Nagasaki Bombed: Second Nuclear Strike Ends the War

Nagasaki was not even the primary target. The B-29 Bockscar, piloted by Major Charles Sweeney, had orders to drop the plutonium bomb "Fat Man" on the city of Kokura. But when the aircraft arrived over Kokura on the morning of August 9, 1945, clouds and smoke from the previous day's firebombing of nearby Yawata obscured the city completely. After three fruitless bombing runs and with fuel running critically low, Sweeney diverted to the secondary target. A last-second break in the clouds over Nagasaki allowed the bombardier to make visual contact, and Fat Man was released at 11:02 a.m. local time. The bomb detonated approximately 1,800 feet above the Urakami Valley, roughly two miles from the intended aiming point. The explosion was more powerful than Hiroshima's — equivalent to 21,000 tons of TNT compared to Little Boy's 16,000 — but Nagasaki's hilly terrain channeled the blast and limited the radius of destruction. Between 39,000 and 80,000 people were killed. The Urakami district, home to Japan's largest Catholic cathedral and a community that traced its Christian roots to the 16th-century Portuguese missions, was almost entirely destroyed. Nagasaki's population on the day of the bombing was estimated at 263,000, including 10,000 Korean residents, 2,500 conscripted Korean laborers, 600 Chinese workers, and 400 Allied prisoners of war. The Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works and the Mitsubishi-Urakami Ordnance Works, which flanked the blast zone, were devastated. Roughly 68 to 80 percent of the city's industrial capacity was destroyed. Six days later, on August 15, Emperor Hirohito announced Japan's surrender in a radio broadcast — the first time most Japanese citizens had ever heard his voice. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain the only wartime use of nuclear weapons. Nagasaki carries the particular weight of being both the second and, so far, the last city to suffer an atomic attack, a distinction the world has maintained for eight decades.