Hiroshima, Nagasaki: Remembering the Only Nuclear Attacks in History
HIROSHIMA — Seventy-nine years ago, two Japanese cities became the sites of the only nuclear attacks ever carried out in war — events that would change the course of history and lead to Japan’s surrender on August 15, 1945, ending World War Two.
On the morning of August 6, 1945, at 8:15 a.m., a U.S. B-29 Superfortress bomber, the Enola Gay, dropped a 10,000-pound uranium-235 bomb over Hiroshima. The weapon, codenamed “Little Boy”, detonated about 580 metres above the city’s center. The blast unleashed heat of roughly 4,000 degrees Celsius, flattening more than half of the city’s buildings within a radius of 4.5 kilometers. Around 78,000 people died instantly, and by the end of that year, the death toll had climbed to about 140,000.
Three days later, on August 9, at 11:02 a.m., another B-29 bomber targeted Nagasaki with a 10,000-pound plutonium-239 bomb nicknamed “Fat Man”. Exploding 500 metres above the ground, it killed around 27,000 people instantly. By the close of 1945, acute radiation sickness and related injuries had brought the toll to about 70,000.
Today, Japan officially recognises the total deaths — including those from radiation-related illnesses in the decades since — as 344,306 in Hiroshima and 198,785 in Nagasaki, according to records dated August 2024.
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