“There was the flash and darkness”: Testimony of Tomiko Sasaki, one of the Hatchobori Streetcar Survivors, Hiroshima Witness.
“It was like a white magnesium flash”: Testimony of Akiko Takakura, Hiroshima Witness.
“When the blast came, my friend and I were blown into another room”: Testimony of Akira Onogi, Hiroshima Witness.
“I was at the window when the flash went off”: Testimony of Kinue Tomoyasu, Hiroshima Witness.
“I cried out, and as soon as I did I felt weightless, as if I were an astronaut”: Testimony of Hiroshi Sawachika, Hiroshima Witness.
“I’d never heard the word ‘decapitation attack’ before”: Ari Fleischer, speaking about September 11, 2001, as quoted in Graff, “‘We’re the Only Plane in the Sky.’”
“That was our Pearl Harbor”: Paul Germain, speaking about September 11, 2001, as quoted in Graff, “‘We’re the Only Plane in the Sky.’”
“They broke for commercial. I couldn’t believe it”: Fleischer, as quoted in Graff, “‘We’re the Only Plane in the Sky.’”
“I saw a young boy coming my way”: Testimony of Kinue Tomoyasu, Hiroshima Witness.
“I looked next door and I saw the father of a neighboring family standing almost naked”: Testimony of Akira Onogi, Hiroshima Witness.
“I really thought I was dying because I drank so much water”: Testimony of Hiroko Fukada, Hiroshima Witness.
“Communications systems were overwhelmed with traffic”: Tillman, as quoted in Wagner, “On 9/11, Air Force One Pilot’s Only Concern Was President Bush’s Safety.”
“We felt terribly hot and could not breathe well at all”: Testimony of Hiroko Fukada, Hiroshima Witness.
“I still felt very thirsty, and there was nothing I could do about it”: Testimony of Akiko Takakura, Hiroshima Witness.
“The houses on both sides of the railroad were burning”: Testimony of Akira Onogi, Hiroshima Witness.
“I could see people running in the dark”: Testimony of Takehiko Sakai, Hiroshima Witness.
“The fire and the smoke made us so thirsty”: Testimony of Akiko Takakura, Hiroshima Witness.
“It was all quiet and the city was wrapped, enveloped in red flames”: Testimony of Takeo Teramae, Hiroshima Witness.
“I was pushed into the river with many other people”: Testimony of Hiroko Fukada, Hiroshima Witness.
“An awful thing happened when I reached the other side, and was relieved”: Testimony of Hiroko Fukada, Hiroshima Witness.
“The water was swirling around me, and later I learned that was a tornado”: Testimony of Hiroko Fukada, Hiroshima Witness.
“Later on in the evening, when we were sitting around without having much to do”: Testimony of Takehiko Sakai, Hiroshima Witness.
“When controllers asked if we were aware of an unidentified plane bearing down on us”: Tillman, as quoted in Wagner, “On 9/11, Air Force One Pilot’s Only Concern Was President Bush’s Safety.”
“Air Force One has defenses to protect against attack”: Tillman, as quoted in Wagner, “On 9/11, Air Force One Pilot’s Only Concern Was President Bush’s Safety.”
“It was very, very hot”: Testimony of Keiko Matsuda, Hiroshima Witness.
“There was a sticky yellowish pus, a white watery liquid coming out of my daughter’s wounds”: Testimony of Kinue Tomoyasu, Hiroshima Witness.
“There were too many people”: Testimony of Akira Onogi, Hiroshima Witness.
“I felt someone touch my leg. It was a pregnant woman”: Testimony of Hiroshi Sawachika, Hiroshima Witness.
“It was on television. I saw it”: Donald Trump, defending the false claim that “thousands” of Muslims cheered on September 11, 2001, as quoted in Glenn Kessler, “Trump’s Outrageous Claim That ‘Thousands’ of New Jersey Muslims Celebrated the 9/11 attacks,” Washington Post, November 22, 2015.
“As military trucks came into the city, they started loading bodies into truck beds”: This quote is adapted from a poem, “The Remains of Uncle Yataro,” by Kikuko Otake, who was five years old at the time of the Hiroshima explosion in 1945 and who later wrote a book of poetry that retells the recollections of her mother Masako (Masako’s Story: Surviving the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima [Tokyo: Ahadada Books, 2007]):
As military trucks came into the city,
[they] started loading bodies into a truck bed.
First, three soldiers tried to lift a burned body,
but they dropped it to the ground, losing their grip,
when the skin sloughed off.
“When I came to, it was about seven in the evening”: Testimony of Yoshitaka Kawamoto, Hiroshima Witness.
