History UsefulNotes / AtomicBombingsOfHiroshimaAndNagasaki

The Imperial Cabinet looked upon the bombings as an unrequited blessing. The bombings provided a ''perfect'' excuse for just getting the whole 'giving up' thing over with because, hey, surrendering to an enemy who has 'the power of a thousand suns, in a bomb' doesn't sound so bad really - it makes it seem it was less your collective fault for getting the entire country [[SecondSinoJapaneseWar into a massive regular-and-guerilla war]] [[ForeverWar it couldn't possibly win]], and then ''[[WorldWarTwo getting involved in another]]'' just to avoid stopping the first one [[GeneralFailure because really, guys, come on, we're gonna win this one any year and loss of a hundred thousand men now, be good sports why don't you.]] So it was that they reduced their conditions to just retaining the Emperor, who was not to be tried for war crimes like establishing Research Unit 731 of the Kwantung/Guandong Army, which went through several (tens of) thousand(s of) 'logs' in live human experiments to develop chemical biological weapons which were used on Chinese urban centres and agricultural areas during [[SecondSinoJapaneseWar the war.]] The Allies accepted, and so a truce was concluded on the 15th of August until the representatives of both countries' governments could meet (on September the 2nd) to sign the peace treaty. In the meantime, The Cabinet set about destroying all the records they could of everything even remotely related to War Crimes before the Americans' troop-ships landed to occupy the place some two weeks later. This would leave the post-war Tokyo (war crime) Trials a teensy bit short of evidence.

Japan's main broadcasting corporation's radio control operator soon noticed the signal to the Hiroshima station was as dead. At military headquarters, many thought it the result of some technical error or meteorological phenomena or other, despite the total loss of contact with all stations in and around Hiroshima. It wasn't August the 8th that Radio Tokyo reported that "Practically all living things, human and animal, were literally seared to death" and people realized it was neither an error, a natural phenomena, or just another run-of-the-mill strategic-bombing. The Nagasaki bombing was initiated at 11:01 AM on 9 August 1945. Fires were even widespread, as Nagasaki was a rather hilly city and most of the city was merely set demolished rather than vaporised (meaning there was plenty of stuff left over to for the firestorm). Total death toll was c.150-250k - not bad, considering, and as little as an eighth of the total USAF strategic bombing campaign. The Soviet Union, having lost some c.20 million military and civilian dead, was totally nonplussed and Generalissimo Chiang's Guomindang (China having had c.20-30 million civilians and c.3 million military dead) were a bit disappointed really.

The Imperial Cabinet looked upon the bombings as an unrequited blessing. The bombings provided a ''perfect'' excuse for just getting the whole 'giving up' thing over with because, hey, surrendering to an enemy who has 'the power of a thousand suns, in a bomb' doesn't sound so bad really - it makes it seem it was less your collective fault for getting the entire country [[SecondSinoJapaneseWar into a massive regular-and-guerilla war]] [[ForeverWar it couldn't possibly win]], and then ''[[WorldWarTwo getting involved in another]]'' just to avoid stopping the first one]] [[GeneralFailure because really, guys, come on, we're gonna win this one any year and loss of a hundred thousand men now, be good sports why don't you.]] So it was that they reduced their conditions to just retaining the Emperor, who was not to be tried for war crimes like establishing Research Unit 731 of the Kwantung/Guandong Army, which went through several (tens of) thousand(s of) 'logs' in live human experiments to develop chemical biological weapons which were used on Chinese urban centres and agricultural areas during [[SecondSinoJapaneseWar the war.]] The Allies accepted, and so a truce was concluded on the 15th of August until the representatives of both countries' governments could meet (on September the 2nd) to sign the peace treaty. In the meantime, The Cabinet set about destroying all the records they could of everything even remotely related to War Crimes before the Americans' troop-ships landed to occupy the place some two weeks later. This would leave the post-war Tokyo (war crime) Trials a teensy bit short of evidence.

