The war, lasting for nearly six tumultuous years, finally came to an end. The bombings effectively crippled Japan and on AugJapan’s Emperor Hirohito announced its surrender in a radio broadcast. At least 50,000 people were killed in the explosion but later statistics revealed that more were killed due to exposure to radiation. Nestled in the Urakami valley and surrounded by mountains, Nagasaki, unlike Hiroshima, was able to restrict the devastation owing to its terrain. While the initial target for the second bomb was the city of Kokura, the target was changed to Nagasaki at the last minute owing to cloudy weather over Kokura. A huge purple cloud rose over the city, killing nearly 70,000 people immediately and an equal number of them in the next few days.Įven before Japan could make sense of the destruction, on Augthe second bomb - bigger and more powerful weighing around 10,000 pounds - nicknamed ‘Fat Man’ was dropped by the crew of Bockscar at Nagasaki, located on the island of Kyushu, at 11.02 a.m. What followed was a massive explosion, equivalent to burning around 15,000 tons of Trinitrotoluene (TNT), that rocked Hiroshima. On August6, 1945 the B-29 bomber Enola Gay, specifically modified to carry the 9000-pound atom bomb nicknamed ‘Little Boy’ flew over Hirsohima, a manufacturing city of around 350,000 people on Japan’s Honshu island and dropped the bomb around 8.15 a.m. atomic bombing mission in Japanese city of Hiroshima. The " Enola Gay" Boeing B-29 Superfortress lands after the U.S. decided to use their newly acquired weapon - the atom bomb - to bring an end to the war. Later that month, the heads of the Allied powers – American President Harry Truman, Soviet leader Josef Stalin and British PM Clement Atlee - issued the Potsdam declaration to the Japanese government to ‘surrender unconditionally’. successfully tested the first atomic bomb in New Mexico. On Ja group of scientists in Manhattan, the U.S. However, in the Pacific, Japan was still holding out fighting against the American forces and refusing to surrender. August 6, 2014īetween April and May in 1945, World War II was almost coming to an end with the surrender of Germany to the Allied forces in Europe. About 45,000 people stood for a minute of silence at the ceremony in Hiroshima’s Peace Park near the epicentre of the 1945 attack that killed up to 140,000 people. Japan marked the 69th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The last surviving member of the crew that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.has died.