A bomb is a bomb, right? Some are bigger, some are smaller, but basically they all go “Boom!” and blow things up.

Right…unless it’s a thermonuclear bomb, commonly called an “A-bomb” (or its big brother, the H-bomb). Then it’s an explosive device that not only breaks things into little pieces - it poisons them and the ground and everything else, living and nonliving, for thousands of years.

Gila Friends Meeting (Quaker) invites you to join them in their annual Hiroshima Peace Day commemoration this Sunday, August 8, at Gough Park. Bring a chair to the pavilion at 12:30 p.m. and join others in considering the terrifying power unleashed 76 years ago when the United States detonated an atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945, and another one over Nagasaki, Japan, three days later.

Those two bombs, the only nuclear weapons ever used in warfare, were game-changers.

The one used on Hiroshima, dubbed “Little Boy,” had an explosive power of 15,000 tons of TNT. “Fat Man,” the bomb used on Nagasaki, was equivalent to 21,000 tons of TNT. It was only afterwards that the world learned how deadly and lingering the radioactive after-effects of atomic weapons and their radioactive components can be.

Though the subsequent arms race led to a worldwide arsenal of 70,000 nuclear weapons, various treaties and agreements have reduced that number to an estimated 13,100 in 2021. Consider how much “safer” we are when 600 of those nuclear weapons are the B63 bombs in the U.S. arsenal. The B63 is comparable to 1,200 kilotons of TNT; it is 80 times more powerful than Little Boy in sheer explosive power, not to mention the everlasting effects of the radiation! While Little Boy killed the equivalent of 3/4ths of the population of Santa Fe today (83,922), just one of today’s B63 bombs could more than obliterate the entire Denver metropolitan population of 2,862,000 people!

The August 8 commemoration will begin with a period of silent contemplation, after which there will be a time for sharing of views on the continuing nuclear threat. Attendees will also be able to view ten War Resisters League posters detailing the events leading up to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings and the resulting nuclear arms race.