At 8.15am local time on the morning of August 6th, 1945, a US B-29 bomber named Enola Gay dropped the world’s first atomic bomb used in warfare over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The weapon, nicknamed “Little Boy”, exploded roughly 600 metres above the city centre. What followed was an act of man-made devastation without precedent in human history.
A blinding flash, an immense shockwave and a blast of intense heat levelled much of the city within seconds. It is estimated that between 70,000 and 80,000 people died instantly. Tens of thousands more were burned, crushed, or irradiated. Buildings within a two-kilometre radius were either incinerated or flattened. In the days, weeks and months that followed, the death toll continued to climb as radiation sickness set in. By the end of 1945, more than 140,000 were dead.
Hiroshima was a moment that changed the trajectory of the modern world. It revealed, in the most brutal way possible, the terrifying power of nuclear weapons. Three days later, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Less than a week after that, Japan surrendered, bringing the second World War to an end.
The shadow cast by those bombings has never lifted. In the eight decades since, the spectre of nuclear annihilation has remained with us, sometimes pushed to the background, other times terrifyingly near. The Cold War saw the United States and the Soviet Union build vast nuclear arsenals, capable of destroying the planet many times over. The Cuban missile crisis of 1962 brought the world to the brink.
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The end of the Cold War offered some hope. Tensions eased and warheads were gradually dismantled. But the danger never truly receded. Nine nations now possess nuclear weapons, and others appear determined to join them. Iran’s ambitions have drawn global attention and military strikes by Israel and the US. North Korea continues to test its capabilities. And in the early stages of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin made direct threats of nuclear escalation.
Flashpoints persist, from the Persian Gulf to the India-Pakistan border. Recent suggestions by Polish politicians that their country should seek its own nuclear arsenal are just one more reminder that the old consensus on deterrence is fraying, with American security guarantees now in serious doubt.
Eighty years on from Hiroshima, the world finds itself on the threshold of a new nuclear era: more multi-polar, less predictable, and almost certainly more dangerous. The lessons of 1945 may not have been forgotten, but they have certainly not been fully heeded. What happened to Hiroshima must remain more than a historical event. It is a warning, one that still demands urgent attention and constant vigilance.
