Casualty total for Hiroshima and Nagasaki

What is the most accurate estimate for deaths as a result of the bombings, including those who died after due to the effects of radiation, burns and such?
 
There really isn't that accurate an estimate due to the uncertainty of how many people were present in the cities, but the USSBS estimates ~110,000 combined dead from immediate effects. See http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/USSBS/AtomicEffects/ for the very interesting study. Of particular note is the fact that there were a total of zero radiation casualties apart from those exposed to the blasts themselves.
 
There really isn't that accurate an estimate due to the uncertainty of how many people were present in the cities, but the USSBS estimates ~110,000 combined dead from immediate effects. See http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/USSBS/AtomicEffects/ for the very interesting study. Of particular note is the fact that there were a total of zero radiation casualties apart from those exposed to the blasts themselves.

Wow, that is rather interesting. You see I am debating with a friend of mine who is Russophile. One of those types that think the US is like the Empire and Putin is Luke Skywalker. He asserts that the atomic bombs caused over a million deaths, a terribly high estimate of course.

Any similar sources on the bombing of Tokyo?
 
The bombings itselfs killed between 150-200 thousands of people and there are aroung 450 thousands hibakushas names in the memorial, putting the casualities (not necessarily from the blast) between 600-650 thousands people.

ps.: Arguing with Putinboos is as bad as arguing with Nazis, srly.

EDIT: The Tokyo firebombings killed around 200,000 peoples and displaced around 1,000,000.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
There really isn't that accurate an estimate due to the uncertainty of how many people were present in the cities, but the USSBS estimates ~110,000 combined dead from immediate effects. See http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/USSBS/AtomicEffects/ for the very interesting study. Of particular note is the fact that there were a total of zero radiation casualties apart from those exposed to the blasts themselves.
Radiation casualties is incredibly hard to actually detect, to be honest. I mean, an elevated cancer risk means that - say - 670 people instead of 650 people in a cohort of 10,000 die of cancer over a given time slice, but none of those deaths can be directly attributed to the radiation - any more than shaving a die so it falls on six 17% of the time instead of 16.7% of the time means you can look in from the outside and say "There! That one of the fifty times he got a six was the illegal one!"
 

jahenders

Banned
Several sources below -- consensus is around 200K. But your Putin-fan friend sounds like the kind of guy that gets Holocaust estimates from Nazis or facts about the Middle East from Ayatollahs.

BTW, if you want to watch a very interesting documentary of firsthand accounts (both people on the ground in Hiroshima and the aircrews), check out "Hiroshima: BBC History" on Netflix. I thought it was awesome.

BBC shows 185K
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/timeline/factfiles/nonflash/a6652262.shtml

The Atomic Archive shows 199K

Hiroshima Nagasaki Pre-raid population 255,000 195,000 Dead 66,000 39,000 Injured 69,000 25,000 Total Casualties 135,000 64,000 http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/MED/med_chp10.shtml


Children of the Bomb study at UCLA says 225K, but claims that may be low.
It is not unlikely that the estimates of killed and wounded in Hiroshima (150,000) and Nagasaki (75,000) are over conservative.
http://www.aasc.ucla.edu/cab/200708230009.html

Wikipedia says 129K-246K:
Within the first two to four months of the bombings, the acute effects of the atomic bombings killed 90,000166,000 people in Hiroshima and 39,000–80,000 in Nagasaki; roughly half of the deaths in each city occurred on the first day.


What is the most accurate estimate for deaths as a result of the bombings, including those who died after due to the effects of radiation, burns and such?
 

ThePest179

Banned
Wow, that is rather interesting. You see I am debating with a friend of mine who is Russophile. One of those types that think the US is like the Empire and Putin is Luke Skywalker. He asserts that the atomic bombs caused over a million deaths, a terribly high estimate of course.

Your best bet is to stop being friends with him.
 
The japanese ought to know better that any external sources how many died from the atomic bombings. So imo credence goes to their figures first.

ps.: Arguing with Putinboos is as bad as arguing with Nazis, srly.
It's same doing that with the opposite "stronkians".

It really is becoming a bad problem, especially with RT news and Sputnik news spouting on about how Putin is god
Again, the "opposition" is just as bad. As the saying goes, you have his side, her side and the truth.

But we digress here considerably, probably this subject is more fitting for the Chat section.
 
People kept (and are keeping even today) dying prematurely of radiation induced diseases (which do not limit to just tumors).
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
Wow, that is rather interesting. You see I am debating with a friend of mine who is Russophile. One of those types that think the US is like the Empire and Putin is Luke Skywalker. He asserts that the atomic bombs caused over a million deaths, a terribly high estimate of course.

Any similar sources on the bombing of Tokyo?

No really hard number exist for either case.

It was the conclusion of the USSBS (Pacific) that Tokyo was the deadlier than either nuclear strike. Even that is very much a SWAG, since no reliable Japanese government figures exist on population for any of the three targeted cities.

It is known that 100K+ were confirmed dead in Tokyo, with lower totals for Hiroshima (~80K) and Nagasaki (~65K) confirmed. After that the guessing game begins. All three cities had large number of refugees/recent worker arrivals that were never part of any formal record. I've seen Tokyo figures over 200K, from decently researched sources, and seen 100K described as the absolute ceiling for the firebombing, with Hiroshima ranging from 70-240K and Nagasaki from 60-200K

Both the nuclear targets were actually something of magnets for victims of other attacks since no major strikes had destroyed the residential/light industrial areas. Combined with the reality that number of death by secondary effects like radiation are literally impossible to pin down (is a cancer that develops 30 years later related to exposure or is it from another source?), the true death toll will never be clear.

