The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima -Japan on August 6, 1945

By executive order of President Harry S. Truman the U.S. dropped the nuclear weapon “Little Boy” on the city of Hiroshima on Monday, August 6, 1945.

In the early morning hours of August 6, 1945, a B-29 bomber named Enola Gay took off from the island of Tinian and headed north by northwest toward Japan.  The bomber’s primary target was the city of Hiroshima, located on the deltas of southwestern Honshu Island facing the Inland Sea.  Hiroshima had a civilian population of almost 300,000 and was an important military center, containing about 43,000 soldiers.

The bomber, piloted by the commander of the 509th Composite Group, Colonel Paul Tibbets, flew at low altitude on automatic pilot before climbing to 31,000 feet as it neared the target area.  At approximately 8:15 a.m. Hiroshima time the Enola Gay released “Little Boy,” its 9,700-pound uranium bomb, over the city.  Tibbets immediately dove away to avoid the anticipated shock wave.  Forty-three seconds later, a huge explosion lit the morning sky as Little Boy detonated 1,900 feet above the city, directly over a parade field where soldiers of the Japanese Second Army were doing calisthenics.  Though already eleven and a half miles away, the Enola Gay was rocked by the blast.  At first, Tibbets thought he was taking flak.  After a second shock wave (reflected from the ground) hit the plane, the crew looked back at Hiroshima.  “The city was hidden by that awful cloud . . . boiling up, mushrooming,

Within minutes 9 out of 10 people half a mile or less from ground zero were dead.

People farther from the point of detonation experienced first the flash and heat, followed seconds later by a deafening boom and the blast wave.  Nearly every structure within one mile of ground zero was destroyed, and almost every building within three miles was damaged.

Some 70,000 people probably died as a result of initial blast. Hiroshima death toll was probably over 100,000.  The five-year death total may have reached or even exceeded 200,000, as cancer and other long-term effects took hold.

At 11:00 a.m., August 6 (Washington D.C. time), radio stations began playing a prepared statement from President Truman (right) informing the American public that the United States had dropped an entirely new type of bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima — an “atomic bomb.”  Truman warned that if Japan still refused to surrender unconditionally, as demanded by the Potsdam Declaration of July 26, the United States would attack additional targets with equally devastating results.