On August 6th 1945, the US bomber Enola Gay flew over the Japanese city of Hiroshima and released the bomb code-named: “Little Boy”.
The atomic weapon detonated 1,900 feet above the port and industrial centre and its immediate blast killed 80,000 people and injured another 35,000. Three days later, the specially-adapted B-29 bomber Bockscar dropped a variant atom bomb “Fat Man”, which exploded in the air 1,600 feet abov another port city, Nagasaki.
On August 14th, after refusing to do so in late July, Japanese Emperor Hirohito signed an unconditional surrender.
The US President Harry S Truman made the decision to use the weapons developed as a result of the Manhattan Project to bring an end the war. He believed continuing with conventional weapons would cost more lives. But the USA remains the only country to have used an atomic weapon during wartime and Hiroshima had been chosen specifically because it had so far been spared in America’s firebombing campaign, thus providing an opportunity to assess the effects of the new weapon.
Two thirds of the buildings in Hiroshima were flattened, and medical services were wiped out. It was claimed only 20 doctors and 150 nurses remained to tend to the injured and dying.
As well as the loss of life on the day (of whom at least 50,000 were civilians), another 60,000 residents of Hiroshima were killed by radiation and nuclear fallout before the end of 1945. The city is now home to a number of memorials and monuments to peace.
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