t the bomb simply happened, like a deux ex machina, a blinding bolt from the sunny sky of August." Somewhere behind this is a dimly perceived, "demonized" America, although not nearly so demonized as the bomb itself, which seems to have had a mind of its own. The idea that the bomb might have had something to do with the ". . . war that preceded it, with Manchuria in 1931, with China in 1937, with Pearl Harbor, Manila, Singapore, Java, or Hong Kong, does not impinge on the religious Hiroshima mind" (Buruma, 1990, p. 15).
There are many such accounts of the dropping of the atomic bomb, so many that it has become part and parcel of American popular culture. The Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are both known to most Americans, and have become so called "atomic shrines" (Weisman, 1990, p. A6). As well, the very idea of using nuclear weapons on a civilian target brings the account ever closer to modern debate. In early 1991, for instance, the use of tactical nuclear weaponry in the Gulf Crisis was discussed, with most finding it an unacceptable alternative based on data from Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Evan Thomas, 1991, pp. 38-9).
The general story of the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima is long and complex. For the purposes of this paper, it is sufficient to note some of the details of the day the bomb detonated. Hiroshima, for instance, was chosen for a variety of reasons, none the least because Hiroshima was located in a flat area, affording the effects of the bomb in a convincing demonstration.
The awesome power of the bomb was evident in that at a range of up to five hundred yards from ground zero, objects engulfed by the fireball became incandescent in the million degree heat. Total destruction stretched out in a half mile radius from the point of the explosion, leaving the rubble of one building indistinguishable from that of the next. Up to two miles from ground zero, fires familiar to the survivors of i...