cheerful crowds enjoyed the first bank holiday in england after the end of the

european war on monday, august 6, and , an american aircraft dropped one bomb on
the japanese town of hiroshima.it exploded 1,000 ft. above the ground just as the
255,000 people of the city were starting on their jobs.

within the fraction of a second the bomb changed from a metal cylinder into
a immense mass of expanding gas , millions of degrees hot. the air itself around the
point of explosion began to burn. a shower of penetrating , invisible rays attacked
every living or dead things in the town. then followed a shock-wave which shattered
the buildings, and a tremendrous blast of hot air whirled the debris of stone,
concrete, metal and wood over the ground.

we still do not know exactly how many people died at that moment; probably
at least 80,000 , while another 60,000 or more suffered from their terrible
injuries for another few weeks or months before a merchiful death put them out of
their misery.tens of thousands of other were maimed or disfigured for life.

within a half-mile radius around the giant crater which formed when the
bomb exploded above, only one out of every ten people survived; within an area of
three square miles only three out of every ten remained alive. the entire town
centre was vaporized.

hiroshima does not look like a bombed city, reported the first american
newspaperman to visit it after janpan's surrender a short while later. it looks as if
a monster steam-rolled had passed over it.all that was left of dozens of block of
city streets, house, factories, and human beings, was three miles of reddish rubble.

three days after that air-raid, yet another bomb of the same kind was
dropped on japan. it exploded at ground level in the town of nagasaki, about as large
as hiroshima. an estimate 24,000 people were killed instantly, another 30,000 died
within a year from their injuries. one and a half square miles of the city were
totally destroyed; the whole town was affected by the blast. there was a tower of
smoke and flame visible 250 miles away, forming a whirling mushroom cloud of that
peculiar shape which we know only too well. terrible heat-rays followed the blast,
and a rain of black dust fell upon the stricken city.

ever since, the world has learned to live in the shadow of that mushroom
cloud--the cloud of the atom bomb.

it is easier to invent a new weapon than to use the same idea for peacfull
purpose. in the case of the atom bomb the problem was how to tame that
tremandous force to do useful work. over nine years after the dropping of those
bombs, the world's first nuclear power station was opened in britain--calder hall in
cumberland. today, more that an dozen nuclear power-stations are reproducing
electricity for britain's homes and factories; there are nuclear-propelled
submarines and surface ships and even space satellites with small reactors for
generating electric 45 current.