80 years ago
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A blinding light like thousands of strobe lights—that's how Toshiko Tanaka described the morning, 80 years ago today, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
On Aug. 6, 1945, the Enola Gay B-29 Superfortress bomber delivered its payload, dubbed Little Boy, onto the unsuspecting civilians of Hiroshima. Three days later, a second bomb— Fat Boy — fell on Nagasaki. The bombing led to the Japanese official surrender in World War II on Sept. 2, 1945.
By the end of 1945, about 210,000 people, mostly Japanese civilians and forced Korean laborers, had died. Some perished instantly in the blasts, others died later on from radiation poisoning. Pregnant women lost children in the aftermath, and thousands more civilians would fall victim to cancers and other side effects over the following decades.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain the only two cities ever to be targeted by nuclear weapons. Tanaka, who was just 6 years old when the bomb fell, told CBS News in 2020 that both remain scarred by the horrors unleashed by President Harry S. Truman and the scientists of the Manhattan Project in the early hours of that quiet August morning.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hiroshima-nagasaki-1945-2025-photos-atomic-bomb/
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I have to comment that my father, who fought the Japanese through Burma & Malaysia (in The 14th under General Slim), showed no qualms regarding this action by the USA.
Of the very few things he ever said regarding his war experiences, the vast number of allied lives the two bombs saved (including his) was something he repeated every time the Hiroshima horrors were shown.
He hinted of seeing fanatical brutal Japanese soldiers in action, lost comrades, seen the Changi POW.
The idea of having allied soldiers fight on and on to walls of the Emperors Palace must have been a nightmare for Churchill and Truman.
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