The Atomic Bomb, Hiroshima and Nagasaki

• On 6^th August 1945 a United States B29 bomber plane, the Enola Gay, flew over the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
• At 8:15 a.m. an atomic bomb was dropped.
• It exploded with the power of 20,000 tonnes of TNT.  It produced a giant mushroom shaped cloud over the city.
• Anyone within a kilometre of the explosion became a bundle of smoking black charcoal in seconds.
• Within minutes about 70,000 people were dead, those who were still alive were in agony from their burns.
• Estimates of the casualties vary:
  • The USA gave a figure of 79,400.
• But,
• The Japanese estimated that 240,000 people were killed during the explosion or died shortly afterwards from the effects of radiation.
• On 9^th August 1945 a second bomb was dropped on the port of Nagasaki.
• According to the USA it killed 20,000 people.  The Japanese said that 50,000 people were killed.
• The two bombs that were dropped were called Fat Man and Little Boy.
• Afterwards, the Americans denied that radiation
• sickness existed and they banned journalists from
• Hiroshima.

Eye Witness Accounts:

a)    The skin was burned off some of them and was hanging from their hands and from their chins.

b)    In Hiroshima, 30 days later, people who were not injured in the bombing are still dying mysteriously and horribly from an unknown something which I can only describe as the atomic plague

c)    Survivors began to notice in themselves a strange form of illness.  It consisted of vomiting, loss of appetite, diarrhoea with large amounts of blood, purple spots on the skin, bleeding from the mouth, loss of hair and usually death.