On two days in August 1945, U.S. planes dropped two atomic bombs — one on Hiroshima, one on Nagasaki, the only times nuclear weapons have been used. Their unprecedented destructive power incinerated buildings and people and left lifelong physical and psychological scars on survivors and on the cities themselves. “Practically all living things, human and animal, were literally seared to death,” an AP story reported. A few days later, Japan announced its unconditional surrender. World War II was effectively over.
Seventy years later, the AP is making stories about the bombings and surrender available, along with photos.
In this Aug. 6, 1945 photo, smoke rises around 20,000 feet above Hiroshima, Japan, after the first atomic bomb was dropped. On two days in August 1945, U.S. planes dropped two atomic bombs, one on Hiroshima, one on Nagasaki, the first and only time nuclear weapons have been used. Their destructive power was unprecedented, incinerating buildings and people, and leaving lifelong scars on survivors, not just physical but also psychological, and on the cities themselves. Days later, World War II was over. (AP Photo)
WASHINGTON, AUG. 6. — An atomic bomb, hailed as the most terrible destructive force in history and as the greatest achievement of organized science, has been loosed upon Japan.
President (Harry) Truman disclosed in a White House statement at 11 a.m. Eastern War Time, today that the first use of the bomb — containing more power than 20,000 tons of TNT and producing more than 2,000 times the blast of the most powerful bomb ever dropped before — was made 16 hours earlier on Hiroshima, a Japanese army base.
(Tokyo Radio announced that Hiroshima was raided at 8:20 a.m. Monday (7:20 p.m. Sunday, United States Eastern War Time). That is about the time the bomb was dropped, but the Tokyo broadcast, recorded by the FCC, made no mention of any unusual destruction. It reported only that “a small number” of American B-29s attacked the city on southwestern Honshu with incendiary and explosive bombs.)
In this Aug. 6, 1945 photo, aboard the cruiser Augusta, President Harry S. Truman, with a radio at hand, reads reports of the first atomic bomb raid on Japan, while en route home from the Potsdam conference. (AP Photo)
The raid on Hiroshima, located on Honshu Island on the shores of the Inland Sea, had not been disclosed previously although the 25th Air Force on Guam announced that 580 Superforts raided four Japanese cities at about the same time.
The atomic bomb is the answer, President Truman said, to Japan’s refusal to surrender. Secretary of War (Henry) Stimson predicted the bomb will prove a tremendous aid in shortening the Japanese war. Mr. Truman grimly warned that “even more powerful forms (of the bomb) are in development.”
“If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a rain of ruin from the air the like of which has never been seen on this earth,” he said.
The War Department reported that “an impenetrable cloud of dust and smoke” cloaked Hiroshima after the bomb exploded. It was impossible to make an immediate assessment of the damage.
President Truman said he would recommend that Congress consider establishing a commission to control production of atomic power within the United States.
This photo-diagram, based on diagram issued by Army Air Force on August 9, 1945, locates areas damaged in Japanese homeland city of Hiroshima by first atomic bomb dropped by U.S. Army Air Forces. Large circle is drawn on diameter of 19,000 feet. Shaded areas indicate devastates sectors, according to information based on intelligence reports. Key to numbers, with percentage of total destruction where available: 1- Army Transport Base -25 percent, 2- Army Ordnance Depot,3- Army Food Depot-35 percent, 4- Army Clothing Depot -85 percent, 5- E. Hiroshima RR Station -30 percent, 6- Unidentified Industry -90 percent, 7- Sumitomo Rayon Plant -25 percent, 8- Kinkwa Rayon Mill -10 percent, 9- Teikoku Textile Mill-100 percent, 10- Power Plant -?, 12- Electric RR power Station -100 percent, 13- Electric Power Generator-100 percent, 14- Telephone Company-100 percent, 15- Gas Works -100 percent, 16- Hiroshima RR Station -100 percent, 17- Unidentified RR Station-100 percent, 18- Bridge, debris loaded, intact, 19- Bridge, one-fourth missing, 20- Large bridge, shattered, intact, 21- Bridge, large hole, west side, 22- Bridge, intact, banks caved in, 23- Bridge, intact, debris covered, 24- Both bridges intact, 25- Bridge, destroyed, 26- Bridge, severely damaged, 27-Bridge destroyed, 28-Bridge, shattered, inoperative, 29- Bridge, intact, slight damage, 30- Bridge, intact, severely damaged. (AP Photo)
“I shall make recommendations to Congress as to how atomic power can become a powerful and forceful influence towards the maintenance of world peace,” he said. Both Mr. Truman and Stimson, while emphasizing the peace-time potentiality of the new force, made clear that much research must be undertaken to effect full peacetime application of its principles.
The product of $2,000,000,000 spent in research and production, the atomic bomb has been one of the most closely guarded secrets of the war. Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill gave the signal to start work on harnessing the forces of the atom. Mr. Truman said the Germans worked feverishly, but failed to solve the problem.
Meantime, American and British scientists studied the problem and developed two principal plants and some lesser factories for the production of atomic power.
The president disclosed that more than 65,000 persons now are working in great secrecy in these plants, adding: “We have spent $2,000,000,000 on the greatest scientific gamble in history — and won. We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japs have above ground in any city. We shall completely destroy Japan’s power to make war.”
The President noted that the Big Three ultimatum issued on July 26 at Potsdam was intended “to spare the Japanese people from utter destruction,” and the Japanese leaders rejected it. The atomic bomb now is the answer to that rejection, and the President said: ‘They may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.”
