima on Tursday morning.

Fighter planes from Japan Air Self-Defense Force (航空自衛隊, Kōkū Jieitai) scrambled to track to bombers. The aircraft leader flew southword over The East China Sea and then south of Okinawas main island afterwards it moved to the Pacific side before scruding along the Japanese archipelago to go northword. The bombers continued flying over the strait of soya while being fueld mid-air. They then headed south on the Japan Sea side before leaving areas near Japan. The defence ministry says the bombers did not violate Japanese airspace, but it was an unusual route for any Russian military aircraft. The Russian airforce have been active around Japan recently. Bombers and spy planes have approached Japanese airspace 5 times since last month.




Russia revealed the flying and says 10 aircraft from Japan's Air Self-Defense Force and South Korea's Air Force tracked them.

The Tupolev TU-95 Strategic Bomber was also the aircraft used when the most powerful thermonuclear device was detonated in October, 30th, 1961 at 11:32 am. The Tsar Bomb was dropped from a bomber TU-95 from 10,5 km height. Destruct of the bomb happened 4500m high above sea level. The explosion yield reached 58 Mt in TNT equivalent.

The explosion results of the device called Tsar Bomb:
The explosion’s “nuclear mushroom” rose 67km high, the diameter of its double-level “cap” reached (at the highest level) 95km. The Fire ball of the explosion with the radius about 4,6km reached the land surface that is not typical for the nuclear air bursts. Radiation caused third degree burns at the distance of 100 km. The burst wave doubled the globe three times. Atmosphere ionization became a reason of radio communication interference even hundreds kilometers away from the testing area that lasted 40 minutes.