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During World War II, the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, were destroyed by atomic bombs dropped by the United States military on August 6 and August 9, 1945, respectively. The surrender of Japan followed on August 15.

Prelude to the bombings

The bombs were secretly developed by the United States under the codename "Manhattan Project," were the second and third atomic bombs to be exploded, and are the only ones ever used as weapons, rather than for testing purposes. (The first test explosion had occurred in a desert in New Mexico on July 16, 1945.) The decision to drop the bombs had been made by US President Harry S Truman, and followed over 3-1/2 years of direct involvement of the US in World War II, during which time the United States had suffered approximately 240,000 casualty deaths. Truman's officially stated intention in ordering the bombings was to bring about a quick resolution of the war by inflicting destruction, and instilling fear of further destruction, that was sufficient to cause Japan to surrender. As detailed near the end of this article, whether or not the bombings were justified has long been a contentious issue.

Hiroshima

Hiroshima during World War II

At the time of its bombing, Hiroshima was a city of relatively minor military significance. It contained the 2nd Army Headquarters, which commanded the defense of all of southern Japan. The city was a communications center, a storage point, and an assembly area for troops, but it was not considered important enough by the U.S. to be targeted for significant bombing prior to August 1945.

The center of the city contained a number of reinforced concrete buildings as well as lighter structures. Outside the center, the area was congested by a dense collection of small wooden workshops set among Japanese houses; a few larger industrial plants lay near the outskirts of the city. The houses were of wooden construction with tile roofs. Many of the industrial buildings also were of wood frame construction. The city as a whole was highly susceptible to fire damage.

The population of Hiroshima had reached a peak of over 380,000 earlier in the war but prior to the atomic bombing the population had steadily decreased because of a systematic evacuation ordered by the Japanese government. At the time of the attack the population was approximately 255,000. This figure is based on the registered population, used by the Japanese in computing ration quantities, and the estimates of additional workers and troops who were brought into the city may not be highly accurate.

The bombing

Hiroshima was the primary target of the first U.S. nuclear attack mission, on August 6, 1945. The weather was good, and the crew and equipment functioned properly. In every detail, the attack was carried out exactly as planned, and the bomb performed exactly as expected.

About an hour before the bombing, the Japanese early warning radar net had detected the approach of some American aircraft headed for the southern part of Japan. The alert had been given and radio broadcasting stopped in many cities, among them Hiroshima. The planes approached the coast at a very high altitude. At nearly 8:00 A.M., the radar operator in Hiroshima determined that the number of planes coming in was very small—probably not more than three—and the air raid alert was lifted. The normal radio broadcast warning was given to the people that it might be advisable to go to shelter if B-29's were actually sighted, but no raid was expected beyond some sort of reconnaissance. At 8:16 A.M., the B-29 Enola Gay dropped the atomic bomb called "Little Boy" over the central part of the city and the bomb exploded with a blast equivalent to 12,000 tons of TNT, killing an estimated 80,000 civilians outright.

Japanese realization of the bombing

The Tokyo control operator of the Japanese Broadcasting Corporation noticed that the Hiroshima station had gone off the air. He tried to use another telephone line to reestablish his program, but it too had failed. About twenty minutes later the Tokyo railroad telegraph center realized that the main line telegraph had stopped working just north of Hiroshima. From some small railway stops within ten miles of the city there came unofficial and confused reports of a terrible explosion in Hiroshima. All these reports were transmitted to the Headquarters of the Japanese General Staff.

Military headquarters repeatedly tried to call the Army Control Station in Hiroshima. The complete silence from that city puzzled the men at Headquarters; they knew that no large enemy raid could have occurred, and they knew that no sizeable store of explosives was in Hiroshima at that time. A young officer of the Japanese General Staff was instructed to fly immediately to Hiroshima, to land, survey the damage, and return to Tokyo with reliable information for the staff. It was generally felt at Headquarters that nothing serious had taken place, that it was all a terrible rumor starting from a few sparks of truth.

The staff officer went to the airport and took off for the southwest. After flying for about three hours, while still nearly 100 miles from Hiroshima, he and his pilot saw a great cloud of smoke from the bomb. In the bright afternoon, the remains of Hiroshima were burning.

Their plane soon reached the city, around which they circled in disbelief. A great scar on the land, still burning, and covered by a heavy cloud of smoke, was all that was left of a great city. They landed south of the city, and the staff officer immediately began to organize relief measures, after reporting to Tokyo.

Tokyo's first knowledge of what had really caused the disaster came from the White House public announcement in Washington, sixteen hours after the nuclear attack on Hiroshima. By the end of 1945, it is estimated that 60,000 more people died due to nuclear fallout sickness, bringing the total killed in Hiroshima to 140,000. However, this total does not include longer term casualties from radiation exposure.

"Survival" of some structures

Some of the reinforced concrete buildings in Hiroshima were of a far stronger construction than is required by normal standards in America, because of the earthquake danger in Japan. This exceptionally strong construction undoubtedly accounted for the fact that the framework of some of the buildings which were fairly close to the center of damage in the city did not collapse. Another is that the blast was more downward than sideways; this has much to do with the "survival" of the Prefectural Industrial Promotional Hall (pictured), which was only a few metres from the aiming point. (The ruin was named Hiroshima Peace Memorial and made a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1996 over the objections of the US and China.)

Nagasaki

Nagasaki during World War II

The city of Nagasaki had been one of the largest sea ports in southern Japan and was of great war-time importance because of its many and varied industries, including the production of ordnance, ships, military equipment, and other war materials. The narrow long strip attacked was of particular importance because of its industries.

