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Thousands more people would die in the coming days and weeks from their injuries and the ravages of radiation poisoning. Around 10:45, the team abandoned Kokura and flew south toward Nagasaki.Ī statue of a saint from a Roman Catholic cathedral was damaged by the explosion. Searching for a window in the clouds, the plane circled the city three times, but Kokura never clearly came into view. Bockscar arrived at Kokura around 10 o’clock in the morning, but visibility over the city was poor. and flew toward Kokura, the intended target.Īlso located on the island of Kyushu, Kokura had been selected because the Japanese Imperial Army’s massive arsenal was there. The mission took off from Tinian Island at 3:47 A.M. They switched the attack to August 9, hastily assembled the egg-shaped plutonium bomb “Fat Man,” and loaded it into the B-29 bomber Bockscar. After the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, the United States planned to drop the next atomic weapon on August 10, but an extended cloudy forecast meant they had to move more quickly. August 9, 1945Ītomic bombs needed to be sited visually rather than relying on radar, which made clear skies necessary. officials had four candidate cities that suited their purposes. The city’s hilly geography and the presence of a POW camp made it a less than ideal target for the atomic bomb, and U.S.
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It had been on an earlier list in April but had been dropped. Two munitions factories were located there: the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works and the Mitsubishi-Urakami Torpedo Works.ĭespite the presence of military targets, Nagasaki was not selected as one of the U.S. During World War II, the city manufactured weapons for the Japanese military. Tagawa's mother died shortly after.īecause of its excellent harbor and successful history as an open port, Nagasaki developed a robust shipbuilding industry and thrived as a trading center. Spilled chemicals in the factory severely burned his father's feet, which were later amputated in a temporary hospital he died a few days later. He was home alone while his parents worked at their factory only half a mile from ground zero. Hiroyasu Tagawa only began sharing his story of August 9, 1945, in 2013. ( Vestiges of the atomic bomb have faded in a now vibrant Hiroshima.) An intact city would better demonstrate the destructive capacity of the atomic bombs. American B-29s would not firebomb those areas. By the end of May 1945, these cities had become the finalists, with Kyoto and Hiroshima being the two primary targets. Very few areas met all the qualifications among them were Kyoto, Hiroshima, Kokura, and Niigata. Between April and June, military leaders generated a long list of Japanese cities using three criteria: First, the cities needed to be large, wider than three miles with sizable populations second, they needed to have “high strategic value,” meaning military installations of some kind and third, they needed to have escaped the U.S.’s ongoing firebombing campaign begun in March 1945.
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military was considering different targets for the first deployment of the atomic bomb that summer.