Rapatronic Photographs: The Terrifying Beauty of Nuclear Tests

Harold Eugene “Doc” Edgerton (1903 – 1990) At the bottom of this post I highlight the human cost of the nuclear tests and include excerpts of poetry from the survivors. I hold that these images are horrifically beautiful and self-evidently terrifying, but the human cost in death, maiming, and ongoing health issues continues to be felt today. I post these images not to celebrate the technology or power, but as historical artefacts which must be remembered rather than celebrated. Their terrifying beauty belies the human cost. (Here)

Harold Eugene “Doc” Edgerton (1903–1990) was an American electrical engineer and MIT professor who pioneered high-speed photography. Beginning in the 1930s, he developed electronic strobe techniques that allowed events lasting microseconds to be photographed as measurable data. Through the engineering firm EG&G, which he co-founded, his work was later applied to U.S. nuclear weapons testing.

Edgerton helped develop the rapatronic camera (“Rapid Action Electronic”), a device designed to photograph extremely fast events without a mechanical shutter. It used a magneto-optical shutter with exposure times measured in tens of nanoseconds, triggered automatically by the initial flash of a nuclear detonation.

Rapatronic cameras captured the earliest moments of nuclear explosions, recording the fireball before it evolved into a mushroom cloud. The images reveal fireball geometry, surface instabilities, and asymmetries used to assess yield and implosion performance. Dark lines visible in some photographs result from vaporized support structures and served as reference points for analysis.

Most of these images were produced during U.S. atmospheric test series in the early 1950s, notably Operation Tumbler–Snapper (1952) and Operation Upshot–Knothole (1953) at the Nevada Test Site. Atmospheric testing ended with the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963, leaving the rapatronic photographs as some of the most precise visual records of nuclear detonations ever made.

In addition to still photography, Edgerton and his team used high-speed motion-picture cameras to record nuclear tests. These films capture the explosion as it evolves over microseconds to milliseconds, showing the rapid expansion of the fireball and the formation of shock waves.

Below excerpt from an old National Geographic film on Dr Edgerton..

Below I include poems by Hiroshima survivors to provide a human counterpoint to the technical images. Edgerton’s photographs and films document the mechanics of an explosion; survivor poetry records the lived experience of its aftermath. The intent is not to romanticise the imagery or celebrate technological power, but to balance it with voices that remind us what was actually affected. Give Back Peace — Sankichi Tōge (峠三吉)

Sankichi Tōge was a Hiroshima survivor, poet, and activist whose collection Genbaku Shishū (“Poems of the Atomic Bomb,” 1951) became one of the defining works of atomic bomb literature. One of his most famous pieces is engraved on a monument at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

"Give back my father, give back my mother; Give grandpa back, grandma back; Give me my sons and daughters back. Give me back myself. Give back the human race. As long as this life lasts, this life, Give back peace that will never end." (from Give Back Peace, Sankichi Tōge) 三重子 守弘"

Children’s Witness Poems — When I Was Small

The anthology When I Was Small contains poems written by Hiroshima children shortly after the bombing, offering direct first-person testimony. Many have been translated into English.

"Because I was small at the time, I was in a baby’s carriage. All at once it went dim. There was a bright flash all of a sudden, and the carriage I was in was smashed to pieces." *(from Atomic Bomb Poem, Morihiro Mieko, 三重子 守弘 age 4 at time of bombing; translation from When I Was Small)

First person account of the bombing.

“When I came to, the neighbourhood was pitch dark and I had been knocked over onto the ground. I could not breathe for the dense cloud of dust. Sobbing voices cried out, ‘Mother, mother, help me!’ I too was sobbing… It got a little brighter in front of me, and I was astonished at seeing the appearance of my friends. Some had burns all over them, some had been burned and their skin was bright red.” — Survivor testimony from Children of Hiroshima: Testament of the Boys and Girls of Hiroshima (testimonies exhibited by Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims).

• The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima (6 Aug 1945) and Nagasaki (9 Aug 1945) remain the only uses of nuclear weapons in war. An estimated 90,000–166,000 people in Hiroshima and 60,000–80,000 in Nagasaki died within weeks of the blasts from the immediate effects of heat, blast, and acute radiation sickness.

• In total, most modern historical estimates place hundreds of thousands of deaths by the end of 1945 when later deaths from injuries and radiation effects are included.

• Tens of thousands more suffered long-term health effects, including increased cancer risk, lifelong disability, and social stigma. Below are links to articles for the film Black Rain Directed by Shohei Imamura. An excellent film about the bombings and the aftermath.
  

  https://www.amazon.com/Black-Rain-Yoshiko-Tanaka/dp/B0C5FFWCWV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Rain_(1989_Japanese_film) https://bfidatadigipres.github.io/japan%202021%3Cbr%3E100%20years%20of%20japanese%20cinema/2021/12/04/black-rain/