The American public, on the other hand, was a little shocked. Though they weren't told of the figure until long-afterwards (the USA only lost 0.2 milllion military dead throughout the war, making the death toll seem very large by comparison), the tales some heard of the destruction made it all seem a bit unnecessarily brutal. At the time the reaction to the bombings was rather varied, with a VocalMinority advocating the dropping of more atomic bombs and the genocide of the Japanese nation. Genocide was never on the cards, but it's hard to see how the USA could have earned an even greater reputation for being almost as brutal, if not more so, than the USSR whose Red Army had killed some six million Germans. Government censorship of the effects of the bomb, and especially of photographs, meant that very few people understood that most of the bomb-deaths were not instantaneous but rather from radiation-poisoning. That said, nobody had much of an idea of the lasting effects of fallout at the time.

The prospects were ''not'' good, even accounting for just how transparent The Allies' overall plan for ''Operation Downfall'' was - i.e. a landing on Kyushu, the southernmost major island, to establish airbases and use them to provide air-cover for the main landings on the southern and eastern coasts of the Tokyo Plain to take the capital in a swift, overwhelming strike. Although some two thousand aircraft and several thousand speedboats had been made available or constructed for ''Tokubetsu Kogeki'' duty, only a handful of regular submarines and mini-submarines were left. Although the Home Islands Corps had enough regular soldiers to match the invaders' million men man-for-man, they didn't have enough weapons for a fifth of them and the [[HomeGuard 'Volunteer Defence Corps']] which took over most of the support roles was largely composed of unarmed women, kids, and the elderly; 'unarmed', because there weren't enough weapons for them. Ammunition production was hovering a touch above zero since the USAF's strategic bombing campaign killed off much of the armaments-workforce and basically shut the economy of the entire country down months ago.

The prospects are ''not'' good, even accounting for just how transparent The Allies' overall plan for ''Operation Downfall'' was - i.e. a landing on Kyushu, the southernmost major island, to establish airbases and use them to provide air-cover for the main landings on the southern and eastern coasts of the Tokyo Plain to take the capital in a swift, overwhelming strike. Although some two thousand aircraft and several thousand speedboats had been made available or constructed for ''Tokubetsu Kogeki'' duty, only a handful of regular submarines and mini-submarines were left. Although the Home Islands Corps has enough regular soldiers to match the invaders' million men man-for-man, they don't have enough weapons for a fifth of them and the [[HomeGuard 'Volunteer Defence Corps']] which has taken over most of the support roles is largely composed of unarmed women, kids, and the elderly; 'unarmed', because there aren't enough weapons for them. Ammunition production is hovering a touch above zero since the USAF's strategic bombing campaign killed off much of the armaments-workforce and basically shut the economy of the entire country down months ago. Despite their best efforts to conscript the civilian population to build fortifications, the conscript-workforce's efficiency had been severely reduced by starvation, low morale resulting from starving military personnel stealing food from and brutalising civilians, and deaths from air-raids. There also wasn't enough concrete-mix, let alone enough iron or steel, to construct the fortifications properly - even once the use of such materials in any other capacity (including bomb-shelters) had been forbidden. This was a major contributing factor to the lethality of the USAF's strategic bombing campaign on Japanese urban centres, which killed between 250 and 900k civilians[[hottip:*: The Great Firebombing of Tokyo, which killed 80k and wounded another 40k, would not have been anywhere near as lethal had there been a single adequate bomb-shelter in the city outside the grounds of the Imperial Palace.]] Morale [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere hung by a thread]] as every man, woman, and child in The Empire realised that its strategic position could very easily be summed up [[http://youtu.be/pje5ROe5Y_w?t=1m38s in a single, rude word]].

In the last month of the summer of 1945, WorldWarII was in its endgame. With NaziGermany defeated, ImperialJapan stood alone. The half-million men of the China Expeditionary Force had been cut off from all supply and its garrisons were left to rot on the vine, scouring the countryside for food and grain on an even greater scale than ever before even as [[NoMoreEmperors The Guomindang]] moved to crush them one by one. The two million men of the Kwantung (aka [[TheReasonMaoChangedHisName Guandong]]) Army Group were being routed by the mechanised units of the Soviet Union's Red Army, more than a million Kwantung Army troops having thrown down their weapons and surrendering en masse, and the Red Army advancing into the North China Plain around Beijing and the Korean Peninsula. The Imperial Navy having been totally annihilated the previous year, save for the Tokubetsu Kogeki[[hottip:*: [[SuicideAttack 'Special Attack']] Speedboat and Submarine units, even the Soviets ''tiny'' Far Eastern Flotilla was able to help the Red Army take Southern Sakhalin island, and they were in an excellent position to take the northern 'Home Island' of Ezo/Hokkaido from the tiny and isolated IJA forces that had been assigned to defend it.

