World War II Day by Day

509th Composite Group HQ, Tinian, Mariana Islands · August 6, 1945

For several months the U.S. had dropped more than 63 mil­lion leaf­lets across Japan, warning civil­ians of devas­tating aerial bombings. Many Japa­nese cities suffered ter­rible damage from napalm bombs that set their wood-frame buildings on fire. On August 1, 1945, some 80 per­cent of Hachioji, a rail choke point near Tokyo, was burned out by napalm. Sixty-five per­cent of Nagaoka was wasted the same day. Nearly 100 percent of Toyama was incinerated.

On this date, August 6, 1945, things were dif­ferent. Hiro­shima, a city of 280,000 civil­ians and 43,000 sol­diers on the Japanese mainland of Honshū, was incin­er­ated by a five-ton ura­nium-filled bomb code­named “Little Boy,” the first of two atomic bombs ever dropped on an enemy nation. A blinding flash lasting per­haps a tenth of a second created an ex­plo­sion that blew out win­dows 6½ miles from the epi­center and sent a mas­sive column of debris and smoke miles high.

Allied forces were poised for inva­sion hun­dreds of miles from the Japa­nese Home Islands when the first atomic bomb ex­ploded. Remem­brance of the horri­fic casu­alt­ies in­flicted by a fanat­i­cal enemy on Amer­i­cans assaulting Japan’s off­shore islands of Iwo Jima and Oki­nawa (Febru­ary 19 to June 22, 1945)—nearly 70,000 dead and wounded—fore­bode worse num­bers ahead, as high as one mil­lion Allied service­men and mil­lions more Japa­nese. Presi­dent Harry S. Truman and Amer­i­can com­manders fretted that a war-weary public might have neither the patience nor the stom­ach for a Japa­nese-style Arma­ged­don on Japan’s home turf. After the Hiro­shima bombing, the White House issued a state­ment that pro­mised Japan “a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on earth” if the country’s mili­tary leader­ship did not end the war in 48 hours on U.S. terms. To a group of Chris­tian leaders Tru­man ex­plained his motives for de­ploying the atomic bomb: “When you have to deal with a beast you have to treat him as a beast.”

Japa­nese leaders had ex­pected, in­deed planned for a bru­tal, no-holds-barred land inva­sion begin­ning in October. But nothing in their past experi­ence or in their wildest imag­i­na­tions had pre­pared them for this level of aerial im­mo­la­tion. The deadly new weapon sys­tem was the equi­va­lent of 220 fully loaded B‑29s dropping their loads in an instant. Within minutes 40,000 Hiro­shima men, women, and chil­dren died mostly in the fire­storms set off by the enor­mous blast, while a further 90,000–166,000 victims would die of burns and radiation poisoning within days or weeks. Survivors of the blast, Hibakusha (lit. “explosion-affected people”), often succumbed months or years later to leukemia or other cancers or passed malignant genetic diseases onto their children.

Hiroshima Atomic Bomb: Delivering a Foretaste of National Apocalypse

Left: Ground-level photograph of the Hiro­shima radio­active mush­room cloud taken from approx­i­mately 4.3 miles/­6.9 km north­east of ground zero, the com­mer­cial center and resi­den­tial area of the city. “Little Boy,” as the ura­nium‑235 bomb was nick­named, deto­nated 1,900 ft/­579 m above the Shima Hos­pital and 550 yards/­503 m from the bombar­dier’s aiming point, the Aioi Bridge. Three days later another mush­room cloud appeared over the city of Naga­saki, the pro­duct of “Fat Man,” as the pluto­nium‑239 bomb was called. Less than a minute after falling earth­ward, the bombs trans­formed both cities into rubble. (They also trans­formed the world, though very differently.) The following day Japan capitulated.

Right: Lost image found in Honkawa Elementary School in 2013 of the Hiro­shima radio­active mush­room cloud, believed to have been taken 20–30 minutes after deto­na­tion from about 6.2 miles/­10 km east of ground zero. Some 400 Hon­kawa students and more than 10 teachers were vic­tims of the bomb blast.

Left: The best-known photographs of the bomb’s after­math were taken from the air by one of three B‑29s that left Tinian in the Mari­ana Islands in the pre­dawn hours of August 6, 1945, for Hiro­shima. This aerial photo­graph is less well known, taken about one hour after the atomic bomb deto­nated over Hiro­shima. “Little Boy” was carried by the Enola Gay, a modi­fied B‑29 Super­for­tress (con­figured to carry an atomic bomb) piloted by thirty‑year‑old Col. Paul Tibbets, Jr. Tibbets had devel­oped his flying skills as a pilot for the U.S. Eighth and Twelfth Air Forces over Europe and North Africa. In March 1943 Tibbets returned to the States to test-fly the new Super­fort­ress, earning him the nickname “Mr. B‑29.”

Right: At 120 inches/300 cm in length, 28 inches/­71 cm in dia­meter, and weighing approx­i­mately 9,700 lb/­4,400 kg, “Little Boy” lies on trailer cradle before being loaded into Enola Gay’s bomb bay. The plane’s forward bomb bay door is visible in the upper right-hand corner of the photo. Of the 131 lb/­59 kg of ura­nium‑235 in the bomb, less than 2 lb/­0.9 kg under­went nuclear fis­sion. The force of the explo­sion was roughly equiv­a­lent to 15,000 tons/­15 kilo­tons of TNT.

Left: The Hiroshima Chamber of Industry and Com­merce Building was the only building remotely close to standing near the epi­center of the atomic bomb blast of August 6, 1945. Known today as the Gen­baku (“Atom Bomb” in Japa­nese) Dome, it was left unre­paired as a reminder of the event. On Decem­ber 7, 1996, the iconic Gen­baku Dome was added to the UNESCO World Heri­tage List. It sits in a lush park, the Hiro­shima Peace Memo­rial Park, sur­rounded by a city of one million people. For many visitors the memo­rial park and museum are hallowed ground, like a ceme­tery, because the ashes and bones of the bombing vic­tims are literally under­foot in a thin white layer a few feet beneath the earth’s surface. A Chil­dren’s Peace Monu­ment in the park was unveiled on Chil­dren’s Day, May 5, 1958, to com­mem­o­rate the thou­sands of inno­cent young vic­tims, but in partic­ular of Sadako Sasak who at age 12 died of radi­a­tion-induced leu­ke­mia 10 years after “Little Boy” was dropped on Hiroshima.

Right: Eight months after America’s ultimate weapon was dropped, Hiro­shima still stands in ruins, the visible evidence of the world’s first use of nuclear wea­pons in war. Of the 68 cities bombed in the sum­mer of 1945, Hiro­shima was fourth in terms of square miles/­km destroyed, 17th in the percent­age of the city destroyed, but second in the number of civilian deaths.

Well-Done Documentary on the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, August 6 and 9, 1945