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[[File:Agnew StrikeOrderHiroshima.jpg|thumb|right|upright|[[Operations Order No. 35|Strike order]] for the Hiroshima bombing as posted on 5 August 1945|alt=A typed page of instructions]]
Hiroshima was the primary target of the first atomic bombing mission on 6 August, with Kokura and Nagasaki as alternative targets. The 393rd Bombardment Squadron B-29 ''[[Enola Gay]]'', named after Tibbets's mother and piloted by Tibbets, took off from North Field, [[Tinian]], about six hours' flight time from Japan
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There were plans for further attacks on Japan following Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Groves expected to have another "Fat Man" atomic bomb ready for use on 19 August, with three more in September and a further three in October.<ref name="Generals" /> A second Little Boy bomb (using U-235) would not be available until December 1945.{{sfn|Nichols|1987|pp=175, 203, 224}}{{sfn|Rhodes|1986|p=689}} On 10 August, he sent a memorandum to Marshall in which he wrote that "the next bomb ... should be ready for delivery on the first suitable weather after 17 or 18 August." The memo today contains hand-written comment written by Marshall: "It is not to be released over Japan without express authority from the President."<ref name="Generals" /> At the cabinet meeting that morning, Truman discussed these actions. [[James Forrestal]] paraphrased Truman as saying "there will be further dropping of the atomic bomb," while [[Henry A. Wallace]] recorded in his diary that: "Truman said he had given orders to stop atomic bombing. He said the thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrific. He didn't like the idea of killing, as he said, 'all those kids.{{' "}}{{sfn|Rhodes|1986|pp=743}} The previous order that the target cities were to be attacked with atomic bombs "as made ready" was thus modified.{{sfn|Bernstein|1991|pp=149–173}} There was already discussion in the War Department about conserving the bombs then in production for [[Operation Downfall]], and Marshall suggested to Stimson that the remaining cities on the target list be spared attack with atomic bombs.{{sfn|Giangreco|2009|pp=111–112}}
Two more Fat Man assemblies were readied, and scheduled to leave [[Kirtland Field]] for Tinian on 11 and 14 August,{{sfn|Hoddeson|Henriksen|Meade|Westfall|1993|pp=396–397}} and Tibbets was ordered by LeMay to return to [[Albuquerque, New Mexico]], to collect them.<ref name="PaulTibbets StudsTerkel">{{cite web| url=http://www.avweb.com/news/profiles/PaulTibbets_StudsTerkel_EnolaGayInterview_2002_196499-1.html| title=Paul Tibbets Interview| last=Terkel| first=Studs
== Surrender of Japan and subsequent occupation ==
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[[Wilfred Burchett]] was also one of the first Western journalists to visit Hiroshima after the bombing. He arrived alone by train from Tokyo on 2 September, defying the traveling ban put in place on Western correspondents.<ref name="Blume, pp. 26–27">Blume, pp. 26–27</ref> Burchett's dispatch, "The Atomic Plague", was printed by the ''[[Daily Express]]'' newspaper in London on 5 September 1945. The reports from Nakashima and Burchett informed the public for the first time of the gruesome effects of [[radiation]] and [[nuclear fallout]]—[[radiation burn]]s and [[radiation poisoning]], sometimes lasting more than thirty days after the blast.<ref>{{cite news|title=Hiroshima as I saw it|first=Leslie|last=Nakashima|url=https://www.upi.com/Archives/1945/08/27/Hiroshima-as-I-saw-it/8051438702501/|date=27 August 1945|work=[[United Press International]]}}</ref>{{sfn|Burchett|2004|pp=10–25}} Burchett especially noted that people were dying "horribly" after bleeding from orifices, and their flesh would rot away from the injection holes where vitamin A was administered, to no avail.<ref name="Blume, pp. 26–27"/>
