Still, many citizens, including schoolchildren, were recruited to prepare for future bombings by tearing down houses to create fire lanes, and it was at this task that many were laboring or preparing to labor on the morning of August 6. to the supposed presence of President Truman’s mother in the area. Rumors abounded as to why this was so, from the fact that many Hiroshima residents had emigrated to the U.S. Up to that point, the city had been largely spared by the rain of conventional air bombing that had ravaged many other Japanese cities. Six miles below the crew of the Enola Gay, the people of Hiroshima were waking up and preparing for their daily routines. As we got farther away, we could see the base of the mushroom and below we could see what looked like a few-hundred-foot layer of debris and smoke and what have you… I saw fires springing up in different places, like flames shooting up on a bed of coals.” Tail gunner Robert Caron: “The mushroom itself was a spectacular sight, a bubbling mass of purple-gray smoke and you could see it had a red core in it and everything was burning inside. We could see smoke and fires creeping up the sides of the mountains.” Where we had seen a clear city two minutes before, we could now no longer see the city. Those of us who had flown quite a bit over Europe thought that it was anti-aircraft fire that had exploded very close to the plane.” On viewing the atomic fireball: “I don’t believe anyone ever expected to look at a sight quite like that. Navigator Theodore Van Kirk recalls the shockwaves from the explosion: “(It was) very much as if you’ve ever sat on an ash can and had somebody hit it with a baseball bat… The plane bounced, it jumped and there was a noise like a piece of sheet metal snapping. Lewis said he could taste atomic fission. I remember (copilot Robert) Lewis pounding my shoulder, saying ‘Look at that! Look at that! Look at that!’ (Bombardier) Tom Ferebee wondered about whether radioactivity would make us all sterile. No one spoke for a moment then everyone was talking. The city was hidden by that awful cloud… boiling up, mushrooming, terrible and incredibly tall. Pilot Paul Tibbets: “We turned back to look at Hiroshima. Below are their eyewitness accounts of the first atomic bomb dropped on Japan. Along with Tibbets, copilot Robert Lewis, bombardier Tom Ferebee, navigator Theodore Van Kirk, and tail gunner Robert Caron were among the others on board the Enola Gay. The B-29 plane that carried Little Boy from Tinian Island in the western Pacific to Hiroshima was known as the Enola Gay, after pilot Paul Tibbets’ mother. The bombing of Hiroshima, codenamed Operation Centerboard I, was approved by Curtis LeMay on August 4, 1945. Department of Energy has estimated that after five years there were perhaps 200,000 or more fatalities as a result of the bombing, while the city of Hiroshima has estimated that 237,000 people were killed directly or indirectly by the bomb’s effects, including burns, radiation sickness, and cancer. Between 90,000 and 166,000 people are believed to have died from the bomb in the four-month period following the explosion. At the time of the bombing, Hiroshima was home to 280,000-290,000 civilians as well as 43,000 soldiers. The bomb was known as “Little Boy”, a uranium gun-type bomb that exploded with about thirteen kilotons of force. On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. After the Interim Committee decided to drop the bomb, the Target Committee determined the locations to be hit, and President Truman issued the Potsdam Proclamation as Japan’s final warning, the world soon learned the meaning of “complete and utter destruction.” The first two atomic bombs ever used were dropped on Japan in early August, 1945.įor a detailed timeline of the bombings, please see Hiroshima and Nagasaki Bombing Timeline.
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