In contrast to many modern aspects of Nagasaki, the residences almost without exception were of flimsy, typical Japanese construction, consisting of wood or wood-frame buildings, with wood walls with or without plaster, and tile roofs. Many of the smaller industries and business establishments were also housed in wooden buildings or flimsily built masonry buildings. Nagasaki had been permitted to grow for many years without conforming to any definite city zoning plan and therefore residences were constructed adjacent to factory buildings and to each other almost as close as it was possible to build them throughout the entire industrial valley.

Nagasaki had never been subjected to large scale bombing prior to the explosion of a nuclear weapon there. On August 1, 1945, however, a number of high explosive bombs were dropped on the city. A few of these bombs hit in the shipyards and dock areas in the southwest portion of the city. Several of the bombs hit the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works and six bombs landed at the Nagasaki Medical School and Hospital, with three direct hits on buildings there. While the damage from these few bombs were relatively small, it created considerable concern in Nagasaki and a number of people, principally school children, were evacuated to rural areas for safety, thus reducing the population in the city at the time of the nuclear attack.

The bombing

On the morning of August 9, 1945, the crew of the American B-29 Superfortress, "Bockscar," flown by Major Charles W. Sweeney and carrying the atomic bomb nicknamed, "Fat Man," found their primary target, Kokura, to be obscured by cloud. After three runs over the city and having fuel running low due to a fuel-transfer problem, they headed for their secondary target, Nagasaki. At about 7:50 am, Japanese time, an air raid alert was sounded in Nagasaki, but the "all clear" signal was given at 8:30. When only two B-29 superfortresses were sighted at 10:53 the Japanese apparently assumed that the planes were only on reconnaissance and no further alarm was given. A few moments later, at 11am, the observation B-29 ("The Great Artiste" flown by Capt. Frederick C. Bock) dropped instruments attached to three parachutes.

At 11:02 am, a last minute break in the clouds over Nagasaki allowed Bockscar's bombardier, Capt. Kermit Beahan, to visually sight the target as ordered, and "Fat Man" was dropped over the city's industrial valley. The bomb exploded 1,540 feet above the ground almost midway between the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works, in the south, and the Mitsubishi-Urakami Ordnance Works (Torpedo Works), in the north, the two principal targets of the city. 75,000 of Nagasaki's 240,000 residents were killed, followed by the death of at least as many from resulting sickness and injury. However another report issues a different residental number, speaking of Nagasaki's population which dropped in one split-second from 422,000 to 383,000, thus 39,000 were killed, over 25,000 were injured. If taken into account those who died from radioactive materials causing cancer, the total number of casualties is to be believed at least 100,000 killed residents. (Estimates from physicists who have studied each atomic explosion state that the bomb that was used had utilized only 1/10th of 1 percent of their respective explosive capabilities.)

Debate over the decision to drop the bombs

Beginning soon after the conclusion of World War II, and continuing to the present day, the dropping of atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been questioned. Their use has been called barbaric since, besides destroying a military base and a military industrial center, more than one hundred thousand civilians were killed. Some, among them U.S. General Douglas MacArthur and later President Dwight Eisenhower , have claimed that the Japanese were already essentially defeated, and that use of the bombs was unnecessary. Some have also suggested that a demonstration of an atomic bomb in an uninhabited region should have been attempted. Others contend that Japan had been trying to surrender for at least two months, but the US refused by insisting on an unconditional surrender—which they did not get even after the bombing, the bone of contention being retention of the Emperor., Many of these people believe that the U.S. had ulterior motives in dropping the bombs, including justifying the $2 billion investment in the Manhattan Project, testing the effects of nuclear weapons, exacting revenge for the attacks on Pearl Harbor, and demonstrating U.S. capabilities to the Soviet Union.

In reply, defenders of the decision to use the bombs say that it is almost certain that the Japanese would not have surrendered without their use, and that hundreds of thousands—perhaps millions—would have perished in the planned U.S. invasion of Japan. To support their position, they point out that the Japanese agreed to surrender only after the second bomb was dropped, when it was evident that the first was not an isolated event, and future prospects were for a continuing rain of such bombs. (In actuality, the U.S. did not have another atomic bomb ready after the bombing of Nagasaki due to the difficulty of producing fissile material.) Regarding the suggestion of a demonstration, they maintain that, given the mind-set of the Japanese at the time, it is unlikely that any conceivable benign demonstration would have induced surrender. Defenders of the bombing point to the fact that Tojo had given an order that all Allied POW's, numbering over 100,000, be executed at the first sign of an invasion of the Japanese mainland.

Under the Nuremberg Principles it could be argued that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the crime against humanity of murder, i.e. the crime of murder committed on a vast systematic scale against a civilian population. It would also be numerous war crimes under the Hague Convention then in force, such as wilful killing of civilians, wanton destruction of cities, and use of poisonous weapons (due to the effects of the radiation). Some people consider the bombings the worst acts of terrorism in history.

See also: aerial bombing of cities, strategic bombing, The United States and weapons of mass destruction

External links

• Documents relating to the decision to use the atomic bomb
• "If the Atomic Bomb Had Not Been Used", published in the Atlantic Monthly, December 1946.
• The Fire Still Burns: An interview with historian Gar Alperovitz
• Was Hiroshima Necessary?
• The Decision To Use the Atomic Bomb: H-NET Debate
• Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims
• Many links on Hiroshima and Nagasaki