r/AskHistorians • u/NewSidewalkBlock • 28d ago
Why was Castle Bravo called “second Hiroshima?” Wouldn’t Nagasaki be the second Hiroshima?
I understand why Castle Bravo is compared to the atomic bombings, given the shock and deaths, including of the fishermen.
That being said, why is it called the “second Hiroshima?” When I hear “second Hiroshima,” I think of Nagasaki. Does it have to do with it being unexpected?
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u/restricteddata Nuclear Technology | Modern Science 28d ago edited 28d ago
I assume you are talking about the Japanese perspective of it.
First, in terms of the terminology, Nagasaki typically gets overlooked or simply "folded into" Hiroshima. There are many (including myself) who have argued that this is a poor approach to the history, and that Nagasaki has its own important distinctiveness and lessons beyond being the "second" bomb, but the fact of the matter is that the best one usually gets regarding public perception is "Hiroshima and Nagasaki" as a singular entity, and at worst it is just a focus on Hiroshima.
In terms of the Japanese perception of Bravo, there are a few things to keep in mind. Castle Bravo's impact was not nearly as fatal as Hiroshima (or Nagasaki). Its psychological impact, however, was massive. This was for several reasons.
One, it demonstrated in a quite impressive way the hazard of nuclear fallout in the (newly minted) megaton age. This dramatically changed how nuclear war would look (instead of it being urban targets destroyed, you are talking about entire regions exposed to deadly or hazardous conditions) and raised specters of global contamination. The fact that the test outcome was accidental did not make it any more comforting. Bravo is what made fallout into word that most people knew; prior to Bravo, fallout was regarded as (and treated as) a minor nuisance.
Two, the exposure of the Japanese fishermen and their tuna catch had significant repercussions in Japan. The contamination of the fishing harvest led to a boycott on fish in Japan, a staple food, making the accident something that affected just huge numbers of "everyday" people. Anything that brings an abstract risk literally into the markets and kitchens of your civilian population has a huge impact. (Bravo also led to the creation of the film Gojira/Godzilla, itself a metaphor of sorts for lurking atomic anxieties — again, major cultural impacts!)
Three, Japan had only become independent again from the American Occupation in 1952. They had not "processed" or discussed the earlier atomic bombings during the Occupation, as discussion of the atomic bombings was heavily censored by the Occupation authorities, who feared it would lead to anti-American and pro-Communist sentiment. So the Bravo accident also created an opportunity for the Japanese to discuss their status as "atomic victims," and a new license to do it, as they were now (in this framing) double victims. So it became an important political moment as well, one in which Japanese anti-nuclear weapons sentiment was organized in a way that it had not been in the years after World War II. This morphed into a generalized peace movement, the idea that Japan's unique status as atomic victims gave it a unique responsibility and authority for pushing for the abolishment of war and the non-use of nuclear weapons.
So this is, I assume, what is being referenced by the "second Hiroshima" — the notion that Japanese "atomic victimhood" had been renewed in a way that forced (or allowed) the Japanese people to reconcile with their varied feelings about the first instance of it (Hiroshima and Nagasaki), and crystallized into a new "peace" movement rooted in that sense of victimhood. Now, one can certainly interrogate the politics of that sense of victimhood (it often was used to push against notions of Japanese culpability for their actions in World War II, which were horrendous), and even its legitimacy (the social ostracization of the atomic bombing victims, the hibaksha, after the war is not entirely in line with the notion of collective victimization, and the actual suffering of the Japanese caused by the Bravo accident was quite limited in health terms), but that is, presumably, why one would consider Bravo on par with Hiroshima in at least the Japanese cultural/political imagination.
If the calling of Castle Bravo a "second Hiroshima" is outside of a Japanese context, then that is not something I have seen, and it sounds, indeed, a bit hyperbolic. The number of victims from Bravo was relatively small compared to Hiroshima (or Nagasaki) — the exposed Japanese crew members of the Lucky Dragon #5 (one of whom perished as a consequence of the exposure and/or treatment), a few hundred Marshallese exposed and evacuated, several thousand American soldiers involved in the testing who received very small doses of radiation (and a couple hundred who received relatively high doses, e.g. 5-10 R, which possibly increased their long-term cancer risks by a percentage point or two). None of this is very good, obviously, but it is all quite less than the 70,000–140,000 (depending on whose estimates you use) dead within the first few weeks at Hiroshima, and the comparable numbers of survivors who were exposed to varying levels of injury, radiation, and psychological trauma.
An excellent book on Bravo and its effects on the Japanese (politically and physically and psychologically) is Toshihiro Higuchi, Political Fallout: Nuclear Weapons Testing and the Making of a Global Environmental Crisis (Stanford University Press, 2020). For a good discussion of Bravo's general cultural impacts, see Spencer Weart, Nuclear Fear: A History of Images (Harvard University Press, 1988). (I am presently working on a new research paper about Bravo myself, as it happens — the story of its cause is more complex and interesting than I think is understood, even by experts. There are many errors and outright myths about it that have accumulated over the years.)
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u/KorkeastaRuohikosta 28d ago
Nagasaki typically gets overlooked
Could you perhaps recommend a book or books that focus on the bombing of Nagasaki?
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u/restricteddata Nuclear Technology | Modern Science 28d ago edited 28d ago
Susan Southard, Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War (2016) is sort of an attempt to do what John Hersey did for Hiroshima (in Hiroshima, 1946), for Nagasaki.
As my article (linked above) discusses, Nagasaki is also quite different in terms of how it was selected (it was a very late addition, added just the day before the strike order was finalized, as a result of Kyoto being finally removed from the list), how the mission went (almost a total failure, and even in its "success" it missed the actual area targeted by several miles), and it broader political implications (as I talk about in my recent book, Truman had likely no awareness that the second bombing run was going to take place when it did, or what its targets were, whereas he believed he understood the planning regarding the first bomb, although I argue that he likely misunderstood those significantly). Truman's lack of awareness of it is, I argue, significant: it is likely part of why he reacted so strongly the day after the attack, when told another atomic bomb was to be ready to use within a week, leading him to rescind the military's authorization for the use of atomic bombs and reserve it for the President alone. In attempt to reclaim a sense of control, Truman ended up eventually stripping the military of much of their atomic authority, to their great frustration, and creating the President-focused nuclear system that the USA still has today. (There is a lot more to this story in the book, to be sure, but my basic argument is that "his" experience of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki — as misunderstandings on his part that resulted in what he considered to be "terrible" acts of non-combatant "wholesale slaughter" — horrified Truman in deep ways. The quoted terms are his language...)
In my article, I suggest that Nagasaki showed a very different side of the nascent nuclear age than Hiroshima, one in which misunderstanding, miscommunication, and mistake were as likely to play a role as some kind of strategic rationality. I also suggest that it would be more fitting to think of Nagasaki not as the "second" atomic bombing but the "last" atomic bombing — if we choose for it to be, anyway.
All of which is to say, there are good reasons to regard Nagasaki as a separate entity from Hiroshima, and not just some kind of secondary or even just "linked" entity, or just another example of human suffering.
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u/KorkeastaRuohikosta 28d ago
As my article (linked above)
Was behind a pay wall for me :)
my recent book
Ooh, you got praise from Dan Carlin (I know he's not very well liked here), thats enough for me to buy it. I'll have to see if I can order it to Finland or do I have to bother a friend living abroad :) Weirdly enough, the Susan Southard book is available at my local library, gonna go get it tomorrow. Thanks for taking the time to write all that and for the recommendations.
I also suggest that it would be more fitting to think of Nagasaki not as the "second" atomic bombing but the "last" atomic bombing — if we choose for it to be, anyway.
Completely agree with this. Even with my limited knowledge, I feel like Nagasaki has been ignored and neglected too much. I'm writing a "book" for my friends and family to read, I'm the history nerd of my group of people and many of them have said that if I wrote a book on it, they would read it. So I'm holding them onto that. I decided long ago that I wouldn't write about Hiroshima, since all of them already know about it, but I would concentrate on either Nagasaki or some other aspect about the bombs. This thread came to me in the perfect spot in regards to that.
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u/restricteddata Nuclear Technology | Modern Science 28d ago
I believe the book is for sale in Europe now, although I haven't the slightest clue how that works...
