People & Histories
6 and 9 August 1945

The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

The United States drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing an estimated 140,000 and 74,000 people by the end of 1945.

  • Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum: Damage of the atomic bombing — Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, City of Hiroshima
  • Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan — Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2005)
  • Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II — John W. Dower, W. W. Norton (1999)

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At 8:15 a.m. on 6 August 1945 the American B-29 Enola Gay dropped a uranium bomb over Hiroshima, a city of roughly 350,000 people. It exploded about 600 metres above the centre, creating a fireball and blast that flattened most of the city. On 9 August a plutonium bomb fell on Nagasaki, whose hills limited the damage somewhat.

The toll

The cities estimate that about 140,000 people had died in Hiroshima and about 74,000 in Nagasaki by the end of 1945, from blast, fire and acute radiation sickness. Many more died in later years from injuries and cancers. The dead included Korean forced labourers, Allied prisoners and Japanese-American students caught in Japan by the war.

Survivors

Survivors, the hibakusha, faced not only illness but discrimination in work and marriage, from fear that radiation effects were contagious or hereditary. Under the occupation, US censorship restricted reporting on the bombs’ effects. From the 1950s, after a Japanese fishing boat, the Lucky Dragon No. 5, was contaminated by an American H-bomb test in 1954, a mass movement against nuclear weapons grew. The film Godzilla came out the same year.

  • Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II — John W. Dower, W. W. Norton (1999)
  • War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945–2005 — Franziska Seraphim, Harvard University Asia Center (2006)

Was it necessary?

The debate continues. The traditional American view holds that the bombs forced a quick surrender and avoided a bloody invasion. Other historians argue that Japan was near collapse, that Soviet entry into the war on 8 August was at least as decisive, and that the United States also had an eye on the postwar world.

  • Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan — Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2005)

Memory

Every 6 August the Peace Memorial Ceremony in Hiroshima falls silent at 8:15; the Atomic Bomb Dome has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1996. A story many Japanese children learn is that of Sasaki Sadako, who developed leukaemia and folded paper cranes in hope of recovery before dying in 1955; schoolchildren still send strings of cranes to the Children’s Peace Monument.

Some Asian neighbours see a danger in this memory: that focusing on Japan as the victim of the bombs blurs Japan’s role as aggressor. Hiroshima’s museum has added more on the city’s role as a military base and on the war’s background. In 2016 Barack Obama became the first sitting US president to visit Hiroshima; he did not apologise, and most survivors said they did not expect him to.

Hibakusha today

The average age of survivors is now over 85, and their numbers are falling fast. Their organisation, Nihon Hidankyo, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2024 for its work toward a world without nuclear weapons. For many Japanese, carrying their testimony forward is a national duty.

How it's seen
Hiroshima and Nagasaki

An atrocity against civilians that must never be repeated anywhere. The cities present themselves as places of peace, and their mayors issue annual declarations calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

Traditional US view

The bombs ended the war quickly and saved the lives of many Americans and Japanese who would have died in an invasion of Japan. Polls show this view has weakened among younger Americans.

  • Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan — Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2005)

Historians' debate

Historians disagree on whether surrender could have come without the bombs, how much the Soviet declaration of war mattered (Tsuyoshi Hasegawa argues it was decisive), and whether postwar projections of invasion casualties were inflated.

  • Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan — Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2005)

Some in China and Korea

Focusing on Japan as a victim of the bombs can obscure why the war happened. Many also recall that tens of thousands of Koreans, many of them forced labourers, were among the victims.

  • War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945–2005 — Franziska Seraphim, Harvard University Asia Center (2006)
  • Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations — Zheng Wang, Columbia University Press (2012)

Why it matters today

Japan

Japan is the only country to have suffered atomic attack, and that experience underpins its commitment to nuclear disarmament, its three non-nuclear principles, and a strong popular pacifism. Survivors, the hibakusha, are honoured as witnesses; their organisation Nihon Hidankyo won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2024.