65th Anniversary of Atomic Bomb Dropped on Nagasaki

Waterfront in Nagasaki, Japan, Photo Credit: Fg2

On August 9, 1945, exactly after the first atomic bomb had been dropped on the city of Hiroshima, another U.S. Boker, named  Bock’s Car left its base on Tinian Island carrying a plutonium bomb nicknamed “Fat Man.”

The scheduled target for the bomb was the Japanese city of Kokura, but because of clouds and poor visibility, the bomber headed for a secondary target, Nagasaki, where at 11:02 am, local time, it dropped the bomb.

About  70,000 people were killed and half of the city was destroyed. Memorial services are held annually at Nagasaki and also at Kokura.

A moment of silence was observed today at 11:02 a.m., the time when the U.S. dropped the second atomic bomb on the  Japanese city of Nagasaki.

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, officially ending the Pacific War and therefore World War II. Germany  had signed its Instrument of Surrender on May 7, ending the war in Europe. The bombings led, in part, to post-war Japan adopting Three Non-Nuclear Principles, forbidding the nation from nuclear armament. The role of the bombings in Japan’s surrender and the U.S.’s ethical justification for them, as well as their strategical  importance, is still debated.