PDA

View Full Version : 63 years ago today



Little-Acorn
08-05-2008, 12:21 PM
Sixty-three years ago today, on August 5, 1945, the first atomic bomb used in warfare was dropped on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. Hiroshima was a key shipping port, containing several major army control centers and large depots of war supplies, along with its civilian population. 3/4 of the city was destroyed, and 80,000 people killed, by one airplane carrying one bomb. It was almost as many as were killed in the earlier (conventional) incendiary raids on Tokyo by hundreds of aircraft carrying thousands of bombs.

A direct result of the atomic bombing, and another three days later on Nagasaki, was the Japanese government's decision to surrender immediately rather than fight to the last man on island after island. As such, the atomic bomb saved millions of American and Japanese lives, far more than were killed in the bombings.