The nuclear attack devastated the cities for months after as survivors, known as hibakusha, suffered the effects of radiation and Japan went into a day of remembrance for those fallen last week.īefore the war: Hisashi Takahashi, covering his face with watermelon in the centre, supplied this photo of his family and relatives posing while they eat watermelon around 1932 in Hiroshima, western Japan.
President Harry Truman decided to use nuclear weapons rather than face a costly invasion of mainland Japan that would cost the lives of an estimated cost of 800,000 US servicemen. It wiped out 30 per cent of the city's population and flattened a 4.7 square mile area, leaving another 80,000 residents of the city injured when it exploded with the force of 16 kilotons of TNT. The US bomb, 'Little Boy,' the first nuclear weapon used in war, was dropped on the Hiroshima at 7.31 am. On that day in 1945 between 90,000 and 146,000 people died in Hiroshima after the city was hit by an atomic bomb.Īnd now specially colourised photos of that terrible day as well as of the weeks preceeding it have emerged in a new book to help those alive at the time to remember. Saturday marks the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II but for many in Japan August 6 remains a more important date.
