On August 15, Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s unconditional surrender, bringing World War II to a close.Īccording to Truman and others in his administration, the use of the atomic bomb was intended to cut the war in the Pacific short, avoiding a U.S. “This second demonstration of the power of the atomic bomb apparently threw Tokyo into a panic, for the next morning brought the first indication that the Japanese Empire was ready to surrender,” Truman later wrote in his memoirs.
Still, the effect was devastating: close to 40,000 people were killed instantly, and a third of the city was destroyed. “Fat Man,” which detonated at 11:02 local time at an altitude of 1,650 feet, killed about half as many people in Nagasaki as the uranium-based “Little Boy” had in Hiroshima three days earlier-despite a force estimated at 21 kilotons, or 40 percent greater. Finding Kokura obscured by cloud cover, the Bockscar’s crew decided to head to their secondary target, Nagasaki. Early on the morning of August 9, 1945, the B-29 known as Bockscar took off from Tinian Island in the western Pacific Ocean, carrying the nearly 10,000-pound plutonium-based bomb known as “Fat Man” toward Kokura, home to a large Japanese arsenal.
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