It has been 69 years since 6 August 1945, when the United States devastated the Japanese city of Hiroshima using an atomic weapon of tremendous destructive power. This was the first time in history that such a weapon was being used.
While the country was still trying to cope with the shock and trauma of the Hiroshima attack, the United States dropped another atomic bomb on Nagasaki three days later – essentially rendering Japan to their yielding knees.
These nuclear attacks were consequences of World War II, which the Japanese empire was facing due to its notorious attack on Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1944 – an event that pulled the sleeping giant into the War that ended in never-before-seen flames and bloodshed. The bombings were performed on the orders of the then President of America, Harry S. Truman.
Here are 10 facts about the event in history:
1. The bomb, which was used on Hiroshima, was called 'Little Boy' and the one dropped on Nagasaki was called 'Fat Man'. These are the only two nuclear bombs ever used in this world to devastate a human settlement.
2. 'Little Boy' was made using 'Uranium 235' and was 3 meters in length and 0.7 meters in diameter. It weighted 4 tons and its energy was equivalent to 20 kilotons of TNT explosive power. It is estimated that the yield was equivalent to approximately 13 kilotons.
3. Some 140,000 (including 20,000 soldiers) were dead by the end of December 1945. Ninety percent of them are thought to have been killed within 2 weeks after the bombing.
4. There were approximately 76,000 buildings in the city when the bomb was dropped, and 92 percent of these were destroyed by the blast and fire.
5. The blast was so powerful that it damaged 60 percent of the buildings located as far as 5 kilometres away from the hypocentre (where the bomb dropped).
6. An area of 13 square kilometres was transformed into a wide-stretch of rubbles and ruins.
7. According to the radio broadcast of Japan, all living things, which included humans and animals, died as a result of the deadly bombing.
8. One of the survivors was cited as saying that "burns blackened the people, they did not have hair as the hair was also burned. Their skin became loose and hung down and it was a city of walking Ghosts", Buzzle website notes.
9. The person who armed the bomb and made it ready for dropping was Captain William S. Parsons. Just before dropping the bomb, he is known to have said that he did not have any emotion at the moment.
10. After the atom bomb exploded, the temperature of the affected place was somewhere around ten million degrees and the light that was emitted upon impact, was much brighter than the brightness of the sun.
