Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Quotes

“Fire storm and black rain and shadows in concrete.”

“A Thousand Paper Cranes. Peace on Earth and in the Heavens.”

“If I had foreseen Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I would have torn up my formula in 1905.”

“What happened at Hiroshima was less than a millionth part of a holocaust at present levels of world nuclear armament.”

“Wikipedia: Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki”

“安らかに眠って下さい 過ちは 繰返しませぬから
• Translation: [P]lease rest in peace, for [we/they] shall not repeat the error.”

“Wikicommons: Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki”

“The Hiroshima people’s experience, is a picture of what our whole world is always poised to become, a backdrop of scarcely imaginable horror lying just behind the surface of our normal life, and capable of breaking through into that normal life at any second.”

“Although the current criteria had been eased from the former criteria, so far only about 6,400 atomic bombing survivors have been officially recognized as atomic bomb illness sufferers. They account for only about 3 percent of some 201,800 survivors as of the end of March 2013.”

“The Second World War introduced total war — unprincipled in method, unlimited in violence, and indiscriminate in victims. The ovens of Auschwitz and the atomic incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki inscribed a still-darker chapter in the chronicle of human brutality.”

“The dropping of the Atomic Bomb is a very deep problem... Instead of commemorating Hiroshima we should celebrate... man's triumph over the problem [of transmutation], and not its first misuse by politicians and military authorities.”

“After all, the United States is the only country in the world that used nuclear, atomic weapons, moreover against a non-nuclear state - against Japan, against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, at the end of World War II. There was no absolute military sense in this. This was a direct extermination of the civilian population.”

“America is a democracy and has no Hitler, but I am afraid for her future; there are hard times ahead for the American people, troubles will be coming from within and without. America cannot smile away their Negro problem nor Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There are cosmic laws.”

“We cannot ignore Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with the useless use of nuclear weapons, an absolutely unnecessary use that, in any case, could have been employed against some military facilities that fell, however, on civilian populations of hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, to establish the era of the atomic terror in the world.”

“The consequence of radiation exposure in fetuses is mostly based on observations rather than based on scientific research. Ethical issues prohibit researching on the fetus. Therefore, most of the data on the impact of radiation on the fetus derives from observations of patients who suffered Japan’s Hiroshima bombing and the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster.”

“... We devoutly hoped that the Japanese would heed our warning that, unless they surrendered unconditionally, the destruction of their armed forces and the devastation of their homeland was inevitable. But on July 28 the Japanese Premier issued a statement saying the declaration was unworthy of notice. That was disheartening. There was nothing left to do but use the bomb.”

“If atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons to the arsenals of a warring world, or to the arsenals of nations preparing for war, then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and Hiroshima. The people must unite, or they will perish.”

“I made up my mind then that the morality of dropping that bomb was not my business. I was instructed to perform a military mission to drop the bomb. That was the thing that I was going to do the best of my ability. Morality, there is no such thing in warfare. I don’t care whether you are dropping atom bombs, or 100-pound bombs, or shooting a rifle. You have got to leave the moral issue out of it.”

“Waiting to speak on Beser’s recorder, Lewis was groping for words to write in his log. There were those on board the plane who would insist his initial reaction to the mushroom cloud was: “My God, look at that sonofabitch go!” But Lewis later decided to pen: “My God, what have we done?””

“This revelation of the secrets of nature, long mercifully withheld from man, should arouse the most solemn reflections in the mind and conscience of every human being capable of comprehension. We must indeed pray that these awful agencies will be made to conduce to peace among the nations, and that instead of wreaking measureless havoc upon the entire globe, may become a perennial fountain of world prosperity.”