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On 6 and 9 August 1945, the United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively. The bombings killed between 150,000 and 246,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in an armed conflict.
Aug 8, 2015 · Colonel Paul Tibbets, a 30 year old colonel from Illinois, led the mission to drop the atomic bomb on Japan. The Enola Gay, the plane which dropped the bomb, was named in tribute to Tibbets'...
- Overview
- The bombing of Nagasaki
- The Japanese surrender
- Casualties, damage, and the legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Truman’s decision to use the bomb would be a source of discussion and controversy for decades, but the effect of Nagasaki was almost immediate. Emperor Hirohito set aside the tradition of imperial nonintervention in political affairs and declared his support for the acceptance of the terms of the Potsdam Declaration. On August 10 the Japanese government issued a statement agreeing to surrender, with the understanding that the emperor’s position as a sovereign ruler would not be challenged. This was promptly rejected, and U.S. Secretary of State James F. Byrnes responded on behalf of the Allies, “From the moment of surrender the authority of the Emperor and the Japanese Government to rule the state shall be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers who will take such steps as he deems proper to effectuate the surrender terms.” By this point Groves had notified Truman that another bomb would be ready for shipment in a matter of days.
An abortive coup by senior Japanese military leaders failed, and on August 14 the Japanese government accepted the Allied terms. The following day, Japanese broadcaster Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai (NHK) aired a recorded address from Hirohito, in which he announced Japan’s surrender. For most of the Japanese public, it was the first time they had heard the emperor’s voice. World War II formally ended on September 2, 1945, with the signing of surrender documents on the deck of the USS Missouri.
Shortly after the conclusion of hostilities, Manhattan Project physicist Philip Morrison traveled to Hiroshima at the request of the War Department to study the effects of the atomic bomb. Characterizing the bomb as “preeminently a weapon of saturation,” he said, “It destroys so quickly and so completely such a large area that defense is hopeless.” The bomb destroyed 26 of the 33 modern firefighting stations in Hiroshima, killing or severely injuring three-fourths of the firefighting personnel. Of 298 registered physicians, only 30 escaped injury and were able to care for survivors. More than 1,800 of the city’s 2,400 nurses and orderlies were killed or seriously injured. Every hospital except one was destroyed or badly damaged. Electric power plants, railroads, telephones, and telegraph lines were all out of commission. Horrified by what he had witnessed, Morrison would spend the rest of his life campaigning against nuclear weapons and a potential “third bomb.”
On June 30, 1946, the U.S. Department of War made public the results of the official investigation of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It had been compiled by the engineers and scientists of the Manhattan Project, who had access to data assembled by the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, the British mission to Japan, and the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission. This report stated that Hiroshima suffered 135,000 casualties, or more than half of its population. The greatest number of these occurred immediately after the bombing. Nagasaki, a city of 195,000, suffered 64,000 casualties. Attempts to quantify the death and suffering at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessarily estimates at best, and this earliest effort omitted significant population groups. Most notable among these were Korean forced labourers, thousands of whom were present in both cities.
The report stated that the effects of the atomic bombs on human beings were of three main types: (1) burns, including flash burns caused by radiation, (2) mechanical injuries resulting from flying debris, falling buildings, and blast effects, and (3) radiation injuries caused entirely by gamma rays and neutrons emitted at the instant of explosion. Burns caused about 60 percent of the deaths in Hiroshima and about 80 percent in Nagasaki. Falling debris and flying glass caused 30 percent of the deaths in Hiroshima and 14 percent in Nagasaki. Radiation caused 10 percent of the deaths in Hiroshima and 6 percent in Nagasaki. No harmful amount of persistent radioactivity was found in either of the two cities in the months after the bombings.
The report concluded that, in Hiroshima, virtually all structures within 1 mile (1.6 km) of Ground Zero were completely destroyed, except for buildings made of reinforced concrete. In those buildings that remained standing, interiors were gutted and doors, frames, and all windows were blown out. More than 60,000 of the estimated 90,000 buildings in Hiroshima were destroyed or severely damaged. In Nagasaki reinforced concrete buildings with 10-inch (25-cm) walls situated 2,000 feet (610 metres) from Ground Zero collapsed.
For all the death and destruction that they caused, the bombs seem to have provided an unlikely guarantee to Japan’s territorial integrity. Documents unveiled after the collapse of the Soviet Union revealed that Stalin had been prepared to occupy and potentially annex Hokkaido in the two weeks between Hirohito’s address and the formal Japanese surrender. Having already been promised the Kuril Islands under the terms of the Yalta agreements (February 1945), Stalin saw an opportunity to claim the northernmost of Japan’s home islands and effectively turn the Sea of Okhotsk into a Soviet lake. Pressure from Truman—and the implied threat of the atomic bomb—caused Stalin to call off the scheduled invasion just days before it was to take place. Hokkaido would be spared the fate of North Korea in the postwar years.
Extensive reconstruction began in both cities during the U.S. occupation of Japan. In Hiroshima a comprehensive planning scheme was enacted in 1950, and the city quickly became an industrial centre for the region. The main factory of the Mazda Motor Corporation survived the bombing, thanks to a quirk of topography, and the growth of the Japanese auto industry would fuel much of Hiroshima’s rebirth. In Nagasaki the portion of the Urakami Basin devastated by the bomb was rebuilt, while large parts of the historical city survived the war and would serve as a major draw for tourists. Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki became spiritual centres of the movement to ban nuclear weapons. Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima is dedicated to those killed by the bomb, and the ruined shell of the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall (now known as the Atomic Bomb Dome) was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1996.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Aug 5, 2020 · This article contains graphic depictions of the atomic bombings’ aftermath. The survivor quotes chosen from interviews with Sakaguchi were spoken in Japanese and translated by the photographer.
- Meilan Solly
Kamikaze (カミカゼ, Kamikaze),[4] better known by his hero alias Atomic Samurai (アトミック侍さむらい, Atomikku Zamurai), is the S-Class Rank 3 professional hero of the Hero Association and is recognized as one of its most powerful heroes.
2 days ago · World War II - Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Atomic Bombs: On August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima: the combined heat and blast pulverized everything in the explosion's immediate vicinity and immediately killed some 70,000 people (the death toll passed 100,000 by the end of the year).
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Aug 6, 2015 · Their stories were stifled from the very beginning. Directly after the war in US-occupied Japan (1945-1952) even the word “atomic bomb”, genbaku in Japanese, was censored. And when the US left...
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