Published since 2005. San Francisco is a city that belongs to the people of the world. Hence this blog has a global focus. The name "Sam Spade's San Francisco" refers to an exciting era in the City's history, the time of Dashiell Hammett's fictional gumshoe and San Francisco character, Sam Spade. My name is Tom Dunn and I edit the blog. I'm not as exciting as Sam Spade, but I am definitely a San Francisco character.Contact or on Twitter -- Search blog below.
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Tuesday, March 27, 2007
The Little Boy at Hunter's Point
With Mayor Newsom's latest suggestions for Hunter's Point making the evening news I thought it might be a good time to take a brief look at Hunter's Point history.
Little Boy was the code name for the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945. Little Boy was more like Baby Huey. It was ten-feet long and about two and a half feet wide and it weighed a whopping 8,900 pounds. Little Boy killed approximately 140,000 people and along with the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, brought World War II to a screeching stop. The Japanese surrendered unconditionally.
The photo shows Little Boy's mushroom cloud forming over Hiroshima, Japan in 1945.
Little Boy, which contained highly lethal levels of uranium-235, was built at the Los Alamos labs and then transported all the way out to San Francisco where it was stored at Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard. For awhile we were storing the world's first atomic bomb right here in San Francisco!
Little Boy was loaded aboard the USS Indianapolis, which steamed out through the Golden Gate and transported the bomb at record-setting speed to Tinian Island in the South Pacific where it was loaded aboard a B-29 Superfortress for the history-making flight over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. It was the first time humankind dropped a nuclear bomb on other human beings.
Hunter's Point, like it or not, is forever linked to the world's first atomic bomb and the annihilation of 140,000 people living in Hiroshima.
There is nothing at Hunter's Point memorializing Little Boy's presence because of the dark pall of death that still hangs over the nuclear bomb's memory. In a sense it was the full-swing closure this country needed after the terrible attack by the Japanese Empire on Pearl Harbor four years earlier in 1941. It gave new and horribly serious meaning to the term over kill.
1 comments:
Anonymous said...
I want to add that on July 16, 1945, with total secrecy, the U.S.S. Indianapolis left San Francisco with two atomic bombs. Its destination was the island of Tinian. On its secret trip it set a new speed record between the Farallones and Hawaii of 74 1/2 hours.
Then on July 30, 1945 the U.S.S. Indianapolis was sunk by a Japanese submarine after delivering the atomic bombs at Guam. The ship went down 450 miles off th Leyte coast. 883 crew members lost their lives in the war's worst naval disaster.
On August 14, 1945 At 4 p.m., Pacific War Time, President Truman announced the surrender of Japan. Spontaneous demonstrations broke out in San Francisco. All 30 air raid sirens were sounded, and thousands of people ran into the streets all over the city. Ticker tape and shredded telephone books were thrown from windows in the Financial District. Chief of Police Dullea reported that rioting broke out during the evening hours of the celebration.
Japanese prisoners of war housed at Angel Island had no apparent reaction to the end of the war. A military spokesman said, "It is typical of the attitude they have had all along. They have been very careful not to show any reaction of emotion regarding the war, or the series of Allied victories."
Finally, on August 15, 1945 the RCA shortwave radio station in San Francisco transmitted to station JUM, Tokio, this message for Emperor Hirohito from Gen. MacArthur: "I have been designated as the supreme commander for the Allied powers, the United States, China, the United Kingdom and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and empowered to arrange for the cessation of hostilities to the earliest possible date. It is desired that a radio station in Tokio be designated for continuous use in handling communications between this headquarters and your headquarters."
August 18, 1945
"Peace riots" ended in San Francisco. Eleven people died and 1000 were injured. More than 100 windows were broken on Market St. District Attorney Edmund G. "Pat" Brown promised a full report on the disturbance to the grand jury.
Today Brown's son, Jerry Brown is California Attorney General.
1 comments:
I want to add that on July 16, 1945, with total secrecy, the U.S.S. Indianapolis left San Francisco with two atomic bombs. Its destination was the island of Tinian. On its secret trip it set a new speed record between the Farallones and Hawaii of 74 1/2 hours.
Then on July 30, 1945 the U.S.S. Indianapolis was sunk by a Japanese submarine after delivering the atomic bombs at Guam. The ship went down 450 miles off th Leyte coast. 883 crew members lost their lives in the war's worst naval disaster.
On August 14, 1945 At 4 p.m., Pacific War Time, President Truman announced the surrender of Japan. Spontaneous demonstrations broke out in San Francisco. All 30 air raid sirens were sounded, and thousands of people ran into the streets all over the city. Ticker tape and shredded telephone books were thrown from windows in the Financial District. Chief of Police Dullea reported that rioting broke out during the evening hours of the celebration.
Japanese prisoners of war housed at Angel Island had no apparent reaction to the end of the war. A military spokesman said, "It is typical of the attitude they have had all along. They have been very careful not to show any reaction of emotion regarding the war, or the series of Allied victories."
Finally, on August 15, 1945 the RCA shortwave radio station in San Francisco transmitted to station JUM, Tokio, this message for Emperor Hirohito from Gen. MacArthur: "I have been designated as the supreme commander for the Allied powers, the United States, China, the United Kingdom and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and empowered to arrange for the cessation of hostilities to the earliest possible date. It is desired that a radio station in Tokio be designated for continuous use in handling communications between this headquarters and your headquarters."
August 18, 1945
"Peace riots" ended in San Francisco. Eleven people died and 1000 were injured. More than 100 windows were broken on Market St. District Attorney Edmund G. "Pat" Brown promised a full report on the disturbance to the grand jury.
Today Brown's son, Jerry Brown is California Attorney General.
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