Mr. Truman forecast that sea and land forces will follow up this air attack in such numbers and power as the Japanese never have witnessed. The President said that this discovery may open the way for an entirely new concept of force and power. The actual harnessing of atomic energy may in the future supplement the power that now comes from coal, oil and the great dams, he said.
“It has never been the habit of the scientists of this country or the policy of this government to withhold from the world scientific knowledge,” Mr. Truman said. “Normally, therefore, everything about the work with atomic energy would be made public.”
That will have to wait, however, he said, until the war emergency is over.
In this photo provided by the U.S. Signal Corps, a massive column of billowing smoke, thousands of feet high, mushrooms over the city of Nagasaki, Japan, after an atomic bomb was dropped by the United States on Aug. 9, 1945. A B-29 plane delivered the blast killing approximately 70,000 people, with thousands dying later of radiation effects. The attack came three days after the U.S. dropped the world’s first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The attacks brought about Japan’s unconditional surrender, and the war ended when the papers of surrender were accepted aboard the U.S. battleship Missouri on Sept. 2, 1945. (AP Photo/U.S. Signal Corps)
A victim of the first atomic bomb ever used in warfare is seen in September 1945, at the Ujina Branch of the First Army Hospital in Hiroshima. The thermic rays emitted by the explosion burned the pattern of this woman’s kimono upon her back. (AP Photo)
Here is a view of the total destruction of Hiroshima, the result of the first atomic bomb dropped in wartime, August 6, 1945. (AP Photo/U.S. Air Force)
An unidentified young boy carries his burned brother on his back, Aug. 10, 1945 in Nagasaki, Japan. This photograph was not released to the public by the Japanese military but was disseminated to the world press by the United Nations after the war. (AP Photo/United Nations, Yosuke Yamahata)
White smoke rises from detonation of the atom bomb over Hiroshima, Aug. 6, 1945. Photo was made from 25,000 feet after the bomb hit its target. (AP Photo/U.S. Air Force)
In this Aug. 6, 1945 photo, survivors of the first atomic bomb ever used in warfare are seen as they await emergency medical treatment in Hiroshima, Japan. On two days in August 1945, U.S. planes dropped two atomic bombs, one on Hiroshima, one on Nagasaki, the first and only time nuclear weapons have been used. Their destructive power was unprecedented, incinerating buildings and people, and leaving lifelong scars on survivors, not just physical but also psychological, and on the cities themselves. Days later, World War II was over. (AP Photo)
A huge expanse of ruins left the explosion of the atomic bomb on August 6, 1945 in Hiroshima. 140,000 people were killed. (AP Photo)
A survivor of the first atomic bomb ever used in warfare, Jinpe Teravama retains scars after healing of burns from the bomb explosion, Hiroshima, in June 1947. (AP Photo)
Ikimi Kikkawa shows keloid scars following the healing of burns caused by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of the second World War. She was seen at the Red Cross hospital there, June 5, 1947. (AP Photo)
A battered religious figure stands witness on a hill above a burn-razed valley at Nagasaki, on September 24, 1945, after the second atomic bomb ever used in warfare was dropped by the U.S. over the Japanese industrial center. The bombing killed more than 70,000 people instantly, with ten thousands dying later from effects of the radioactive fallout. (AP Photo)
A Japanese woman is seen with a child in traditional Japanese clothing, who survived the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, in Nagasaki, Japan, August 9, 1945. Their faces are marked with burns by the heat of the explosion. Scanty food rations are given out to the suffering public. (AP Photo)
A Japanese family eats rice in the crude shack they built from the wreckage left on the spot where their home once stood in Nagasaki, Sept. 14, 1945. (AP Photo)
The Japanese of atom-bombed Hiroshima have put the ancient custom of wearing nose and mouth masks while out of doors to a good use. Hiroshima was the first town to be hit by an atom bomb during the war. Japanese girls wearing their masks as they walk through the devastated streets of Hiroshima, Japan, on Oct. 6, 1945. (AP Photo)
Aerial views of Hiroshima, Sept. 5, 1945, after the atomic bomb was dropped over this Japanese city on Aug. 6. (AP Photo/Max Desfor)
The completely destroyed Roman Catholic Church of Urakami in Nagasaki is seen in 1945, after the second atomic bomb ever used in warfare was dropped by the U.S. over the Japanese industrial center. The bombing killed more than 70,000 people instantly, with ten thousands dying later from effects of the radioactive fallout. (AP Photo)
A civilian examines a sign in the middle of mass of rubble that once was a home in Nagasaki, Sept 14, 1945, one of the cities destroyed by atomic bomb. (AP Photo)
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7 thoughts on “AP WAS THERE: US Drops Atomic Bombs on Japan in 1945”
Nicely censored. Well done. I’ve been to the Hiroshima Peace Centre where they showed dioramas of people with flesh hanging off still walking around and they played the screams of the victims who had to jump into the river for some relief. All unnecessary – the ban on photographs for 5 years after. AP must have people in priviledged places to have had access.
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Nicely censored. Well done. I’ve been to the Hiroshima Peace Centre where they showed dioramas of people with flesh hanging off still walking around and they played the screams of the victims who had to jump into the river for some relief. All unnecessary – the ban on photographs for 5 years after. AP must have people in priviledged places to have had access.
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Tremendas fotos, lamentables y tristes, pero como siempre, los niños, ancianos e inocentes, tienen que pagar las facturas.
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