Friday, June 6, 2008

A weapon of mass destruction in Los Angeles.

The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuclear attacks at the end of World War II against the Empire of Japan by the United States at the order of U.S. President Harry S. Truman on August 6 and 9, 1945.
After six months of intense firebombing of 67 other Japanese cities, the nuclear weapon "Little Boy" was dropped on the city of Hiroshima on Monday, August 6, 1945.
Followed on August 9 by the detonation of the "Fat Man" nuclear bomb over Nagasaki.



The two bombs killed as many as 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki by the end of 1945, roughly half on the days of the bombings.
Since then, thousands more have died from injuries or illness attributed to exposure to radiation released by the bombs.
In both cities, the overwhelming majority of the dead were civilians.

The release of the atomic bomb at 08:15 (Hiroshima time) was uneventful.
The gravity bomb known as "Little Boy” took 57 seconds to fall from the aircraft to the predetermined detonation height about 600 meters (1,900 ft) above the city.
It created a blast equivalent to about 13 kilotons of TNT.
The radius of total destruction was about 1.6 km (1 mile), with resulting fires across 11.4 km (4.4 square miles).
Infrastructure damage was estimated at 90 percent of Hiroshima's buildings being either damaged or completely destroyed.

The atomic bomb was transported by the 393d Bombardment Squadron B-29 airplane called “Enola Gay”.
Piloted and commanded by Colonel Paul Tibbets.
He had called his bomber “Enola Gay” after his mother.



Now we fast-forward to 2008.
Los Angeles.
In the part of this immense city called Lawndale we find in a complex of small businesses the workplace of master carpenter Bob Wilhite.

Besides the work he does for his clients, he is dealing with a fascination he has for the atomic bomb.

On the walls of his workplace he has images of the atomic bomb, the “Enola Gay” and the mushroom cloud.




In the centre of his workplace he has the yet unfinished replica of the “Fat Boy”: the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki.
Mr. Bob Wilhite is making the atomic bomb out of wood but it has its original size.



Why would a person do such a thing?
To re-build a weapon of mass destruction that has killed over 80.000 civilians instantly?

Hence, the question: “Bob, why are you doing this?”

He replied: “You know, everybody wants to have the atomic bomb. So do I”.









.

No comments: