Hiroshima Nuclear Bomb Quotes & Sayings

Historically, the Germans had a habit of associating the names of objects with the sounds they made. After bell makers-turned-cannon-makers learned that by closing off the mouth of the cannon before lighting the fuse, the entire cannon could be made to explode, the device they invented became known as the 'bum' (for boom!). In keeping with this tradition, the first one-thousand-pound bomb was dubbed 'ein laussen bum' (meaning, "a loud boom"). After the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, they called the fission device 'ein grossen laussen bum' (or, "a big loud boom"). The next obvious step was the fusion, or H-bomb, which was pronounced 'ein grossen laussen bum all ist kaput! — Charles Pellegrino

The advocates of nuclear disarmament seem to believe that, if they could achieve their aim, war would become tolerable and decent. They would do well to read this book and ponder the fate of Dresden, where 135,000 people died as the result of an air attack with conventional weapons. On the night of March 9th, 1945, an air attack on Tokyo by American heavy bombers, using incendiary and high explosive bombs, caused the death of 83,793 people. The atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima killed 71,379 people. So it goes. — Kurt Vonnegut

Japan knows the horror of war and has suffered as no other nation under the cloud of nuclear disaster. Certainly Japan can stand strong for a world of peace. — Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project

I come and stand at every door
But none can hear my silent tread
I knock and yet remain unseen
For I am dead for I am dead

I'm only seven though I died
In Hiroshima long ago
I'm seven now as I was then
When children die they do not grow

My hair was scorched by swirling flame
My eyes grew dim my eyes grew blind
Death came and turned my bones to dust
And that was scattered by the wind

I need no fruit I need no rice
I need no sweets nor even bread
I ask for nothing for myself
For I am dead for I am dead

All that I need is that for peace
You fight today you fight today
So that the children of this world
Can live and grow and laugh and play

- The Girl Child — Nazim Hikmet

The Islamic method of waging war is not to kill innocent civilians, but it was Christians in World War II who bombed innocent civilians in Dresden and dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, neither of which were military targets. — Feisal Abdul Rauf

Science began with a gadget and a trick. The gadget was the wheel; the trick was fire. We have come a long way from the two-wheel cart to the round-the-world transport plane, or from the sparking flint to man-made nuclear fission. Yet I wonder whether the inhabitants of Hiroshima were more aware of the evolution of science than ancient man facing an on-storming battle chariot.
It isn't physics that will make this a better life, nor chemistry, nor sociology. Physics may be used to atom-bomb a nation and chemistry may be used to poison a city and sociology has been used to drive people and classes against classes. Science is only an instrument, no more than a stick or fire or water that can be used to lean on or light or refresh, and also can be used to flail or burn or drown. Knowledge without morals is a beast on the loose. — Dagobert D. Runes

I returned to civilization shortly after that and went to Cornell to teach, and my first impression was a very strange one. I can't understand it any more, but I felt very strongly then. I sat in a restaurant in New York, for example, and I looked out at the buildings and I began to think, you know, about how much the radius of the Hiroshima bomb damage was and so forth ... How far from here was 34th street? ... All those buildings, all smashed - and so on. And I would go along and I would see people building a bridge, or they'd be making a new road, and I thought, they're crazy, they just don't understand, they don't understand. Why are they making new things? It's so useless.
But, fortunately, it's been useless for almost forty years now, hasn't it? So I've been wrong about it being useless making bridges and I'm glad those other people had the sense to go ahead. — Richard Feynman