“ordinary people saved each other”: The quotation is, in fact, by a survivor of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Robert Snyder, as quoted in Michael Keller, “New York Stories: An Oral Historian Takes on 9/11,” Atlantic, September 7, 2011.
The construction of a new command center at Offut alone had cost $1.2 billion: Steve Liewer, “Work on New $1.2 Billion StratCom HQ Will Soon Enter Phase ‘Fraught with Risk,’” Omaha World-Herald, February 14, 2017.
“One of the awkward questions we faced . . . was whether to reconstitute Congress after a nuclear attack”: This quote describing the decision-making is from an actual “continuity of government” exercise during the Reagan administration. James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet (New York: Penguin, 2004), 141–142.
Staff had sometimes joked that Hicks was the “real daughter”: Michael Wolff, “‘You Can’t Make This S—— Up’: My Year inside Trump’s Insane White House,” Hollywood Reporter, January 4, 2018.
“When a bad story would come up, she would volunteer”: Former Trump campaign senior communications adviser Jason Miller, as quoted in Eleanor Clift, “How Hope Hicks Became the Ultimate Trump Insider,” Town & Country, February 2, 2018.
“She’s like a security blanket for the boss”: An anonymous “person who speaks to the president,” as quoted in Emily Jane Fox, “‘She Is Like a Security Blanket’: Hope Hicks, the Linus of the West Wing, Delivers a Devastating Blow to Trump,” Vanity Fair, February 28, 2018.
“There was nothing in the world like her”: “Donald Trump singled out a ‘young socialite’ at his club at Mar-a-Lago by telling a reporter [Michael Corcoran with the now-defunct magazine Maximum Golf], ‘there is nothing in the world like first-rate pussy.’ . . . Corcoran used the quote as the kicker in his piece, but says it was changed by the editor in chief, who replaced the obscenity with the word ‘talent.’ Joe Bargmann, Corcoran’s editor at Maximum Golf, confirmed Corcoran’s account. ‘I was asked to change the last word of the story from ‘pussy.’ When I refused, my top editor changed the quote,’ Bargmann told The Daily Beast.” Brandy Zadrozny, “Trump Bragged: ‘Nothing in the World Like First-Rate P**sy,’” Daily Beast, November 29, 2017.
Conclusion
All told, nearly three million people died in the span of about forty-eight hours: All casualty estimates were created using Alex Wellerstein’s “Nukemap” website: https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/.
The public health implications of entire populations with compromised immunity are wide-ranging and severe: Jennifer Leaning, “Public Health Aspects of Nuclear War,” Annual Review of Public Health 7 (1986): 411–439.
more than 80,000 federal jobs were located in northern Virginia and the area was home to more than 100,000 federal workers: The statistics are from the FRED data provided by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and the US Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
which in turn is believed to be responsible for the famines that have struck Africa, South Asia, and China over the past few years: All statistics are derived from Ira Helfand, Nuclear Famine: 2 Billion People at Risk? (Washington, DC: Physicians for Social Responsibility, 2013).
with the costs associated with rebuilding Manhattan alone estimated at between $15 trillion and $20 trillion: Estimates are derived (and adjusted for inflation) from
Barbara Reichmuth, Steve Short, Tom Wood, Fred Rutz, and Debbie Schwartz, “Economic Consequences of a Radiological/Nuclear Attack: Cleanup Standards Significantly Affect Cost,” Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, 2005.
About the Author
Jeffrey Lewis, PhD, is a columnist for Foreign Policy, a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, and a research affiliate at the Stanford University Center for Security and International Cooperation. He is the founding publisher of Arms Control Wonk (armscontrolwonk.com), the leading blog on disarmament, arms control, and nonproliferation. He lives in central California.
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Footnotes
* According to a follow-up statement released by the White House, “consillary” is “an accepted anglicization of the Italian term consigliere” and is “commonly used by real Americans who don’t learn Italian at fancy Swiss boarding schools.”
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* Former president Trump was emphatic that the commission note his score, which was one stroke under par. While the commission understands that the step of noting the president’s golf score may seem out of place in such a document, the former president, after a draft was shared with him for his comment, expressed his concern that “the fact that you didn’t publish the number proves that you are just like all the biased reporters who are part of the anti-Trump fake news media that never gives me as much credit as I deserve.”
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* Kim Jong Un appears to have been referring to a comment attributed to Trump: “If there’s going to be a war to stop Kim Jong Un, it will be over there. If thousands die, they’re going to die over there. They’re not going to die here.” Trump denies ever saying this.
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The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States Page 24