The atomic bombings
On 6 August 1945 the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, followed three days later by a second on Nagasaki. Between 110,000 and 210,000 people were killed. Japan announced its surrender on 15 August, ending the Second World War.
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What happened
By mid-1945 Germany had surrendered, but the war in the Pacific continued, and US planners were preparing an invasion of Japan expected to cost huge numbers of lives. The Manhattan Project had just produced a working atomic bomb, tested in the New Mexico desert in July.
At 8:15 on the morning of 6 August 1945, the B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped a uranium bomb nicknamed 'Little Boy' over Hiroshima, a city of around 350,000 people with military headquarters and an army port. It exploded about 600 metres above the city, destroying almost everything within roughly 1.6 km. Three days later a plutonium bomb destroyed much of Nagasaki.
Between 110,000 and 210,000 people died by the end of 1945 in the two cities, from the blast, fire and radiation sickness, and survivors, the hibakusha, suffered long-term illness and discrimination. On 15 August Emperor Hirohito announced Japan's surrender. Whether the bombings were necessary remains debated. They remain the only nuclear weapons ever used in war, and Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park, around the ruined Genbaku Dome, became a global symbol of the case against them.
Around the same time
- Independence and Partition, Delhi, India, 1947
- The People's Republic is proclaimed, Beijing, China, 1949
- The Dust Bowl, Southern Great Plains, USA, 1930 to 1936
- Ghana wins independence, Accra, Ghana, 1957
Earlier: The Dust Bowl, 1930 to 1936 · Later: Independence and Partition, 1947
Further reading
Encyclopedia article: Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (en.wikipedia.org)