In the last month of the summer of 1945, WorldWarII was in its endgame. With NaziGermany defeated, ImperialJapan stood alone. The half-million men of the China Expeditionary Force had been cut off from all supply and its garrisons were left to rot on the vine, scouring the countryside for food and grain on an even greater scale than ever before even as [[NoMoreEmperors The Guomindang]] moved to crush them one by one. The two million men of the Kwantung (aka [[TheReasonMaoChangedHisName Guandong]]) Army Group were being routed by the mechanised units of the Soviet Union's Red Army, more than a million Kwantung Army troops having thrown down their weapons and surrendering en masse, and the Red Army advancing into the North China Plain around Beijing and the Korean Peninsula. The Imperial Navy having been totally annihilated the previous year, save for the Tokubetsu Kogeki[[hottip:*: SuicideAttack 'Special Attack']] Speedboat and Submarine units, even the Soviets ''tiny'' Far Eastern Flotilla was able to help the Red Army take Southern Sakhalin island, and they were in an excellent position to take the northern 'Home Island' of Ezo/Hokkaido from the tiny and isolated IJA forces that had been assigned to defend it.

In the last month of the summer of 1945, WorldWarII was in its endgame. With NaziGermany defeated, ImperialJapan stood alone. The half-million men of the China Expeditionary Force had been cut off from all supply and its garrisons were left to rot on the vine, scouring the countryside for food and grain on an even greater scale than ever before even as [[NoMoreEmperors The Guomindang]] moved to crush them one by one. The two million men of the Kwantung (aka [[TheReasonMaoChangedHisName Guandong]]) Army Group were being routed by the mechanised units of the Soviet Union's Red Army, more than a million Kwantung Army troops having thrown down their weapons and surrendering en masse, and the Red Army advancing into the North China Plain around Beijing and the Korean Peninsula. The Imperial Navy having been totally annihilated the previous year, save for the Tokubetsu Kogeki[[hottip:*: [[SuicideAttack 'Special Attack']]]] Speedboat and Submarine units, even the Soviets ''tiny'' Far Eastern Flotilla was able to help the Red Army take Southern Sakhalin island, and they were in an excellent position to take the northern 'Home Island' of Ezo/Hokkaido from the tiny and isolated IJA forces that had been assigned to defend it.

In the last month of the summer of 1945, WorldWarII was in its endgame. With NaziGermany defeated, ImperialJapan stood alone. The half-million men of the China Expeditionary Force had been cut off from all supply and its garrisons were left to rot on the vine, scouring the countryside for food and grain on an even greater scale than ever before even as the Guomindang moved to crush them one by one. The two million men of the Kwantung (aka [[TheReasonMaoChangedHisName Guandong]]) Army Group were being routed by the mechanised units of the Soviet Union's Red Army, more than a million Kwantung Army troops having thrown down their weapons and surrendering en masse, and the Red Army advancing into the North China Plain around Beijing and the Korean Peninsula. The Imperial Navy having been totally annihilated the previous year, save for the Tokubetsu Kogeki[[hottip:*: [[SuicideAttack 'Special Attack']]]] Speedboat and Submarine units, even the Soviets ''tiny'' Far Eastern Flotilla was able to help the Red Army take Southern Sakhalin island, and they were in an excellent position to take the northern 'Home Island' of Ezo/Hokkaido from the tiny and isolated IJA forces that had been assigned to defend it.

