The US Strategic Bombing Survey of 1946 notes that the bomb, which had exploded slightly northwest of the centre of the city, killed over 80,000 people and injured as many. On the morning of August 6, at 8:15 am local time, a B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped the atomic bomb called “Little Boy” with a force of over 20,000 tonnes of TNT on the city of Hiroshima, when most of the industrial workers had already reported to work, many were en route and children were in school. What happened on August 6 and August 9, 1945?
One historian Gar Alperovitz argued in his 1965 book that the use of nuclear weapons on Japanese cities was “intended to gain a stronger position for postwar diplomatic bargaining with the Soviet Union, as the weapons themselves were not needed to force the Japanese surrender,” a US government website mentions. If they do not now acknowledge our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air.”īut there are other theories. It was to spare the Japanese public from utter destruction that the ultimatum of July 26 was issued at Potsdam. Harry S Truman, the US President of the time, had warned: “We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city.
8, 1945 file photo, only a handful of buildings remain standing amid the wasteland of Hiroshima (AP Photo/File)
