The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima
On August 6, 1945, an American B-29 bomber named the Enola Gay left the island of Tinian for Hiroshima, Japan. This mission was piloted by Colonel Paul Tibbets. Hiroshima was chosen as the primary target since it had remained largely untouched by bombing raids and the bomb’s effects could be clearly measured.
The uranium 235 gun-type bomb, named Little Boy, exploded at 8:16 a.m. In an instant 80,000 to 140,000 people were killed and 100,000 more were seriously injured. The bomb exploded 1,900 feet above the center of the city, some 70 yards southeast of the Industrial Promotion Hall (now known as the Atomic Bomb Dome). The bomb had an explosive yield of about 12.5 kilotons of TNT.
In less than one second, the fireball had expanded to 900 feet. The blast wave shattered windows for a distance of ten miles and was felt as far away as 37 miles. Over two-thirds of Hiroshima's buildings were demolished. The hundreds of fires, ignited by the thermal pulse, combined to produce a firestorm that incinerated everything within miles of ground zero. Hiroshima had disappeared under a thick, churning foam of flames and smoke. The co-pilot, Captain Robert Lewis, commented, "My God, what have we done? "
About 30 minutes after the explosion, a heavy rain began falling in areas to the northwest of the city. This ‘black rain’ was full of dirt, dust, soot and highly radioactive particles that were sucked up into the air at the time of the explosion and during the fire. It caused contamination even in the remote areas from the explosion.
The survivors, who became known as hibakusha, sought relief from their injuries. However, 90% of all medical personnel were killed or disabled, and the remaining medical supplies quickly ran out. Many survivors began to notice the effects of exposure to the bomb’s radiation. Their symptoms ranged from nausea, bleeding, and loss of hair, to death. Survivors caught in the open within 1.2 miles of ground zero died within 6 weeks of radiation sickness.
A Hole in the Clouds
Nagasaki After the Bomb: A Waste Land
Hiroshima Streetcar, September, 1945
A passenger-filled streetcar traverses a ravaged Hiroshima in this never-published J.R. Eyerman photo, a month after the American bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the city of 300,000, August 6, 1945. An estimated 80,000 people were killed (many of them, quite literally, vaporized) in the blast; tens of thousands more died within a year from radiation poisoning. "In the moment of its incomparable blast, air became flame, walls turned to dust. 'My God,' breathed the crew of the B-29 at what they saw. Members reported, 'there was a terrific flash of light, even in the daytime ... a couple of sharp slaps against the airplane.' White smoke leaped on a mushroom stem to 20,000 feet where it spilled into a huge, billowy cloud. Then an odd thing happened. The top of this cloud broke off the stem and rose several thousand feet. As it did so, another cloud formed on the stem exactly as the first had done
Scenes From a Life: Nagasaki, September, 1945
A photo album. Shards of pottery. A pair of scissors. Of this scene, photographer Bernard Hoffman wrote to LIFE's legendary photo editor, Wilson Hicks, on September 9, 1945: "Assume this had been a private dwelling. The album was water soaked and some of the pix stuck together ... However, since this album came through the blast intact, and remains the only evidence of what once had been a home and family, I'm sending the pictures on for what they're worth to you
Waves of Destruction
"In the following waves [after the initial blast] people's bodies were terribly squeezed, then their internal organs ruptured. Then the blast blew the broken bodies at 500 to 1,000 miles per hour through the flaming, rubble-filled air. Practically everybody within a radius of 6,500 feet was killed or seriously injured and all buildings crushed or disemboweled." -- From the article "Atom Bomb Effects," LIFE, 3/11/1946. Above: Hiroshima, 1945, by Bernard Hoffman. To this day, of course, historians, politicians, and military men and women the world over argue whether the American use of atomic weapons in WWII was, in fact, justified. That the bombs hastened the end of the war is, on the other hand, something that even the United States' fiercest critics generally concede. One week after the obliteration of Nagasaki, Japan surrendered.
'We Saw Hiroshima Today ...'
Photographer Bernard Hoffman's typed notes -- addressed to LIFE's photography editor at the time, Wilson Hicks, back in New York -- describing his first impressions of Hiroshima, less than a month after the Enola Gay dropped the bomb that destroyed the city and forever changed the face of war. "We were so shocked with what we saw," Hoffman wrote, "that most of us felt like weeping. Not out of sympathy for the Japs, but because we were so shocked and revolted by this new and terrible form of destruction.... What was formerly Japan's most modern, most westernized city, is now nothing more than a two foot layer of twisted tin and rubble." The use of what is now considered a vile slur, "Jap," was common in the vast majority of American publications during -- and for some time after -- the war.
A Flat, Silent Plain
"Japan's premier, Prince Higashi-Kuni ... on September 5 paid despairing tribute to the atomic bomb: 'This terrific weapon was likely to result in the obliteration of the Japanese people.' The atomic bomb, he indicated, was the immediate inducement to surrender ... As far as a man can walk for an hour in any direction there is only a flat, silent plain, a still-stinking junkpile. Americans visiting the city have to keep reminding themselves that this enormous destruction was caused by one bomb." -- From "What Ended the War," LIFE, 9/17/1945. Above: Nagasaki, 1945, a few months after the bombing, photographed by Alfred Eisenstaedt. No publication in the world covered World War II as thoroughly as LIFE: "After Pearl Harbor," the magazine noted in November, 1945, "20 men and one woman
'The Gimmick' and Its Aftermath
Living and the Dead
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