A million is vastly greater than any estimate for civilian deaths from all causes on the Home Islands and any I have ever seen.
 
I wouldn't trust USSBS for shit on radiation casualties. We have eyewitness accounts of people who were otherwise completely unaffected by the thermal pulse and blast wave dying from acute radiation sickness months after the bombing. I do doubt that radiation deaths amount to anything more then a quarter of 60-80,000 immediate deaths at most. And trying to separate the long-term effects of radiation exposure (ie: stuff like cancer and leukemia) from potential natural causes after the 1940s is an exercise in futility.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
I wouldn't trust USSBS for shit on radiation casualties. We have eyewitness accounts of people who were otherwise completely unaffected by the thermal pulse and blast wave dying from acute radiation sickness months after the bombing. I do doubt that radiation deaths amount to anything more then a quarter of 60-80,000 immediate deaths at most. And trying to separate the long-term effects of radiation exposure (ie: stuff like cancer and leukemia) from potential natural causes after the 1940s is an exercise in futility.
Indeed - we have anecdotal evidence suggesting there were some secondary radiation deaths, and we know that there have to have been some tertiary deaths simply because we know radiation exposure ups lifetime cancer rates, but the latter two are impossible to quantify precisely.

What we do know is that the two strikes were relatively clean as far as fallout went, and that there were people killed by secondary radiation, and we have both lowball and highball.

The conclusion I tend to come to is that Tokyo was deadlier in direct casualties but that it was also bigger and less likely to have down-the-line deaths. The nuclear weapons attacks were devastating, but not devastating enough to result in seven-figure deaths.
 
Indeed - we have anecdotal evidence suggesting there were some secondary radiation deaths, and we know that there have to have been some tertiary deaths simply because we know radiation exposure ups lifetime cancer rates, but the latter two are impossible to quantify precisely.

What we do know is that the two strikes were relatively clean as far as fallout went, and that there were people killed by secondary radiation, and we have both lowball and highball.

Agreed.

The conclusion I tend to come to is that Tokyo was deadlier in direct casualties but that it was also bigger and less likely to have down-the-line deaths.
I should point out that the Tokyo raid took much longer to do it's killing via direct effects: 6 hours compared to the less then 5 minutes for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. When put in that perspective, Hiroshima probably ranks as the most people killed in the shortest possible time by human agency in history.
 
I recall reading somewhere that all Hibakusha (as defined as people who survived the bombings) deaths are attributed to bomb effects and thus contribute to the death toll, which will thus presumably keep increasing until every person who was in those cities at the time has died.

A quote in this AP sourced piece from yesterday seems to confirm this:

"There were 5,359 hibakusha who died over the past year, bringing the total death toll from the Hiroshima bombing to 297,684."

This seems fallacious, as average mortality rates from all causes would have resulted in the deaths of many of those people over the intervening seven decades anyway, regardless of bomb effects.

Can anyone confirm/nix if that is actually the case?
 

jahenders

Banned
I actually heard something abut the Hibakusha on NPR last night. They didn't specifically cite this form of counting, but it seemed in line with other things they said.

The idea is rather ludicrous as you note. By that logic, deaths attributed to the Holocaust, or Stalin, or the Japanese, etc would be MUCH higher because it would include every person who was even temporarily a victim of them. So, if they want to use that argument, then Japan should be sending letters of apology to the family of every veteran of the war in the pacific who dies.

I recall reading somewhere that all Hibakusha (as defined as people who survived the bombings) deaths are attributed to bomb effects and thus contribute to the death toll, which will thus presumably keep increasing until every person who was in those cities at the time has died.

A quote in this AP sourced piece from yesterday seems to confirm this:

"There were 5,359 hibakusha who died over the past year, bringing the total death toll from the Hiroshima bombing to 297,684."

This seems fallacious, as average mortality rates from all causes would have resulted in the deaths of many of those people over the intervening seven decades anyway, regardless of bomb effects.

Can anyone confirm/nix if that is actually the case?
 
A lot less than in the firebombing of Tokyo, but ultimately people don't seem to care about that event. I remember in high-school History Class we had a whole page devoted to Hiroshima and only a tiny 1 sentence caption at the bottom of the page for the firebombing of Tokyo.
 
Radiation casualties is incredibly hard to actually detect, to be honest. I mean, an elevated cancer risk means that - say - 670 people instead of 650 people in a cohort of 10,000 die of cancer over a given time slice, but none of those deaths can be directly attributed to the radiation - any more than shaving a die so it falls on six 17% of the time instead of 16.7% of the time means you can look in from the outside and say "There! That one of the fifty times he got a six was the illegal one!"
It gets worse. When calculating safe radiation dose rates (e.g. as a classified radiation worker I'm permitted a dose of 50mSv/year, since that is considered to give an acceptably low mortality rate), we have precisely two data points - Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Linear-No-Threshold model (which assumes that risk of cancer is purely down to accumulated dose and not to dose rate) is then applied.

What this means is that the prevalence of cancer among Hibakusha is actually to some extent being back-calculated from the cancer rates among those receiving very high doses of prompt radiation (i.e. those close to the bombs when they went off). The problem is that we're fairly sure the LNT model is rubbish, since areas with high natural background radiation levels do not have the elevated cancer rates predicted by it - in fact there is some very weak evidence that the reverse might in fact be the case, and that low dose radiation may in fact have a mild protective effect. For acute doses this isn't a big deal - the cancers show up quickly and are easily distinguished in population studies. The problem is with those showing up 30 years later, we just don't have an available control population so are largely modelling these from the high-dose LNT model, scaled down to their exposure.
 
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