On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked the American fleet at Pearl Harbor.  The Japanese took the Americans by surprise and sunk 19 ships and about 2,400 American soldiers and sailors were killed.  Four years later, on August 6 and August 9, 1945 the Americans dropped two atomic bombs into Hiroshima and Nagasaki which totally demolished the cities.  Pearl Harbor was one of the jsutifications for President Truman to decide on drooping the bombs.  During the attack of the atomic bomb, over 240,000 Japanese civilians died and destroying the two cities.  Hiroshima was one of the targets because it contained numerous war material factories, with the homes of skilled workers packed around the plants.  It was also the headquarters of the Japanese Secong Army, under Field Marshal Shunroku Hata but they were unaware that Hiroshima Castle held 23 American prisoner, 13 of them were crew members of Okinawa-based B-24 bombers shot down just five days earlier.  The blast were devastating.  For the ten of thousands who were wounded on that day, no proper medical care existed.  Fifty-two out of the 55 hospitals and aid centers were destroyed or severely damaged.  Of 150 doctors practicing in Hiroshima, 65 were killed and most of the others were wounded severely.  1,780 nurses, 1654 died or were injured.  But the horror of the bombs was not reflected jsut in the casualty list of the times.  No one predicted the aftereffects of the radiation that permeated Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  In the years and even decades that followed the appearance of the mushroom clouds, latent radiation chose new victims and with little warning.  Hundreds of seemingly healthy people became ill and died with symptoms of radiation sickness, or from illness thought to be spawned by radiation.  The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki came to realize that none among them could be absolutely sure of having escaped the wrath of the nuclear explosions.  The list of terrors intoduced byt he atomic bomb was added another: the terror of the unknown.


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