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Portrait of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

History · The 20th century

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

6 and 9 August 1945

Nuclear warfare — the only use of atomic weapons in war

The only use of nuclear weapons in armed conflict. On 6 August 1945 a United States B-29 named Enola Gay, flown by Colonel Paul Tibbets, dropped a uranium bomb codenamed Little Boy on a Japanese city; three days later a second B-29, Bockscar, dropped a plutonium bomb codenamed Fat Man on its secondary target after cloud obscured the primary. The weapons came from the Manhattan Project, directed scientifically by J. Robert Oppenheimer and tested at Trinity in New Mexico on 16 July 1945. Estimates of the dead by the end of 1945 range from about 90,000 to 146,000 in the first city and 39,000 to 80,000 in the second, counting deaths from blast, fire and radiation. The Soviet Union declared war on Japan on 8 August; Emperor Hirohito announced surrender on 15 August and it was signed on 2 September 1945.

How to spot them

  • ▸Two Japanese cities, three days apart, in August 1945
  • ▸A uranium weapon called Little Boy and a plutonium weapon called Fat Man
  • ▸The aircraft was a B-29 named after the pilot's mother
  • ▸The second target was chosen only because cloud covered the first
  • ▸The only occasion on which nuclear weapons have been used in war

What happened

The first test of the new weapon in the New Mexico desert on 16 July 1945 (1945)

The Trinity test at Alamogordo, watched by Oppenheimer, Groves and the Manhattan Project scientists

A B-29 named after the pilot's mother, releasing a uranium bomb at 8.15 in the morning (1945)

The Enola Gay, flown by Colonel Paul Tibbets, on 6 August 1945

A second mission that bombed its alternative target because cloud covered Kokura (1945)

Bockscar, flown by Major Charles Sweeney, on 9 August 1945

The surviving skeletal dome of an exhibition hall, kept as a ruin and now a World Heritage Site (1996)

The Genbaku Dome, near the hypocentre, inscribed by UNESCO in 1996

A recorded imperial broadcast telling subjects to endure the unendurable (1945)

The Jewel Voice Broadcast of 15 August 1945; most listeners had never heard the emperor speak

John Hersey's 1946 magazine account that followed six survivors (1946)

It filled an entire issue of The New Yorker and was published as a book the same year

Quick-fire facts

  • •The bombs were products of the Manhattan Project, led militarily by General Leslie Groves and scientifically by J. Robert Oppenheimer at Los Alamos
  • •Little Boy was a uranium-235 gun-type device; Fat Man used implosion of a plutonium core, the design tested at Trinity
  • •The first bomb was dropped at 8.15 a.m. local time on 6 August and the second at 11.02 a.m. on 9 August 1945
  • •Kokura was the primary target of the second mission and was spared by cloud and smoke
  • •Estimates of deaths by the end of 1945 are about 90,000 to 146,000 in the first city and 39,000 to 80,000 in the second
  • •Survivors are known in Japanese as hibakusha and receive state support; many suffered long-term radiation illness
  • •The Soviet Union declared war on Japan and invaded Manchuria on 8–9 August 1945, between the two bombings
  • •Japan announced surrender on 15 August 1945 and signed the Instrument of Surrender aboard USS Missouri on 2 September
  • •Tsutomu Yamaguchi, officially recognised as a survivor of both bombings, died in 2010
  • •Barack Obama in 2016 became the first serving US president to visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park

Drill it — 10 cards

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Sources