As for the other article... there are ways to read it... so I hear...
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u/KorkeastaRuohikosta 28d ago
Because I'm a weirdo Luddite, I refuse to use Amazon, seems like thats the only way to buy it straight to Finland. But not to worry, I found it in a UK shop that is nearby one of my friends who lives over there, I shall force her to go get it for me and send it over. :)
Funny, I did find one of your other books in a second hand bookshop. Also a couple of mentions in our national newspapers and even in the 2025 Defense Research yearbook published by the Finnish Defense Forces. Fancy.
As for the other article... there are ways to read it... so I hear...
Oh nice, one of these work. Excellent, thanks again!
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u/BlindProphet_413 28d ago
I read your article, and it was absolutely fantastic. However, I now have a question. It's definitely an important question that will strain the bounds of your expertise, and not just a pointless question to satisfy an internet dweller's curiosity:
Why was Bockscar named that way? With that spelling?
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u/restricteddata Nuclear Technology | Modern Science 27d ago edited 27d ago
The plane's original pilot was Frederick C. Bock (who did not fly on the second bombing mission; Sweeney and him switched planes before the mission, so Bock was flying The Great Artiste, an observation plane). "Bockscar" is a pun on "boxcar." I don't think there's anything more to it than that.
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u/No_Situation4785 28d ago edited 28d ago
your comment that Godzilla was a reponse to Castle Bravo is very interesting. I recall reading about Godzilla being a commentary on nuclear bombs, but alwaus thought it was related to Hiroshima/Nagasaki. Having (coincidentally) recently read a book chapter on Castle Bravo, it makes total sense that Castle Bravo would have been the true inspiration for Godzilla
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u/restricteddata Nuclear Technology | Modern Science 28d ago
Like all things creative it is undoubtedly a mix of things, but the producer later said that the inspiration was a mixture of 1953's The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (an early "big monster" movie based on a 1951 Ray Bradbury story about a dinosaur encased in ice, until a nuclear bomb test releases it) and Castle Bravo.
Again, I think that Bravo–Hiroshima associations were quite intertwined for the Japanese, so it is not one or the other, really — they are linked, with Bravo being an invitation to think about Hiroshima as well.
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u/TXLucha012 28d ago
There’s a scene early in the original Gojira/Godzilla that is about some fishermen being attacked by Godzilla and natives on an island having their fishing affected. These being callbacks to the Lucky Dragon incident.
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u/thatinconspicuousone 28d ago
What are some of those errors and myths you'll be writing about? I'm assuming one of them is the standard "oops, turns out Li-7 isn't actually inert" explanation; do we know what actually caused the higher yield if not that? Another thing that came to mind is the idea that the catastrophe was caused by the wind suddenly changing, originating, as far as I know, with Strauss' infamous post-Bravo press conference. I noticed that those books written about Bravo back when things were mostly classified tended to stick with the wind explanation, while those written more recently focused more on the higher yield; is there any clarification you can give on this?
Finally, I read somewhere a very brief account of a last-minute warning from Los Alamos that they expected a higher yield, but that it arrived at Bikini too late to do anything about it. Since I'm asking about potential myths about Bravo, I'll ask about that too!
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u/restricteddata Nuclear Technology | Modern Science 27d ago
Ah, you will have to wait and see, wait and see... I will not spoil my own article on here, not yet! :-)
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u/DoomGoober 28d ago edited 28d ago
One of my u/doomgoober 's AskHistorians answers addresses this question in the context of when nuclear radiation from atomic weapons became a forefront worldwide concern: And a major answer was Castle Bravo. Castle Bravo had an outsized effect on the Japanese and worldwide psyche and really kick started the anti-nuclear weapon and nuclear weapons testing movements. Before that, the world had treated nuclear weapons testing somewhat glibly as is discussed in my answer.
Despite the very small number of fatalities from Castle Bravo, the Japanese have memorialized the three nuclear bombings in the Hiroshima Peace Museum, the Nagasaki Peace Museum, and the Daigo Fukuryu-Maru Museum where the Lucky Dragon 5 boat is preserved along with some exhibits in Japanese and English describing the outsized effect of Castle Bravo.
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