The prospects are ''not'' good, even accounting for just how transparent the Allies' overall plan for ''Operation Downfall'' was - i.e. a landing on Kyushu, the southernmost major island, to establish airbases and use them to provide air-cover for the main landings on the southern and eastern coasts of the Tokyo Plain to take the capital in a swift, overwhelming strike. Although some two thousand aircraft and several thousand speedboats had been made available or constructed for ''Tokubetsu Kogeki'' duty, only a handful of regular submarines and mini-submarines were left. Although the Home Islands Corps has enough regular soldiers to match the invaders' million men man-for-man, they don't have enough weapons for a fifth of them and the [[HomeGuard 'Volunteer Defence Corps']] which has taken over most of the support roles is largely composed of unarmed women, kids, and the elderly; 'unarmed', because there aren't enough weapons for them. Ammunition production is hovering a touch above zero since the USAF's strategic bombing campaign killed off much of the armaments-workforce and basically shut the economy of the entire country down months ago. Despite their best efforts to conscript the civilian population to build fortifications, the conscript-workforce's efficiency had been severely reduced by starvation, low morale resulting from starving military personnel stealing food from and brutalising civilians, and deaths from air-raids. There also wasn't enough concrete-mix, let alone enough iron or steel, to construct the fortifications properly - even once the use of such materials in any other capacity (including bomb-shelters) had been forbidden. This was a major contributing factor to the lethality of the USAF's strategic bombing campaign on Japanese urban centres, which killed between 250 and 900k civilians[[hottip:*: The Great Firebombing of Tokyo, which killed 80k and wounded another 40k, would not have been anywhere near as lethal had there been a single adequate bomb-shelter in the city outside the grounds of the Imperial Palace.]] Morale [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere hung by a thread]] as every man, woman, and child in The Empire realised that its strategic position could very easily be summed up [[http://youtu.be/pje5ROe5Y_w?t=1m38s in a single, rude word]].

It was in this environment that the USA's atomic weaponry was used - with Eastern Europe and Northern China in Soviet hands, and the Soviets and the Guomindang and USA racing to secure as much of the Japanese Empire as they can, toe secure as much influence over the shape of post-war East Asia as possible. The problem with ''Operation Downfall'' was that it was too slow; it would not be ready until October. By that time the Soviets could easily have taken the entire Korean Peninsula, reached the Yangzi or at least the Yellow River, and taken Ezo/Hokkaido. And ''that'' could well have meant an East Asia that was more [[DirtyCommunists 'Red']] than not. Just as if not more important was the balance of power; the Red Army had three times the number of combat troops as the rest of the Allies combined, twice as many (and better-quality) armoured vehicles and an only slight inferiority in fighter-aircraft, and though the Soviets lacked bombers the Allies bombers didn't have the range to damage any Soviet urban or industrial centres. [[ThoseWackyNazis The Nazis]] had thought right up 'til the end that the mutual threat posed by the Soviet Union was sufficiently great that The Allies would happily sign a truce with them in exchange for Germany's support against the Soviets. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable The prognosis of a war with the USSR]] would be, at best, a gruesome stalemate... and at worst, the loss of western Europe and China.

Japan's main broadcasting corporation's radio control operator soon noticed the signal to the Hiroshima station was as dead. At military headquarters, many thought it the result of some technical error or meteorological phenomena or other, despite the total loss of contact with all stations in and around Hiroshima. It wasn't August the 8th that Radio Tokyo reported that "Practically all living things, human and animal, were literally seared to death" and people realized it was neither an error, a natural phenomena, or just another run-of-the-mill strategic-bombing. The Nagasaki bombing was initiated at 11:01 AM on 9 August 1945. Fires were even widespread, as Nagasaki was a rather hilly city and most of the city was merely set demolished rather than vaporised (meaning there was plenty of stuff left over to for the firestorm). Total death toll was c.150-250k - not bad, considering, and as little as an eighth of the total USAF strategic bombing campaign. The Soviet Union, having lost some c.20 million military and civilian dead, was totally nonplussed and the Guomindang (China having had c.20-30 million civilians and c.3 million military dead) was a bit disappointed really.

