What kind of bomb hit hiroshima

The United States believed that dropping a nuclear bomb - after Tokyo rejected an earlier ultimatum for peace - would force a quick surrender without risking US casualties on the ground. The attack was the first time a nuclear weapon was used during a war. At least 70, people are believed to have been killed immediately in the massive blast which flattened the city. Tens of thousands more died of injuries caused by radiation poisoning in the following days, weeks and months.

When no immediate surrender came from the Japanese, another bomb, dubbed "Fat Man", was dropped three days later about kilometres miles to the south over Nagasaki. The recorded death tolls are estimates, but it is thought that about , of Hiroshima's , population were killed, and that at least 74, people died in Nagasaki. They are the only two nuclear bombs ever to have been deployed outside testing. The dual bombings brought about an abrupt end to the war in Asia, with Japan surrendering to the Allies on 14 August But some critics have said that Japan had already been on the brink of surrender and that the bombs killed a disproportionate number of civilians.

Japan's wartime experience has led to a strong pacifist movement in the country. At the annual Hiroshima anniversary, the government usually reconfirms its commitment to a nuclear-free world. After the war, Hiroshima tried to reinvent itself as a City of Peace and continues to promote nuclear disarmament around the world. Seventy-five years after the Enola Gay opened its bomb bay doors, 31,ft above Hiroshima, views on what happened that day are still deeply polarised. Those on the ground who lived to tell the tale see themselves, understandably, as victims of an appalling crime.

Sitting and talking with any "hibakusha" survivor is a deeply moving experience. The horrors they witnessed are almost unimaginable. Hordes of zombie like people, their skin melted and hanging in ribbons from their arms and faces; mournful cries from the thousands trapped in the tangle of collapsed and burning buildings; the smell of burned flesh.

Later came the black rain and the agonising deaths from a strange new killer - radiation sickness. But any visitor to the Hiroshima Peace Museum might justifiably ask, where is the context? After all, the atom bombs didn't come out of nowhere. And so, to many Japanese, Hiroshima and Nagasaki stand oddly alone, detached from the rest of history, symbols of the unique victimhood of Japan, the only country ever to experience a nuclear attack.

The lack of context can feel equally egregious on the other side. When I last visited Hiroshima, I asked a group of visiting American college students what they had learned in school about the attack. Because of the extent of the devastation and chaos—including the fact that much of the two cities' infrastructure was wiped out—exact death tolls from the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain unknown.

However, it's estimated roughly 70, to , people died in Hiroshima and 60, to 80, people died in Nagasaki, both from acute exposure to the blasts and from long-term side effects of radiation. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present.

In early August , warfare changed forever when the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, devastating the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and killing more than , people. The atomic bomb, and nuclear bombs, are powerful weapons that use nuclear reactions as their source of explosive energy. Scientists first developed nuclear weapons technology during World War II. Atomic bombs have been used only twice in war—both times by the United States Soon after arriving at the Potsdam Conference in July , U.

President Harry S. On July 24, eight days Ever since America dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan on August 9, , the question has persisted: Was that magnitude of death and destruction really needed to end World War II? American leadership apparently thought so. A few days earlier, just 16 hours after the The instability created in Europe by the First World War set the stage for another international conflict—World War II—which broke out two decades later and would prove even more devastating.

Rising to power in an economically and politically unstable Germany, Adolf Having no point of reference for the bomb's absolute devastation, some survivors believed themselves to have been transported to a hellish version of the afterlife. The worlds of the living and the dead seemed to converge. A Protestant minister: "The feeling I had was that everyone was dead. The whole city was destroyed I thought this was the end of Hiroshima—of Japan—of humankind This was God's judgment on man.

A six-year-old boy: "Near the bridge there were a whole lot of dead people Sometimes there were ones who came to us asking for a drink of water. They were bleeding from their faces and from their mouths and they had glass sticking in their bodies. And the bridge itself was burning furiously The details and the scenes were just like Hell.

