Hiroshima

On Monday, August 6, 1945, at 8:15, the B-29 Enola Gay dropped "Little Boy" and 70,000 - 80,000 people died instantly. Approximately 1 mile radius was destroyed.

Nagasaki

On the morning of August 9, 1945, the B-29 Bockscar dropped "Fatman" and 40,000 - 75,000 people died instantly. Approximately a 1 mile radius was destroyed.

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The Hiroshima "Little Boy" bomb detonated with an approximate power of 13 kilotons of TNT, creating the signature mushroom cloud which rose to almost 11 miles high.

The Nagasaki "Fat Man" bomb detonated with approximately 21 kilotons of TNT, and created winds up to 650 miles an hour, with temperatures reaching 7,000 F, enough to turn the ground right below the bomb to glass.

The whole world was stunned when the first atomic bomb was detonated in White Sands, in the Manhattan Project. The first bomb was called the "Gadget" because they really didn't know what was going to happen. The first bomb had only several kilotons, which was significantly more powerful than a conventional bomb. The world was not prepared for the first bomb, dropped on Hiroshima, where it detonated with the power of 26,000,000 lbs of TNT, killing over 50,000 people instantly. It took many hours for the Japanese to realize what had happened, but by the time they realized what had happened, there were several square miles of the city on fire and approaching 100,000 people dead.

The tragedy is that many of the survivors from Hiroshima, then fled to Nagasaki, which, 3 days later, they were bombed again. There were only several people who survived through both bombings, all of who, subsequently died from two more then lethal doses of radiation.

These bombs were intended to entice the Japanese into surrender, because the war in the pacific was incredibly costly and brutal. There was also a invasion being planned for the mainland, which was a last resort, and was estimated to cost over a million lives.

 

This is a picture of the epicenter of the blast in Hiroshima, and there is almost nothing left.

This scale of destruction had never been witnessed before, which was why it was such a good scare tactic, as well as

This is an aerial photo of ground zero in Nagasaki, and it is absolutely destroyed. it is hard to imagine anyone survived that at all.

These two bombs would catapult the world into the atomic age, and would have everyone working on a mad dash to get atomic weapons, and would eventually lead to a 40+ year cold war with the USSR.

Every year in Hiroshima people remember that day and mourn all the losses by making strings of paper swans and drape them over the memorial at ground zero.

In Hiroshima there is a memorial to the bombing, it is a building, that when the bomb hit, was not completely destroyed. It is sometimes referred to as the skeleton building, because after the blast, the walls were partially destroyed, but the frame stayed mostly intact. It was only about 400 feet away from where the bomb detonated and its puzzling how it stayed so well intact. In 1996 it was decided that it should be on the World Heritage List, and officially and indefinitely named the Atomic Bomb Dome, or A-Bomb dome. Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki have Peace Parks, dedicated to the remembrance of the fallen and lost. The Nagasaki Peace park has a "Peace Symbols Zone" which opened in 1978. The Peace Symbols Zone is an area dedicated to Peace Monuments from countries around the world, and there are currently 16, from counties spread around the world. Nagasaki also has the "Nagasaki National Peace Memorial Hall for Atomic Bomb Victims" where people can come to remember and pray for those killed in the bombing.