The decision to prove the bombing accomplished everything it was meant to achieve... sorta. The Soviets were apparently left in awe of the USA's power[[hottip:*: Only, not really. The Soviet intelligence services were the best in the world, and they knew just how expensive and how many there were]]. the premature defeat of Japan allowed the Guomindang to reclaim most of China for themselves (the USAAF used its transport planes and bombers to ferry them over to accept the surrender of most garrisons), all of Japan was secured for the USA, the c.500 000 (inc. c.100k deaths) almost-entirely-American[[hottip:*: Just three divisions of British, Canadian, and Australian troops were included in the force. Their weaponry and ammunition, equipment, unit-structure, and tactical-strategic doctrine was just too different for them to be included in greater numbers. Most of the Royal Navy was slated to show up, however]] casualties expected to result from ''Downfall'' were averted, and even a bit of Korea was given over to The Allies.

The prospects were ''not'' good, even accounting for just how transparent the Allies' overall plan for ''Operation Downfall'' was - i.e. a landing on Kyushu, the southernmost major island, to establish airbases and use them to provide air-cover for the main landings on the southern and eastern coasts of the Tokyo Plain to take the capital in a swift, overwhelming strike. Although some two thousand aircraft and several thousand speedboats had been made avilable or constructed for ''Tokubetsu Kogeki'' duty, only a handful of regular submarines and mini-submarines were left. Although the Home Islands Corps has enough regular soldiers to match the invaders' million men man-for-man, they don't have enough weapons for a fifth of them and the [[HomeGuard 'Volunteer Defence Corps']] which has taken over most of the support roles is largely composed of unarmed women, kids, and the elderly. Unarmed, because there aren't enough weapons. Ammunition production is hovering above zero since the USAF's strategic bombing campaign killed off much of the armaments-workforce and basically shut the economy of the entire country down months ago. Despite their best efforts to conscript the civilian population to build fortifications, the conscript-workforce's efficiency had been severely reduced by starvation, low morale resulting from starving military personnel stealing food from and brutalising civilians, and deaths from air-raids. There also wasn't enough concrete-mix, let alone enough iron or steel, to construct the fortifications properly - even once the use of such materials in any other capacity (including bomb-shelters) had been forbidden. This was a major contributing factor to the lethality of the USAF's strategic bombing campaign on Japanese urban centres, which killed between 250 and 900k civilians[[hottip:*: The Great Firebombing of Tokyo, which killed 80k and wounded another 40k, would not have been anywhere near as lethal had there been a single adequate bomb-shelter in the city outside the grounds of the Imperial Palace.]] Morale [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere hung by a thread]] as every man, woman, and child in The Empire realised that its strategic position could very easily be summed up [[http://youtu.be/pje5ROe5Y_w?t=1m38s in a single, rude word]].

Knowing very well close they were to total defeat, the Cabinet was split on those who wanted to surrender now, please, before they kill us all, and those who wanted to fight to the death. The latter were an oddity whom the former allowed to be a vocal minority, to buck up morale and make it appear to The Allies that resistance would remain fierce despite the mass-surrenders evident in Manchuria. But the former faction was evenly split on those who wanted to surrender now, please, before things get worse because ''look'' you idiots people are living on 1200 calories-a-day, they're dying in the streets, and those who wanted to surrender with some dignity. For all of them, the bombings provided a ''perfect'' excuse for just getting it over with because, hey, surrendering to an enemy who has 'the power of a thousand suns, in a bomb' doesn't sound so bad really - it makes it seem it was less your collective fault for getting the entire country [[SecondSinoJapaneseWar into a massive regular-and-guerilla war]] [[ForeverWar it couldn't possibly win]], and then [[WorldWarTwo ''start another'' just to avoid stopping the first one]] [[GeneralFailure because really, we're going to win any year now, why can't you guys see that?]]

Before we get into the actual details of the events themselves, there has been much debate over whether the bombings were justified. [[RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgement Please don't]] turn this page into a front for the debate. Thank you.

It can be stated without fear of InternetBackdraft however, had Japan not surrendered in these events, the Allied forces were planning to invade the Japanese mainland, using all the forces they could muster and using additional nukes. Over 1 million additional Allied casualties were expected had this happened, with many more Japanese. Needless to say, there might not have been much of a next generation of Americans and Japanese at all afterwards. Furthermore, the Allies were planning to use nuclear bombs to clear a beachhead. They would have then marched the invasion force directly through the fallout zone; a horrifying prospect.

