LITTLE BOY

By Felipe Argote

CHURCHILL, ROOSEVELT Y STALIN

While in Potsdam, a town near Berlin in Germany, Joseph Stalin, Harry Truman and Clement Attlee, discussed the distribution of the planet, or rather the remains, after the unconditional surrender of Germany, in the desert of New Mexico United States ended late the last argument for the defeat of Germany and Japan. The conference was developing smoothly. It was the second part of the conference which began in February at Yalta. That is the reason it is generally referred as Yalta and Potsdam. But the actors of this conference had varied by 66 % compared to February in Yalta. Of the three, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, there was only the Russian dictator there. Franklin D. Roosevelt had died at his desk in Warm Springs, Georgia. He died of brain cancer, despite many years to grieve after surviving polio. Winston Churchill began the conference, but was later replaced by Clement Attlee, who had defeated him on the British elections.

In the midst of the conference Harry Truman discussed separately with Attlee and Stalin. He reported to both that U.S. had developed a lethal weapon of mass destruction. A few moments earlier he had received a telegram informing him that in Alamogordo, New Mexico, had been carried out successful test of a nuclear explosion equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT.

Truman then sent a telegram on July 26 to Japan in which he requested their unconditional surrender, surrender to all territories outside Japan and threatened to prosecute military Nipponese leaders. This became known later as the Potsdam Declaration. He never mentioned the atomic bomb. Japan rejected the ultimatum, though they had lost all their possessions in the Pacific and expected land invasion. According to the agreements of Yalta the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and attacked him in Manchuria, northeastern China controlled by the Nipponese.

On August 6, 1945 began one sunny morning in Japan. In Hiroshima looked like the population was going to spend a normal morning in the plight of the war. This was one of the few large cities that had not been devastated by the B-29 which since 1944 dropped thousands of bombs on population centers of the Japanese islands. Its inhabitants had no idea that during the night had taken off three B-29 bombers. One of them was the Enola Gay piloted by Col. Paul Tibbets. The Colonel had put the airplane name on behalf of his mother. This bomber was wearing a uranium bomb named with the suggestive name of Little Boy. He was accompanied by two similar bombers, one carried scientifics and one with a camera crew.

At 8:15 a.m. the hell arrived from the air. First there was a flash with a white light such as magnesium, which blinded those who directly observed. Those who were nearby were vaporized. Some bodies were changed into a shadow on the pavement. Others were burned, turned to dust when touched. After that, a whirlwind destroyed everything in its path with temperatures of 600 degrees Celsius. Finally, acid black rain, full of radioactivity loaded bathed who remained alive. These would have a slow and painful death. 180,000 people died in Hiroshima, 100,000 at the time of the nuclear explosion and the rest in the following weeks. It was the most devastating attack in the history of mankind. The second took place three days later on Nagasaki. They killed 80,000 people, 50,000 at the time of the explosion of another bomb, this time of plutonium.

At 65 years of this extreme show of barbarism there is no argument to justify such a crime against humanity, killing men, women and especially innocent children in the stupidity of war.