These were the first atomic bombs ever actually used against an enemy population. Japan surrendered on August 14 (August 15 Japan time)-eight days after Hiroshima, six days after the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, five days after Nagasaki. Hiroshima and Nagasaki stood before the world as stark examples of what this really meant. By 1946, in any case, “ground zero” had become a media catch phrase referring to the epicenter of a nuclear explosion. It is possible that the “zero” designation had its actual origin here, before the bombs were deployed against the two Japanese cities. The historical monument that used to mark the epicenter of the Trinity test bore the simple legend Ground Zero. The phrase was coined in reference to the first nuclear weapons tested and used by the United States in 1945-the top-secret “Trinity” test in the desert of Alamagordo, New Mexico, in mid July 1945, and the atomic bombs dropped with devastating effect a few weeks later on Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9). Prior to “9-11,” Ground Zero did in fact have a concrete, historical, explicitly nuclear meaning. What if the next Ground Zero involves nuclear weapons? As a concept, these ominous words are inseparable from the terrifying vision of WMD-Weapons of Mass Destruction. As a place, Ground Zero thus refers to the dead center of an explosive act of violence. Posted at Japan Focus on April 27, 2005.įor most Americans today, the words “Ground Zero” immediately call to mind the horror of September 11, 2001, when terrorists crashed hijacked airplanes into the World Trade Center in New York City, destroying two skyscrapers and killing some three-thousand individuals. They are provided courtesy of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and form part of a much larger archive of more than 2,000 images and annotations. These drawings and paintings by Japanese survivors of the atomic bomb were created more than a quarter century after the bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Ground Zero 1945: Pictures by Atomic Bomb Survivors by John W.
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