The Fallout: The Legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Canada and the World

In recognition of the 80th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Sean Campbell, Diefenbunker Curator, shares Canada’s involvement in nuclear history and the legacy of these tragic events.

“What has kept the world safe from the bomb since 1945 has been the memory of what happened at Hiroshima.”

JOHN HERSEY

Canada is among the few nations that witnessed and participated in the race to develop the first atomic weapons in human history. In the heated discussions of today’s geopolitics, and with rising threats of nuclear weapons being used in conflicts, Canada’s history rests beneath the cloud shadows of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.   

Canada’s involvement with atomic weapons began with the Sahtú Dene in the community of Délı̨nÄ™ in the Northwest Territories, who mined some of the first pitchblende uranium to be used in the bomb’s development. According to academic Peter C. van Wyck, tonnes of this cargo made its way from Canada’s North to a refinement facility in Port Hope, Ontario to be processed for testing in the Manhattan Project.¹ It was the Montreal Laboratory, led by British scientists (some feeding secrets to the Soviets), who worked on the Tube Alloys program to develop bomb designs, uranium enrichment, and nuclear fusion for the United Kingdom before being taken over by the Americans.ⁱ In the 80 years since those first bombs were dropped, the Diefenbunker: Canada’s Cold War Museum recognizes that their unsettling lessons are important now more than ever. 

Witness to the aftermath

At a time when most nations understood the power of atomic bombs only through photographs, articles, and official statements, Canada was one of the first nations to see ground zero. Between November 2 and 24, 1945, the first official British and Commonwealth observers of Hiroshima and Nagasaki surveyed the two cities to understand the aftermath of the new weapons of war. Amongst the members of this British Mission to Japan (BMJ) was Canadian doctor and scientist Dr. Omond Solandt of Winnipeg, Manitoba. He witnessed the devastation firsthand and documented information regarding casualties for the BMJ’s final report. Emotionally numbed following his previous experience with the Blitz in London, Dr. Solandt was awed at “the catastrophic power of the atomic bomb.†Other observers gave similar assessments, including New Yorker contributor John Hersey in his Pulitzer Prize-winning article of the bombing “Hiroshima,†published in 1946.² Highlighting in graphic detail the experiences of six survivors of the bomb blast, Hersey detailed the aftermath of the bombing in which roughly 100,000 people had died, and sixty-two thousand out of ninety-six thousand buildings were destroyed or damaged beyond repair.³  

Shaped by this understanding of the power of nuclear weapons and his experience of the bombing campaign on Britain, Dr. Solandt carried this legacy into his work as the Chair of Canada’s Defence Research Board from 1946 to 1956, overseeing the development of military science and civil defence across the country. Mainly, Dr. Solandt saw the value of investing in civil defence for the protection of the civilian population and the nation at large.ⁱⁱ Controversially, Dr. Solandt also advocated for Canada to acquire nuclear weapons to deter an attack on the country during the Cold War, which would align Canada with the Soviet Union, the United States, and Great Britain. 

The need for nuclear?

The legacy of the bombings also held sway in the debate that would come to define the Cold War era: nuclear proliferation versus disarmament. This debate raised the question of whether Canada could be considered a nuclear nation during that era. While Canada did not develop its own nuclear arsenal, it did consider and offer the idea to Great Britain land for nuclear weapons testing within the country.⁴ Following the Cuban Missile Crisis and the election of Prime Minister Lester Pearson in 1963, Canada also hosted American nuclear warheads through the BOMARC missile program. 

In the years following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, debates began over whether nuclear bombs were truly necessary to defeat Japan. Though they inflicted a significant toll, the bombings occurred during the Soviet Union’s invasion of Japanese territory and the effect of Allied firebombing on major Japanese cities was sufficient to bring Japan’s military to its knees.⁵ Countering this, the need to use atomic weapons would prevent a costly Allied invasion of the Japanese archipelago to end the war conclusively. Dubbed Operation Downfall, the Allied invasion plan would have included the 6^th Canadian Infantry Division (including my grandfather) and was estimated that it would cost between 500,000 and several million casualties before the war was projected to finish in 1947.⁶ Still controversial, this debate continues to this day. 

In certain circumstances, the period after the bombings also saw the need for atonement for the scale of destruction. Though they never perpetrated any violence against the Japanese directly, the same Sahtú Dene of the Délı̨nÄ™ First Nation in the Northwest Territories who mined the Manhattan Project uranium sent a delegation of community members to Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the 53^rd anniversary of the bombings. On this occasion, they apologized for their role in the development of the nuclear weapons that were dropped on the cities.⁷  

Preparing the public

Finally, one of the most powerful legacies of the bomb is the psychological toll it impressed on the public and politicians. Psychologists and sociologists that were studying the aftereffects of the two bombings concluded the need for psychical conditioning of the population as well as for more robust civil defence measures to defend the public at large. In the development of their civil defence programs, the United States proposed the idea of creating a force of the citizenry to train for a nuclear attack and preparing them through a process of “emotional inoculation.â€⁸ This would involve the use of controlled environments to expose these citizens to the concepts of death and destruction through film screenings, morgue visits, and shelter exercises. Canada took note of the American approach in the 1950s and 1960s, opening the Canadian Civil Defence College in Arnprior, Ontario in 1953 and disclosing as much information to the public as possible for Canadians to become prepared citizens in the event of nuclear attack through publicity campaigns.⁹ In its most concrete form, it was the work of the Defence Research Board in this period that helped to inform the Diefenbaker government to design the system of emergency government bunkers, with the headquarters located in Carp, Ontario — now the site of the Diefenbunker Museum. 

Lasting legacy

Following August 6 and 9, 1945, the trajectory of human history changed forever. The expanding research and testing of nuclear weapons drew just as much from fear and derision as from awe for the power of science when brought into the realm of military matters. Long debated as to whether it was a nuclear nation or not, Canada would prepare for nuclear war based on the reality of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the potential of hydrogen bombs 1,570 times more powerful (Tsar Bomba in 1961) than those events combined. In our current era of political turmoil, marked by potential flashpoints in Ukraine, the Middle East, and Asia, Canadians would do well to learn and educate others on the ramifications when nuclear weapons are dropped as a military act.

In the months after the bombing, observers to Hiroshima came across instances of people’s forms, emblazoned as shadows on the stone surfaces of surviving buildings, frozen mid-pose as the detonation occurred. Stone tiles, traditionally used as building materials in the city and like the one in the Diefenbunker’s Canada and the Cold War exhibition, melted within 600 yards of the detonation site (Hersey noted that the stone tile’s melting point was at 1,300 degrees Celsius).¹⁰ 

There are many ways we can interpret and take away the lessons from these unprecedented events. It is important to understand that should nuclear weapons ever be used again, we are fully aware of the consequences they will unleash — and the devastating results that could leave us all in shadows.