A sociologist: "My immediate thought was that this was like the hell I had always read about I had never seen anything which resembled it before, but I thought that should there be a hell, this was it—the Buddhist hell, where we were thought that people who could not attain salvation always went And I imagined that all of these people I was seeing were in the hell I had read about.

A boy in fifth grade: "I had the feeling that all the human beings on the face of the earth had been killed off, and only the five of us his family were left behind in an uncanny world of the dead. A grocer: "The appearance of people was They had no hair because their hair was burned, and at a glance you couldn't tell whether you were looking at them from in front or in back Many of them died along the road—I can still picture them in my mind—like walking ghosts They didn't look like people of this world.

Many people traveled to central places such as hospitals, parks, and riverbeds in an attempt to find relief from their pain and misery. However, these locations soon became scenes of agony and despair as many injured and dying people arrived and were unable to receive proper care. A sixth-grade girl: "Bloated corpses were drifting in those seven formerly beautiful rivers; smashing cruelly into bits the childish pleasure of the little girl, the peculiar odor of burning human flesh rose everywhere in the Delta City, which had changed to a waste of scorched earth.

A fourteen-year-old boy: "Night came and I could hear many voices crying and groaning with pain and begging for water. Someone cried, 'Damn it! War tortures so many people who are innocent! Give me water! The sky was red with flames.

It was burning as if scorching heaven. For more testimonials from survivors, visit Voices from Japan. Three days after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9 — a kiloton plutonium device known as "Fat Man.

Prior to August 9, Nagasaki had been the target of small scale bombing by the United States. Though the damage from these bombings was relatively small, it created considerable concern in Nagasaki and many people were evacuated to rural areas for safety, thus reducing the population in the city at the time of the nuclear attack.

It is estimated that between 40, and 75, people died immediately following the atomic explosion, while another 60, people suffered severe injuries. Total deaths by the end of may have reached 80, The decision to use the second bomb was made on August 7, on Guam.

Its use was calculated to indicate that the United States had an endless supply of the new weapon for use against Japan and that the United States would continue to drop atomic bombs on Japan until the country surrendered unconditionally.

The city of Nagasaki, however, was not the primary target for the second atomic bomb. Instead, officials had selected the city of Kokura, where Japan had one of its largest munitions plants. Olivi, weaponeer Frederick Ashworth, and bombadier Kermit Beahan.

At am, "Bockscar" and five other Bs departed the island of Tinian and headed towards Kokura. When the plane arrived over the city nearly seven hours later, thick clouds and drifting smoke from fires started by a major firebombing raid on nearby Yawata the previous day covered most of the area over Kokura, obscuring the aiming point.

Pilot Charles Sweeney made three bomb runs over the next fifty minutes, but bombardier Beahan was unable to drop the bomb because he could not see the target visually. By the time of the third bomb run, Japanese antiaircraft fire was getting close, and Second Lieutenant Jacob Beser, who was monitoring Japanese communications, reported activity on the Japanese fighter direction radio bands.

Running low on fuel, the crew aboard Bockscar decided to head for the secondary target, Nagasaki. When the B arrived over the city twenty minutes later, the downtown area was also covered by dense clouds. Frederick Ashworth, the plane's weaponeer proposed bombing Nagasaki using radar. At that moment, a small opening in the clouds at the end of the three-minute bomb run permitted bombardier Kermit Beahan to identify target features. It exploded 43 seconds later with a blast yield equivalent to 21 kilotons of TNT at an altitude of 1, feet, about 1.

The radius of total destruction from the atomic blast was about one mile, followed by fires across the northern portion of the city to two miles south of where the bomb had been dropped. In contrast to many modern aspects of Hiroshima, almost all of the buildings in Nagasaki were of old-fashioned Japanese construction, consisting of wood or wood-frame buildings with wood walls and tile roofs.

Many of the smaller industries and business establishments were also situated in buildings of wood or other materials not designed to withstand explosions.