Hiroshima, the place where the first nuclear bomb was hit in the history of mankind, appeared after the war:
"In 75 years, this scorched earth will be left without grass. ”
But what happened when Hiroshima had a population of about 300,000 before the bombing, but now it has 1.18 million, and the post-war reconstruction of Hiroshima has quickly paid off.
Hiroshima
It was supposed to be Hiroshima, the first place to be bombed
The reason why the U.S. military chose Hiroshima to drop the first atomic bomb in World War II was because the place was so important to Japanese militarism, and it was Japan's "military capital" as early as the Sino-Japanese War.
This is due to the geographical location of Hiroshima, the largest city in the western part of Japan's main island of Honshu (the most important of Japan's four large islands), easily accessible by rail, and the Seto Inland Sea to the south.
This unique land and water conditions made Hiroshima an excellent military base for Japan, and since the Meiji Restoration, the city has been a "pawn" in Japan's foreign wars, especially since the First Sino-Japanese War.
During World War II, Hiroshima still played an important role in the role of Japanese militarism, at this time it was the location of the headquarters of the Second General Army, the military industrial enterprises were very developed, and the people of Hiroshima under the influence of militarism actively built wartime industries, making Hiroshima a "Japanese arsenal", and the super battleship "Yamato" was produced here.
Many people in Hiroshima also pledged their "allegiance to the Japanese emperor" by joining the army, including the "Itagaki Division" of the Fifth Division of the Army, and the Kunisaki Detachment of the division participated in the Nanjing Massacre.
In addition to this, there is a heinous crime behind Hiroshima.
Next to it is a small island called "Okunoshima", which is another poison gas research and development base in Japan in addition to 731, and the Japanese government considered that the use of poison gas would be condemned by the entire international public opinion, so the island was once erased from the map.
Most of the weapons developed by Okunoshima were used on Chinese soil, and some of them are still remnants in China, like a time bomb, and they don't know when something will go wrong.
It was for these reasons that the United States decided to bomb this so-called "military capital" with an atomic bomb. However, after the bombing, the reaction of the local government in Hiroshima caught the US military by surprise.
The day after the bombing, the governor of Hiroshima Prefecture, Genkin Takano (a prefecture larger than a city in Japan, the opposite of China), said:
"Hiroshima suffered a lot, but this is the essence of war. We can't stop, not for a day. We can't stop fighting. We must resist until we defeat the enemy. ”
The Japanese government and the Hiroshima prefectural government reacted the same way, and they wanted to continue to "break 100 million jade", but there was no way, the United States dropped another atomic bomb on Nagasaki, and Japan panicked, and then announced its surrender, and World War II ended.
Hiroshima came to the post-disaster reconstruction stage, and for three reasons, Hiroshima did not become a "place where no grass grew for 75 years".
Break the reason for "a place where no grass grows in 75 years".
(a)
At that time, the after-effects of the atomic bomb dropped by the US military on Hiroshima were actually far less than the Chernobyl nuclear leak in the Soviet Union, mainly because the United States had only just mastered nuclear technology in 45 years, and the atomic bomb at that time was far less powerful than the current nuclear bomb.
At that time, the two atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki had only about 1kg of uranium-235 and plutonium-239 involved in nuclear fission. In addition, the explosion occurred in the air, and the impact of various radiation on the ground was greatly weakened, so although the atomic bomb caused a lot of damage to Hiroshima at the time, the subsequent impact was not as great as Chernobyl.
(b)
On September 17, 1945, more than a month after the atomic bomb struck Hiroshima, a devastating typhoon hit Hiroshima and swept through the city.
However, as the saying goes, "good fortune lurks in disguise, and misfortune and fortune depend on it", this typhoon also blew a large amount of nuclear pollution into the sea, greatly reducing the radiation hazard caused by the atomic bomb.
(c)
The radiation was not "very high" in the first place, and with the "help" of the typhoon, the radiation impact on Hiroshima naturally became "very small", and the Japanese government decided to rebuild Hiroshima, but at this time it encountered another problem.
At that time, the Korean War had not yet broken out, and one of the tasks of the US military stationed in Japan was to prevent the resurgence of Japanese militarism. Hiroshima is Japan's "military capital," and the United States will most likely oppose the rebuilding of this "military capital."
