INDESCRIBABLE RUIN

Waikato Times, Volume 106, Issue 22682, 9 August 1945, Page 5

INDESCRIBABLE RUIN

TOKYO ON ATOMIC BOMB DAMAGE MORE THAN HALF OF HIROSHIMA IN RUINS BOMB BUILT ROUND 8 LB. CHARGE WASHINGTON, Aug. 8 While Tokyo says the effect of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima is indescribable, Allied reconnaissance confirms that more than half the city lies in ruins from a bomb built up round a charge which weighs no more than 81b. The photographs show that the bomb wiped out four and one-tenth square miles or 60 per cent of Hiroshima. Five major industrial targets were destroyed. This information is given in an Air Force communique, which says that additional damage is shown outside the destroyed area. These details are based on reconnaissance photographs analysed by experts at Guam, and they were also given at a press conference at Guam attended by General Spaatz, Commander-in-Chief United States Pacific Army Air Forces, and General Lemay, Commander of the Twentieth Air Force. The atomic bomb “literally seared to death all living things, human and animal, in Hiroshima,” said the Tokyo radio. The dead were buried beyond recognition.- The authoritieo were unable to get a definite check on the civilian casualties. The radio said that the city was a “disastrous ruin” and that the effect of the bomb was widespread. It added: “Those out of doors were burned to death. Those indoors were killed by the indescribable pressure and by the heat. Houses and buildings were smashed, including emergency medical facilities.” Four attacks with ordinary bombs have been made on Japan in the past 24 hours. One hundred Super-Fortresses dropped fire bombs on Fukuyama, in Honshu, and this was followed by a double attack in the afternoon on the Tokyo area. Earlier, 600 tons were dropped on the steel town of Nawaka, in Kyushu.