When was the dropping of the atomic bombs in japan

I was asked to give them water, so I found a chipped bowl and went to the nearby river and scooped water to let them drink. People died one after another. They didn't die like human beings. This is the day when fascism finally dies, as we always knew it would. The following day, Japan's Emperor Hirohito was heard on the radio for the first time ever in a broadcast in which he blamed the use of "a new and most cruel bomb" for Japan's unconditional surrender.

He added: "Should we continue to fight, it would not only result in the ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but would lead also to the total extinction of human civilisation.

He added that special thanks went to the US "without whose prodigious efforts the war in the East would still have many years to run". After the surrender of Japan, two days of national holiday were announced for celebrations in the UK, the US and Australia.

The Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima, seen below in August , was one of the few buildings to survive the bomb and has been preserved as a memorial. All photographs subject to copyright. Image source, Getty Images. The devastated city of Hiroshima after the atomic bomb blast. It is estimated that about , of Hiroshima's , population were killed by the atomic bomb. The crew of Enola Gay, which dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. A shadow of a victim of the Hiroshima atomic bomb seen on stone steps.

A woman shows her injuries in Hiroshima; her skin was burned in a pattern corresponding to the dark portions of a kimono worn at the time of the explosion. Consequently, neither Truman nor any of his advisors ever debated if the atomic bombs should be used, only how and where they should be used.

In the spring of , the American government convened a committee of scientists and military officers to determine how best to use the bombs. This group unanimously declared that there was no guarantee that demonstrating the bombs to the Japanese in a deserted area would convince Japanese leaders to surrender.

It was vital that Japan be convinced to surrender as fast as possible because the United States had just two atomic bombs available in July and additional weapons would not be ready to deploy for several more weeks.

Meanwhile, thousands of Chinese, American, and Japanese soldiers continued to die each day the war continued. Consequently, Truman approved the long-standing plans for the US Army Air Force to drop atomic bombs on a list of preselected Japanese cities. The list of targets excluded Tokyo and Kyoto because of their political and historic importance. Instead, the intended target of the first bomb was Hiroshima, a fan-shaped city of approximately , people that occupied the estuary of the Ota River.

The city was also home to the headquarters of the Japanese army that defended the island of Kyushu as well as a number of war industries. At a. As a result, the overloaded Enola Gay used more than two miles of runway to get aloft.

US Army Air Force photo. Meanwhile, in Hiroshima, Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto awoke at 5 a. Hiroshima time, which was an hour behind Tinian time. Tanimoto remained in the city to remove the transportable objects in his church to the safety of a suburban estate.

He had slept poorly because of several air raid warnings the previous night. Hiroshima had not yet endured an American bombing raid, but its good fortune was not expected to last.

That morning, Tanimoto had agreed to help a friend move a large armoire filled with clothes out to the suburbs. As the two men trundled the piece of furniture through the streets, they heard an air raid siren go off. The alarm sounded every morning when American weather planes flew overhead, so the men were not particularly worried. They continued on with their handcart through the city streets. Let some of the facts speak for themselves. W as the use of the atomic bomb inhuman?

All war is inhuman. Here are some comparisons of the atomic bombing with conventional bombing. At Hiroshima the atomic bomb killed about 80, people, pulverized about five square miles, and wrecked an additional ten square miles of the city, with decreasing damage out to seven or eight miles from the center.

At Nagasaki the fatal casualties were 45, and the area wrecked was considerably smaller than at Hiroshima because of the configuration of the city. Compare this with the results of two B incendiary raids over Tokyo. One of these raids killed about , people, the other nearly , Of the square miles of greater Tokyo, 85 square miles of the densest part was destroyed as completely, for all practical purposes, as were the centers of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; about half the buildings were destroyed in the remaining square miles; the number of people driven homeless out of Tokyo was considerably larger than the population of greater Chicago.

These figures are based on information given us in Tokyo and on a detailed study of the air reconnaissance maps. They may be somewhat in error but are certainly of the right order of magnitude. W as Japan already beaten before the atomic bomb? The answer is certainly "yes" in the sense that the fortunes of war had turned against her.

The answer is "no" in the sense that she was still fighting desperately and there was every reason to believe that she would continue to do so; and this is the only answer that has any practical significance. General MacArthur's staff anticipated about 50, American casualties and several times that number of Japanese casualties in the November 1 operation to establish the initial beachheads on Kyushu.

After that they expected a far more costly struggle before the Japanese homeland was subdued. There was every reason to think that the Japanese would defend their homeland with even greater fanaticism than when they fought to the death on Iwo Jima and Okinawa. No American soldier who survived the bloody struggles on these islands has much sympathy with the view that battle with the Japanese was over as soon as it was clear that their ultimate situation was hopeless.

No, there was every reason to expect a terrible struggle long after the point at which some people can now look back and say, "Japan was already beaten. That this was not an impossibility is shown by the following fact, which I have not seen reported. We recall the long period of nearly three weeks between the Japanese offer to surrender and the actual surrender on September 2.

This was needed in order to arrange details: of the surrender and occupation and to permit the Japanese government to prepare its people to accept the capitulation. It is not generally realized that there was threat of a revolt against the government, led by an Army group supported by the peasants, to seize control and continue the war. For several days it was touch and go as to whether the people would follow their government in surrender.

The bulk of the Japanese people did not consider themselves beaten; in fact they believed they were winning in spite of the terrible punishment they had taken.