Today marks the 70th anniversary of the world’s first act of nuclear warfare.
Depending on one’s politics, the detonation of Little Boy some 2,000 feet over Hiroshima, Japan was either a necessary evil or just plain evil. Let’s not get into that right now. Let’s instead remember the victims.
The August 31, 1946 issue of the New Yorker devoted its entire editorial space to a terrifying account of the blast and its aftermath by John Hersey. It’s well worth a read, and available in its entirety here. And if you’ve never listened to Krzysztof Penderecki’s Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima, composed in 1960, now might be a good time to do so.