To change the slogan, as early as September 2, 1945 (the day Japan officially signed the surrender), Hiroshima Prefecture Governor Genkin Takano, who had been clamoring for the continuation of the war after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, put forward a new point of view:
The slogan is to transform Hiroshima from a "military capital" into a "city of peace."
This has to admire the speed of change of Takano Genjin, at this time not only the Hiroshima prefectural governor stood up, but the mayor of Hiroshima also began to lobby the US military in Japan in a special way.
Other displays:
"The dropping of the atomic bomb on August 6, 1945, allowed Hiroshima to be reborn in pursuit of peace."
In other words, Hiroshima owes a debt of gratitude to the United States! It was the American atomic bomb that made Hiroshima reborn.
This will undoubtedly be a win-win for both the United States and Japan, as the United States will have to control Japan after the war, so it must try to downplay it, preferably to eliminate the anti-American sentiment that has arisen among the Japanese people in the aftermath of the atomic bombing, and Japan to deny the link between Hiroshima, the "military capital," and the war crimes it has committed before.
Eventually, the United States and Japan hit it off, and on August 6, 1949, the fourth anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan legally decided on Hiroshima's new status as a "City of Peace." As for the anger of the people of Hiroshima against the U.S. and Japanese governments as a result of this exchange, it is not for them to consider.
The reconstruction of the "City of Peace" began, and Hiroshima began to declare what it called "pacifism."
However, at this time, there was another unexpected thing.
The resurgence of Japanese militarism, the false "pacifism"
However, whether Hiroshima's "pacifism" is peaceful or not is in quotation marks, because Hiroshima was hit by the first atomic bomb in human history, so its people have been engaged in an anti-nuclear weapons campaign since the war.
However, with the outbreak of the Korean War and the beginning of the Cold War, considering its own security, especially next to the Soviet Union and a rising China, Japan became more and more uneasy, especially the Soviet Union and China successively possessed nuclear weapons. But Japan cannot develop nuclear weapons on its own.
As a result, Japan joined the nuclear umbrella of the United States, and even violated its own pacifist constitution, the three non-nuclear principles:
"Don't own, don't produce, don't introduce"
It has directly and continuously brought US nuclear weapons into the country and refused to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
At the same time, Japan is also engaged in "duplicity" at home, and the peace movement in Hiroshima and the slogan of anti-nuclear weapons are only superficial projects. Behind the scenes, there are still many organizations that are vigorously proclaiming the "theory of atomic peace," which will allow Japan to develop a large number of nuclear technologies other than nuclear weapons. The Fukushima nuclear power plant, for example, is a striking example.
In addition to being embodied in reality, Japan's careful thinking is also frantically engaging in "historical nihilism."
They chose to try their best to downplay the war crimes committed before 1945, and at the same time, Japan knew that it would not be able to hold the United States accountable for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki incidents, so Japan did not hesitate to "naturalize" these two disasters at home in order to reduce the adverse effects of US-Japan relations, while portraying itself as a "victim" in the international community.
After all, it can be the only country in the world to be bombed by an atomic bomb, thus forming an emotional alliance with other World War II victims and gaining international moral rights. While gaining international sympathy, Japan's militarism gradually began to rear-rise. However, as the Hiroshima poet Sadako Awawara wrote in "When We Speak of Hiroshima":
"When we talk about Hiroshima, we hear about Pearl Harbor, and when we talk about Hiroshima, we hear about the Nanjing Massacre. ”
War cannot be used to erase history, nor should it be used to offset history, and the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima cannot be used to offset Pearl Harbor, the Nanjing Massacre, the 731 laboratory......
We look back at history in order to reject the goodbye to the Nanjing Massacre on the one hand, and to uphold the authority of the Hiroshima nuclear bombing on the other.
Looking back at the nuclear issue, after the Fukushima nuclear leak, Japan is discharging nuclear sewage into the sea, making the people of the world pay for it on the one hand, and on the other hand, acting as an innocent gesture, which is very similar to how Japanese militarism used the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to justify its "innocence" or "guilt".