Ramifications of Hiroshima bombing linger

[unhappycamper]

A mushroom cloud billows into the sky about an hour after an atomic bomb was detonated above Hiroshima, Japan on Aug. 6 1945.


Ramifications of Hiroshima bombing linger
By Jim McConville - Asbury Park (N.J.) Press
Posted : Friday Aug 6, 2010 15:02:33 EDT

ASBURY PARK, N.J. — Former Army Air Forces Capt. Irving Bauman wondered if the photograph was of some new species of vegetation. Then he wondered why his colonel was so hush-hush about it.

“I developed the picture, and I see a mushroom,” said Bauman, 92, who lives in Wall. “I couldn’t possibly imagine why he wanted that kind of top secret classification on that negative.”

But Bauman, an aerial photo officer in charge of the photo laboratory for the 73rd Bomb Wing at Saipan, soon realized that the negative he had developed was no new form of fungus.

The photo, shot from the B-29 bomber Enola Gay on Aug. 6, 1945, was the first Army picture taken of the explosion of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

On the 65th anniversary of that nuclear detonation that eventually killed an estimated 166,000 Japanese, among the consequences which still reverberate are how it changed the geopolitical landscape in the way that countries plan for and conduct war, and how atomic power is harnessed and used.