Above: Sannō Shrine in Nagasaki. These camphor trees survived the atomic bombing. Photo by ぱちょぴ on Wikimedia Commons.
Tinian
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The world’s first atomic explosion, a test for a plutonium-based atomic weapon, was secretly detonated in New Mexico on July 16, 1945. Ten days later at the Potsdam Conference, President Truman warned Japan of “prompt and utter destruction” if it did not surrender unconditionally. Japan did not accept the ultimatum.
Headquarters of the 509th Composite Group of the United States Army Air Forces on Tinian in 1945. Photo by Harold Agnew.
By that time, parts for a gun-type uranium bomb, Little Boy, and an implosion-type plutonium bomb, Fat Man, were arriving at Tinian Island in the South Pacific. Tinian, an island in the Northern Mariana Islands, is less than forty square miles in area. Seeking an air base in the Pacific, Allied forces captured Tinian from Japan in the summer of 1944 and transformed it into the biggest air base in the world, headquarters for the 509th Composite Group. Under the direction of Norman Ramsey, a small number of scientists and engineers from Los Alamos traveled to Tinian to assemble the atomic bombs. Tinian is roughly 1,600 miles away from the cities that were on the list of possible targets in July, 1945: Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata, and Nagasaki.
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The airplane icon shows the location of Tinian Island. The western starburst icon marks Nagasaki, the eastern one marks Hiroshima. The western circle icon marks Kokura, the eastern one marks Niigata.
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Hiroshima
Suddenly we were attacked by a terrible blue-yellow flash. . . . At the same time, we were blown off the ground by the blast. . . . Then the heat wave reached us. We could hear the sound of our faces and hair burning. |
Under the same circumstances—and the key words are "the same circumstances"—yes, I would do it again. . . . It’s really hard to talk about morality and war in the same sentence. Where was the morality in the bombing of Coventry, or the bombing of Dresden, or the Bataan Death March, or the Rape of Nanking, or the bombing of Pearl Harbor? |
Hiroshima before and after the atomic bombing. The T-shaped Aioi Bridge is visible at the center of both. Photos by the US Army.
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On August 6, Enola Gay took off from Tinian. William “Deak” Parsons, director of the Los Alamos Ordnance Division, armed Little Boy in-flight. Hiroshima’s Aioi Bridge was the target for the bomb, due to its unique T-shape visible from the air. At 8:16:02 a.m. in Hiroshima, the uranium bomb detonated 1,968 feet above the Shima Surgical Clinic. The blast and subsequent firestorm destroyed approximately two-thirds of the city’s buildings and killed approximately 80,000 people.
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Nagasaki
In those years, you did not think about the poor people that were on the ground that had to take all that we gave them. I say that with an open heart for the simple reason that now as years have come on us, we realize the number and death. We have lost our own loved ones and we realize what death is. But at that time, you are realizing, "Could we have killed this monster [World War II] now and could we have gotten rid of it?" And which we did. |
I experienced the atomic bombing in Shiroyama-machi, 800 meters from the hypocenter. I was eight years old at the time. On that day eight members of my family disappeared from the earth. Shiroyama had no large factories and was nestled among green foothills far back from both the railroad station and the port. . . . It was an idyllic community where we would shout out greetings to the adults and they would cheerfully call back "Hi!" |
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On August 9, Bockscar flew from Tinian carrying Fat Man. The crew found the mission’s primary target, Kokura, obscured by clouds and smoke, and headed to the secondary target of Nagasaki. Bockscar now had enough fuel for one pass over Nagasaki before making an emergency landing at Okinawa. The plutonium bomb was dropped on this first and only pass, and detonated 1,650 feet above a tennis court in the city’s industrial Urakami Valley at 11:02 a.m. The blast was largely confined to the valley, yet still destroyed approximately half of the city. As with the bombing of Hiroshima, there are no exact numbers for how many people were killed by the heat, shockwave, and ensuing fires, but estimates range from around 40,000 to 75,000 people.
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The End of the War
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The events of August 1945 were decisive in the war in the Pacific. On August 3rd, three days before the bombing of Hiroshima on the 6th, the Allies began a naval blockade of the Japanese home islands. On August 8th, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, and invaded Japanese-held Manchuria the next day—the same day, August 9, that the U.S. bombed Nagasaki. On August 15 (August 14 in the United States), Japan accepted the Allies’ terms of surrender, and the war was formally over on September 2 (September 1 in the United States).
Were the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki necessary to end World War II? This is a complicated historical question--since the cities were bombed, we have no way of knowing what would have happened if they weren’t. Perhaps a more relevant question is: How do we choose to live now with our shared atomic legacies? |
Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signs the official Instrument of Surrender at 9:04 a.m. on September 2, 1945. Lieutenant General Richard K. Sutherland stands opposite, Foreign Ministry representative Toshikazu Kase stands in the right front of the photograph. Photo by Lieutenant Stephen E. Korpanty / US Army Signal Corps.
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After the Bombings
Survivors of the bombings, called hibakusha (被爆者), began the enormous tasks of rebuilding Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Families had been shattered. Injured survivors needed medical care. Radiation exposure brought the immediate threat of radiation poisoning, and the long-term threat of cancer. Food shortages affected both cities. Facing these challenges, survivors began to rebuild infrastructure, businesses, and homes.
Some people feared that nothing would grow again after the atomic bombings. However, new green plant life sprouted in both cities not long after the destruction. In Hiroshima, residents first saw red canna flowers growing from the rubble. In Nagasaki, the nearly half-millenium-old camphor trees of the Sannō Shrine were damaged by the bomb—but they quickly grew new buds, encouraging survivors with their display of resilience and new life.
Some people feared that nothing would grow again after the atomic bombings. However, new green plant life sprouted in both cities not long after the destruction. In Hiroshima, residents first saw red canna flowers growing from the rubble. In Nagasaki, the nearly half-millenium-old camphor trees of the Sannō Shrine were damaged by the bomb—but they quickly grew new buds, encouraging survivors with their display of resilience and new life.
Los Alamos the Not-Secret City
Many of my friends felt responsible for killing Japanese civilians, and it upset them terribly. I could muster very little sympathy for their point of view; few of them had any direct experience with war and the people who had to fight it. |
I still remember the feeling of unease, indeed nausea, when I saw how many of my friends were rushing to the telephone to book tables at the La Fonda hotel in Santa Fe, in order to celebrate [after the bombing of Hiroshima]. |
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Los Alamos residents reacted in mixed ways to the bombing of Japan. They celebrated the Project’s success and the war’s end, but they also lamented the mass civilian deaths and worried about what lay ahead for their city on the Hill and for the world.
The day of the bombing of Hiroshima, President Truman revealed to the American public the existence of Los Alamos and its role in producing an atomic bomb. He called the Manhattan Project “the greatest achievement of organized science in history.” Overnight, the people of the closed town of Los Alamos—civilians and military alike—who had toiled in secrecy became celebrities, heroes, and objects of intense curiosity. |
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With the bomb no longer secret, Los Alamos scientists joined in the vigorous public debate about the future of atomic power. Should the United States share atomic science with the world, perhaps even subject it to international control? Within the country, should it be under military or civilian authority? Should the nation try to develop new, even more potent nuclear weapons? What were the prospects for peaceful uses of atomic energy? And what role would Los Alamos play in the post-war Atomic Age?
Links & Resources
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The Los Alamos Historical Society was supported by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the New Mexico Humanities Council in the creation of this page.
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