Atomic Bomb « LONELY PLANET

Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuclear attacks at the end of World War II against the Empire of Japan by the United States at the order of U.S. President Harry S. Truman on August 6 and 9, 1945.After six months of intense firebombing of 67 other Japanese cities, the nuclear weapon “Little Boy” was dropped on the city of Hiroshima on Monday, August 6, 1945, followed on August 9 by the detonation of the “Fat Man” nuclear bomb over Nagasaki. These are to date the only attacks with nuclear weapons in the history of warfare.The bombs killed as many as 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki by the end of 1945, roughly half on the days of the bombings.Since then, thousands more have died from injuries or illness attributed to exposure to radiation released by the bombs. In both cities, the overwhelming majority of the dead were civilians.Six days after the detonation over Nagasaki, on August 15, Japan announced its surrender to the Allied Powers, signing the Instrument of Surrender on September 2.
The Huge Atomic Cloud

Hiroshima Was Burnt To Ashes

Shadows
All the watches found in the ground zero were stopped at 8:15 am, the time of the explosion.

The photograph bellow shows the stone steps of a Bank where a person was incinerated by the heat rays
photograph shows the shadow made by the heat rays. This place is about 800 meters from the hypocenter, and the unshielded asphalt surface was scorched, whereas the surface shielded by the handrail appears to be a whitish shadow.
Disaster Near The Hypocenter
Around the Matsuyama-cho intersection which is close to the hypocenter, victimswere burned to death in their last gesture grasping at the air or trying to escape. Everything that burns was burnt. Roof tiles were crushed into small pieces and scattered all over, air-raid shelters and street cars were burned and ruined
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Yamahata, the photographer of Nagasaki

On Agust 10, 1945, the day after the bombing of Nagasaki Yosuke Yamahata, began to photograh the devastation. The city was dead. He walked through the darkened ruins and the dead corpses for hours. By late afternoon, he had taken his final photographs near a first aid station north of the city. In a single day, he had completed the only extensive photographic record of the immediate aftermath of the atomic bombing of either Hiroshima orNagasaki.