Oppenheimer's Deadly Toy

Seventy-five years ago today in the early morning of August 6, 1945, a B-29 bomber, Enola Gay, took off from the island of Tinian and headed north by northwest toward Japan. 

"The bomber’s primary target was the city of Hiroshima, located on the deltas of southwestern Honshu Island facing the Inland Sea. Hiroshima had a civilian population of almost 300,000 and was an important military center, containing about 43,000 soldiers.

"At approximately 8:15 a.m. Hiroshima time the Enola Gay released “Little Boy,” its 9,700-pound uranium gun-type bomb, over the city.

"Tibbets immediately dove away to avoid the anticipated shock wave. Forty-three seconds later, a huge explosion lit the morning sky as Little Boy detonated 1,900 feet above the city, directly over a parade field where soldiers of the Japanese Second Army were doing calisthenics." 

The bombing marked the beginning, suggest some historians, of what we've come to call our modern era. I'm still not sure they didn't mean (t)error.  

Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.

Three days later, a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.

We're left to await the whimper.

Three-quarters of a century onwards, it seems to me we're older but no wiser.
"Between the idea And the reality; Between the motion And the act; Falls the Shadow."
-bill kenny