Noticing of the attack first started when Japan's main broadcasting corporation's radio control operator noticed the signal to the Hiroshima station was as dead as a doornail. At military headquarters, most people felt the raid was [[ApatheticCitizens just a rumor, despite the numerous losses of contact with Hiroshima.]] It wasn't until 8 August that Radio Tokyo reported that "Practically all living things, human and animal, were literally seared to death" and people realized what had just happened.

The more overlooked Nagasaki atomic bombings happened at 11:01 AM on 9 August 1945. Fires were even more spread out than at Hiroshima.

The American reaction to the bombings was rather varied, with a VocalMinority advocating the genocide of all Japanese people and dropping of more atomic bombs. Had this happened, it can be speculated it would have had disastrous consequences for the United States' reputation as well as a harmful ecological effect. Government censorship of photographic evidence what the atomic bomb did also influenced the minority, as they had no idea of its effects. That, and the fact that nobody had much of an idea of the lasting effects that the bombs and their fallout wrought for some time.

The effect on the Japanese leadership was one of total surprise. The Allies had warned Japan of a major blow if they did not unconditionally surrender in the Potsdam Declaration in July, but were being deliberately cagy on what that blow would be, both to keep Japan off guard but also to keep the Soviets from knowing of the atom bomb. [[hottip:*:Thanks to Klaus Fuchs and others, they already knew.]] After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the leadership was in disarray, with one camp advocating total surrender out of a quite reasonable fear that America might have had more and would use them, while another camp, pushing for a fight to the death, attempted to launch a coup, even against the Emperor himself, to forestall surrender. The coup fizzled, and Japan surrendered unconditionally on August 15, with the actual surrender taking place on September 2.

In the last month of the summer of 1945, WorldWarII was in its endgame. With NaziGermany defeated, ImperialJapan stood alone. The half-million men of the China Expeditionary Force had been cut off from all supply and its garrisons were left to rot on the vine, scouring the countryside for food and grain on an even greater scale than ever before even as the Guomindang moved to crush them one by one. The two million men of the Kwantung (aka [[TheReasonMaoChangedHisName Guandong]]) Army Group were being routed by the mechanised units of the Soviet Union's Red Army, more than a million Kwantung Army troops having thrown down their weapons and surrendering en masse, and the Red Army advancing into the North China Plain around Beijing and the Korean Peninsula. The Imperial Navy having been totally annihilated the previous year, save for the Tokubetsu Kogeki[[hottip:*: [[SuicideAttack 'Special Attack']]]] Speedboat units, even the Soviets ''tiny'' Far Eastern Flotilla was able to help the Red Army take Southern Sakhalin island, and they were in an excellent position to take the northern 'Home Island' of Ezo/Hokkaido from the tiny and isolated IJA forces that had been assigned to defend it.

The icing on the cake, though, was [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin ''Operation Donwfall'']]. For while Hokkaido was of no strategic value, and the Soviets could fairly be held at bay if they landed on the tiny and easily-defended beaches of northern Honshu, ''Operation Downfall'' promised to bring the fight directly to the capital. For the Tokyo Plains, the closest thing to tank-country in all the Japanese Isles, had - you guessed it - Tokyo smack-bang right in the middle of them. And worse yet, the whole thing was girded by miles and miles of ''excellent'' beaches for landing an invasion force of a half a million men on.

The prospects were ''not'' good, even accounting for just how transparent the overall plan for ''Operation Downfall'' was - i.e. a landing on Kyushu, the southernmost major island, to establish airbases and those air-cover for the main landings on the Tokyo Plain to take the capital. The Empire's strategic position could very easily be summed up [[http://youtu.be/pje5ROe5Y_w?t=1m38s in a single, rude word.]]

