Bombardementerne af Hiroshima og Nagasaki

In 1945, during the final stages of World War II, the United States dropped two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9) . Never in the World History before were there used nuclear weapons, and have never been used since then. Hiroshima is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture, and the largest city in the Chugoku region of western Honshu, which is the largest of Japan’s islands.

The plane Enola Gay, took off from Tinian, a North Pacific island in the Marianas, around 1,500 south of Japan. On a hook in the ceiling of the plane, hung the atomic bomb, named ‘Little boy’ Uranium-235 was used to create ‘Little Boy’, a radioactive isotope of uranium. The bomb cost $2 billion in research, and had never been tested. So August 6, the first choice target, Hiroshima, was having clear weather. At 8:15 a.m., the door in the plane sprang open and ‘Little Boy’ was dropped. The bomb exploded 1,900 feet above the city. They missed the target by 800 feet, the Aioi Bridge.

Staff Sergeant George Caron, the tail gunner, described what he saw: "The mushroom cloud itself was a spectacular sight, a bubbling mass of purple-gray smoke and you could see it had a red core in it and everything was burning inside. . . . It looked like lava or molasses covering a whole city. . . ."4 The cloud is estimated to have reached a height of 40,000 feet. The goal had been the entire city, instead of just the usual military installation. The atomic bomb that exploded over Hiroshima killed not just men, but civilian women and children too.70,000 died immediately from the explosion, and the same number died from radiation within five years. Now the United States was planning another nuclear bomb-attack on Japan. August 9, 11:02 a.m., the atomic bomb ‘Fat Man’ was dropped over Nagasaki. The bomb exploded 1,650 feet above the city.