Monday 13 July 2009

Hiroshima And Nagasaki - Then And Now

On 6th and 9th August 1945, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The nuclear weapons were code-named 'Little Boy and 'Fat Man' respectively.
The bombs killed as many as 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki by the end of 1945, roughly half on the days of the bombings. Six days after the detonation over Nagasaki, on August 15th, Japan announced its surrender to the Allied Powers, signing the Instrument of Surrender on September 2nd, officially ending the Pacific War and therefore World War II

The following pictures show the utter devastation immediately after the bombings in 1945 and also how the cities have been transformed to look the way they do today, 64 years on.
CLICK ON EACH IMAGE TO ENLARGE.