Knowing this, the Cabinet was split on those who wanted to surrender now, please, before they kill us all, and those who wanted to fight to the death. The latter were by far a minority. But the former faction was evenly split on those who wanted to surrender now, please, before things get worse because ''look'' you idiots people are living on 1200 calories-a-day, they're dying in the streets, and those who wanted to surrender with some dignity. For all of them, the bombings provided a ''perfect'' excuse for just getting it over with because, hey, surrendering to an enemy who has 'the power of a thousand suns, in a bomb' doesn't sound so bad really - it makes it seem it was less your collective fault for getting the entire country [[SecondSinoJapaneseWar into a massive war it couldn't possibly win]], and then [[WorldWarTwo ''start another'' just to avoid stopping the first one]] [[GeneralFailure because really, we're going to win any year now, why can't you guys see that.]]

On August 6, 1945, the end of WorldWarII was coming near. The event that finally pushed the Japanese to surrender was arguably these two horrific events.

* In ''Obasan'' by Joy Kogawa, Naomi's mother dies in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, although she doesn't find out until years later.

* Both 1989 films titled ''Black Rain''. The Japanese film is an account of the bombing of Hiroshima, while the American film, directed by Ridley Scott, uses Hiroshima as the villain's motivation. Both films take their title from the ''kuroi ame'', or black rain, a rain that was heavy with soot, ash and nuclear fallout, that fell on Hiroshima for days after the bombing.

It can be stated without fear of InternetBackdraft however, had Japan not surrendered in these events, the Allied forces were planning to invade the Japanese mainland, using all the forces they could muster and using additional nukes. Over 1 million additional Allied casualties were expected had this happened, with many more Japanese. Needless to say, there might not have been much of a next generation of Americans and Japanese at all afterwards.

* Both 1989 films titled ''Black Rain''. The Japanese film is an account of the bombings, while the American film, directed by Ridley Scott, uses the bombings as character and plot backstory. Both films take their title from the ''kuroi ame'', or black rain, a rain that was heavy with soot, ash and nuclear fallout, that fell on Hiroshima for days after the bombing.

* ''BarefootGen'' A semiautobiographical account of the author's own experiences surviving Hiroshima.

!!Depictions in fiction:

The American reaction to the bombings was rather varied, with a VocalMinority advocating the genocide of all Japanese people and dropping of more atomic bombs. Had this happened, it can be speculated it would have had disastrous consequences for the United States' reputation as well as a harmful ecological effect. Government censorship of photographic evidence what the atomic bomb did also influenced the minority, as they had no idea of it's effects.

The American reaction to the bombings was rather varied, with a VocalMinority advocating the genocide of all Japanese people and dropping of more atomic bombs. Had this happened, it can be speculated it would have had disastrous consequences for the United States' reputation as well as a harmful ecological effect. Government censorship of photographic evidence what the atomic bomb did also influenced the minority, as they had no idea of it's effects.

The more overlooked Nagasaki atomic bombings happened at 11:01 AM on 9 August 1945. Fires were even more spread out than at Hiroshima.

Noticing of the attack first started when Japan's main broadcasting corporation's radio control operator noticed the signal to the Hiroshima station was as dead as a doornail. At military headquarters, most people felt the raid was [[ApatheticCitizens just a rumor, despite the numerous losses of contact with Hiroshima.]] It wasn't until 8 August that Radio Tokyo reported that "Practically all living things, human and animal, were literally seared to death" and people realized what had just happened.

It can be stated without fear of InternetBackdraft however, had Japan not surrendered in these events, the Allied forces were planning to invade the Japanese mainland, using all the forces they could muster and using additional nukes. Over 1 million additional Allied casualties were expected had this happened, with many more Japanese.

Had Japan not surrendered in these events, the Allied forces were planning to invade the Japanese mainland, using all the forces they could muster and using additional nukes. Over 1 million additional Allied casualties were expected had this happened, with many more Japanese.

The choosing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima as the targets was almost a chance event, as there were four military targets to choose from. The Enola Gay launched the first nuclear device, Little Boy, at Hiroshima at 8:15 am, on a hot summer day. Wind caused it to miss the point it was aimed for, the Aioi Bridge, and detonate over Shima Surgical Clinic instead. It killed some 30% in the blast and firestorm alone.

The choosing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima as the targets was almost a chance event, as there were four military targets to choose from. The Enola Gay launched the first nuclear device, Little Boy, at Hiroshima at 8:15 am, on a hot summer day.