One air battle was so lopsided in favor of the Americans that it was called a turkey shoot. Japanese suicide pilots crashed their planes into American vessels. Huge ships went to the bottom with their crews. Naval and air battles had been sudden, brief and deadly. The fighting on land, at sea and in the air had been savage. At the time of the Hiroshima bombing, an average of 5,000 were still dying each week.
More than 100,000 American soldiers, sailors and Marines had already been killed in the Pacific since Japan’s attack on the U.S. (Matt McLain/The Washington Post) A shortened war, a dreadful cost This week, commemorations are scheduled across the country, with socially distanced candlelight vigils and the tolling of bells, and because of the covid-19, ceremonies and remembrances have moved online. It would be the start of a frightful era of weapons that could defy control and menace civilization.īut as “Dimples Eight Two” picked up speed that morning, its mission was born of its time: deliver a blow that the United States hoped might finally end the global butchery of World War II. Tens of thousands more would die the same way at Nagasaki a few days later, and the world would subsequently be hearing about megatons, mutual assured destruction, proliferation, nuclear winter, meltdowns and dirty bombs. It was an important enemy military site with a wartime population about 280,000, according to the historians Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts.Īlmost half of them were about to be incinerated, crushed, and irradiated by the crude atomic weapon named “Little Boy” that the Enola Gay carried. (AP)įifteen hundred miles to the north-northwest, under a waning crescent moon, lay a 400-year-old Japanese city most Americans probably had never heard of but whose name was about to be etched into the pages of history. Shumard, assistant engineer and Staff Sgt. Jacob Besser, radar countermeasures officer.
Tibbets, 509th Composite Group commanding officer and pilot Capt. John Porter, ground maintenance officer Capt. Find out more about the authors who wrote them.This undated photo includes most members of 12-man crew of the bomber that dropped the atomic bomb over Hiroshima posing in the Mariana Islands in 1945 during World War II. The fact files in this timeline were commissioned by the BBC in June 2003 and September 2005. It was the first time his voice had been heard on the radio.Īfter the war, Hiroshima was rebuilt as a peace memorial city and the closest surviving building to the epicentre was designated the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. At midday on the following day, Emperor Hirohito broadcast the news to the Japanese people. On 14 August, Japan agreed to the Allies' terms of surrender. 'Obscene in its greedy clawing at the earth, swelling as if with its regurgitation of all the life that it had consumed.' He later recalled the cloud caused by the atomic blast in Martin Gilbert's Second World War: The final death toll was calculated as at least 50,000.Īmong those in the plane that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki was the British pilot Leonard Cheshire. About 40,000 people were killed instantly and a third of the city was destroyed. The original target was Kokura, but this was obscured by cloud so the bomb was dropped on nearby Nagasaki, an important port. On the morning of 9 August, the Americans dropped a second, bigger atomic bomb. In addition, it may also have been a way of demonstrating American military superiority over the Soviet Union. The Allies feared that any conventional attempt to invade the Japanese home islands would result in enormous casualties, and the bomb was seen as a way of bringing the war against Japan to a swift conclusion. Hiroshima was chosen because it had not been targeted during the US Air Force's conventional bombing raids on Japan, and was therefore regarded as being a suitable place to test the effects of an atomic bomb. Thousands of people were made homeless and fled the devastated city. And the intense heat of the explosion then created many fires, which consumed Hiroshima and lasted for three days, trapping and killing many of the survivors of the initial blast.
The blast destroyed more than ten square kilometres (six square miles) of the city. As well as residents of Hiroshima, the victims included Koreans who had been forced to come to Japan as labourers, and American prisoners-of-war who were imprisoned in Hiroshima. The final death toll was calculated at 135,000. Many more died of the long-term effects of radiation sickness. The heat from the bomb was so intense that some people simply vanished in the explosion. Between 60,000 and 80,000 people were killed instantly. The bomb was dropped by parachute and exploded 580m (1,900ft) above the ground. On the morning of 6 August 1945 an American B-29 bomber, the 'Enola Gay', dropped the first atomic bomb used in warfare on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.