廣島核爆經典照片並非真的蘑菇雲

Later this week, President Obama plans to visit a memorial in Hiroshima, Japan, that displays a large photograph of the city’s destruction seven decades ago. The striking image is typically identified as a mushroom cloud. But nuclear experts say it actually shows billowing smoke from a raging firestorm.

美國總統奧巴馬計劃本週晚些時候訪問日本廣島的一個紀念館，那裏有一張醒目的大照片，顯示了該市七十年前遭到核轟炸的景象，人們通常認爲那是蘑菇雲。但核專家說，圖中顯示的其實是熊熊火焰產生的滾滾濃煙。

“This is not a mushroom cloud,” said Richard L. Garwin, a noted bomb designer and longtime adviser to Washington on nuclear arms.

“那不是蘑菇雲，”著名的核彈設計師、長期在華盛擔任頓核軍備顧問的理查德·L·加文(Richard L. Garwin)說。

Kevin Roark, a spokesman at the Los Alamos weapons laboratory in New Mexico, which made the Hiroshima bomb, known as Little Boy, said the image showed “a smoke plume from the fires that followed.”

新墨西哥州洛斯阿拉莫斯(Los Alamos)武器實驗室的發言人凱文·洛克(Kevin Roark)說，圖片顯示的是“爆炸後烈火升騰的濃煙”。轟炸廣島的原子彈“小男孩”(Little Boy)就是該實驗室製造的。

Military experts say the cloud and its dark shadow can be seen as a kind of sundial that suggests when an American plane took the photograph. John Coster-Mullen, an expert on the Hiroshima bomb, put the time as just before noon — more than three hours after the strike on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945.

軍事專家說，煙雲及其陰影可以看作是一種日晷，顯示了美國飛機拍攝這張照片的時間。研究廣島原子彈的專家約翰·科斯特-馬倫(John Coster-Mullen)說，拍攝時間接近正午——1945年8月6日早上襲擊開始的三個多小時後。

The towering plume, he said in an email, “is most definitely not the original mushroom cloud, which had long since dissipated.”

他在一封電郵說，“最初的蘑菇雲早已消散，絕不是這一道”升騰的濃煙。

Mr. Roark said the cloud, if it were nuclear in nature, would be larger than the one resulting from the most powerful bomb the United States ever detonated, which was a thousand times stronger than Little Boy.

洛克說，美國至今引爆過的最大核彈威力比“小男孩”強一千倍，但蘑菇雲都不如這團煙雲大。

This is the most famous image of the Hiroshima mushroom cloud, which was taken minutes after the Enola Gay, a B-29 bomber, dropped the bomb that changed history. The photographer was the plane’s tail gunner, Bob Caron, a native of Brooklyn. The photograph he took shows the area near the ground beginning to boil with dark smoke.

這是廣島蘑菇雲最有名的照片，是在B-29轟炸機艾諾拉·蓋伊號(Enola Gay)投下了改變了歷史的核彈數分鐘之後拍攝的。拍攝者是飛機的尾炮手、土生土長的布魯克林人鮑勃·卡隆(Bob Caron)。從他拍攝的這張照片中可以看到，地面附近的區域升起了大量黑煙。

“I saw fires springing up,” Mr. Caron once recalled. “Pretty soon, it was hard to see anything because of the smoke.”

“我看到了火焰竄起，”卡隆有一次回憶說。“很快，由於煙霧太濃，什麼東西都看不清了。”

Hiroshima was a tinderbox. Survivors said paper, wood, and blackout curtains burst into flames. The firestorm raged over miles.

廣島是一個火藥桶。倖存者說，紙、木材，遮光窗簾起火燃燒。火災連綿數英里。

After the war, the United States conducted more than 200 tests of nuclear devices in the atmosphere and carefully photographed their mushroom clouds. One of the most powerful was code-named Ivy Mike, pictured here.

戰爭結束後，美國在大氣層進行了200多次核彈測試，並且仔細地拍下它們的蘑菇雲。其中威力最強大的核彈之一代號爲“常春藤麥克”(Ivy Mike)，這裏有它的圖。

“The Effects of Nuclear Weapons,” a federal guide, said the mushroom clouds typically reached their maximum heights in about 10 minutes and could linger “for about an hour or more before being dispersed by the winds.”

聯邦指南手冊《核武器的影響》(The Effects of Nuclear Weapons)說，蘑菇雲通常在10分鐘左右升至最大高度，“在被驅散風前，可保持約一個小時或更長時間。”

The first thing a visitor sees at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum is a large blowup of the towering cloud. It stretches floor to ceiling. Period lettering in its lower-right-hand corner identifies the scene as “Hiroshima (atomic) strike.” Otherwise, the image speaks for itself, a grim prelude to the museum’s tour of destruction.

前往廣島和平紀念資料館(Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum)，你第一眼看到的就是高聳的煙雲圖像，從地面直到天花板。右下角寫着“廣島核襲擊”。就算沒有字，這幅圖像也很直白，它是一個嚴峻的前奏，爲博物館展現的毀滅之旅拉開序幕。

The museum distributes the image to news agencies that give the photograph’s original source as the United States Army, which in 1945 ran the Air Force. Recently, The Associated Press called the image a mushroom cloud, as did a caption for the A.P. photograph accompanying an article in The New York Times about Mr. Obama’s impending visit.

該博物館將這幅圖像分發給各新聞機構，稱照片來自美國陸軍，1945年時美國空軍也由陸軍負責。近日，美聯社(Associated Press)稱圖中是蘑菇雲，在《紐約時報》一篇關於奧巴馬即將訪問廣島的文章中，爲美聯社這張照片提供的圖釋也說它是蘑菇雲。

So too, “The Making of the Atomic Bomb,” a 1986 book that received a Pulitzer, described the image as “the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima.”

1986年的普利策獲獎圖書《原子彈的建造》(The Making of the Atomic Bomb)也把這幅圖稱爲“廣島上空的蘑菇雲”。

Mr. Coster-Mullen, author of “Atom Bombs” and, in his youth, a photographer for the Daily News in Beloit, Wis., called the recurring misidentification a case of simple confusion.

《原子彈》(Atom Bombs)的作者科斯特-馬倫年輕時曾是威斯康星州貝洛伊特《每日新聞》(Daily News)的攝影師，他說人們一再誤認蘑菇雲，其實就是搞混了。

“It’s dramatic,” he said of the photograph. “People compare it to the wimpy little mushroom cloud and say: ‘Let’s show this one. It’s really big.’”

“這張的效果很震撼，”他說這張照片。“人們把它和小小的蘑菇雲比較了一下，說：‘我們就放這張圖吧，這張真的很大。”