Seventy years ago today, on 6th August 1945 at 8:15am JST, the US bomber Enola Gay dropped “Little Boy” on Hiroshima. Three days later, another bomber from the same squadron, Bockscar, dropped “Fat Man” on Nagasaki.
The Japanese government were struggling to surrender and end the war: the US government wanted to try out the effect of their two kinds of nuclear weapons on two cities that had not yet been firebombed. After the two nuclear weapons had been dropped, negotiations could be allowed to begin: Japan’s surrender was announced on 15th August.
By 15th August, the US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had already killed between 84,000 and 123,000 civilians: by the time Japan formally surrendered to the Allied forces on 2nd September, over 246,000 civilians had been killed by the US bombing on those two cities.
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First Night History 