The western Japanese city of Hiroshima was flattened on August 6, 1945, when the United States dropped a uranium bomb, wickedly codenamed Little Boy. Roughly 78,000 people were killed—nay, vaporised instantly. Tens of thousands more would die by the end of the year due to burns and radiation exposure. On August 6, 2025, thousands of people gathered in Hiroshima to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the world’s first wartime use of a nuclear bomb—as survivors, officials and representatives from 120 countries and territories marked the milestone with renewed calls for disarmament and peace. Hiroshima had been chosen as a target partly because its surrounding mountains were believed by US military strategists and planners to amplify the bomb’s force. Three days later, Nagasaki was the target of the US ire, this time round being pulverised with a plutonium bomb. With that the US had avenged the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour, though the ostensible reason for use of the nuclear weapon was to bring the simmering WWII to an end. The disproportionate use of retaliatory force stunned the world, but no one, including Japan, bestirred to accost the US. No Nuremberg-like trial was demanded for the trial of the then US president Harry S Truman.

In 1944, at the beginning of the end of WWII, the US established the Bretton Woods twins, the World Bank and the IMF, in order to be able to control the world finances, with the US dollar positioning itself as the world’s reserve currency and the default currency to pay with by importing nations........

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