''The New York Times'' then apparently reversed course and ran a front-page story by [[Bill Lawrence (news personality)|Bill Lawrence]] confirming the existence of a terrifying affliction in Hiroshima, where many had symptoms such as hair loss and vomiting blood before dying.<ref name="Blume, pp. 26–27"/> Lawrence had gained access to the city as part of a press junket promoting the [[U.S. Army Air Force]]. Some reporters were horrified by the scene, however, referring to what they saw as a "death laboratory" littered with "human guinea pigs". General MacArthur found the reporting to have turned from good PR into bad PR and threatened to court martial the entire group. He withdrew Burchett's press accreditation and expelled the journalist from the occupation zones.<ref>Blume, pp. 28–31</ref> The authorities also accused him of being under the sway of Japanese propaganda and later suppressed another story, on the Nagasaki bombing, by [[George Weller]] of the ''[[Chicago Daily News]]''. Less than a week after his ''New York Times'' story was published, Lawrence also backtracked and dismissed the reports on radiation sickness as Japanese efforts to undermine American morale.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Goodman |first1=Amy |first2=David |last2=Goodman |newspaper=The Baltimore Sun |title=The Hiroshima Cover-Up |date=5 August 2005 |url=
A member of the [[United States Strategic Bombing Survey]], Lieutenant [[Daniel A. McGovern]], arrived in September 1945 to document the effects of the bombing of Japan.<ref name="BBC">{{cite news|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-68656372|title=Oppenheimer: Monaghan man who captured nuclear devastation|website=BBC News|date=31 March 2024}}</ref> He used a film crew to document the effects of the bombings in early 1946. The film crew shot {{convert|90000|ft|m|disp=flip|abbr=on}} of film, resulting in a three-hour documentary titled ''The Effects of the Atomic Bombs Against Hiroshima and Nagasaki''. The documentary included images from hospitals, burned-out buildings and cars, and rows of skulls and bones on the ground. It was classified "secret" for the next 22 years.{{sfn|Moore|1995|p=73}}<ref name="Greg Mitchell">{{cite news |title=The Great Hiroshima Cover-Up |author=Greg Mitchell |author-link=Greg Mitchell |url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-mitchell/for-64th-anniversary-the_b_252752.html |newspaper=HuffPost |date=7 August 2009|access-date=26 April 2011}}</ref> Motion picture company ''[[Nippon Eigasha]]'' started sending cameramen to Nagasaki and Hiroshima in September 1945. On 24 October 1945, a [[Military Police Corps (United States)|U.S. military policeman]] stopped a ''Nippon Eigasha'' cameraman from continuing to film in Nagasaki. All ''Nippon Eigasha''{{'s}} reels were confiscated by the American authorities, but they were requested by the Japanese government, and declassified.<ref name="Greg Mitchell" /> The public release of film footage of the city post-attack, and some research about the effects of the attack, was restricted during the [[occupation of Japan]],{{sfn|Ishikawa|Swain|1981|p=5}} but the Hiroshima-based magazine, ''Chugoku Bunka'', in its first issue published on 10 March 1946, devoted itself to detailing the damage from the bombing.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.atomicbombmuseum.org/3_social.shtml |publisher=Atomic Bomb Museum |title=Destructive Effects |access-date=22 December 2016}}</ref>
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Examination of the prenatally exposed in terms of IQ performance and school records, determined the beginning of a statistically significant reduction in both, when exposed to greater than 0.1 to 0.5 gray, during the same gestational period of 8–25 weeks. However outside this period, at less than 8 weeks and greater than 26 after conception, "there is no evidence of a radiation-related effect on scholastic performance."<ref name="auto" />
The reporting of doses in terms of absorbed energy in units of [[Gray (unit)|grays]] and [[Rad (unit)|rads]] – rather than the biologically significant, biologically weighted [[sievert]] in both the SMR and cognitive performance data – is typical.<ref name="ReferenceA" /> The reported threshold dose variance between the two cities is suggested to be a manifestation of the [[Fast neutron therapy#LET|difference between X-ray and neutron absorption]], with [[Little Boy]] emitting substantially more [[neutron flux]], whereas the [[Fat Man#Assembly|Baratol]] that surrounded the core of [[Fat Man]] filtered or shifted the absorbed neutron-radiation profile, so that the dose of radiation energy received in Nagasaki was mostly that from exposure to X-rays/gamma rays. Contrast this to the environment within 1500 meters of the hypocenter at Hiroshima, where the in-utero dose depended more on the absorption of [[neutron]]s which have a [[Relative biological effectiveness#Adoption of weighting factors|higher biological effect per unit of energy absorbed]].<ref>{{Cite journal |quote=Significant increases at doses greater than 50 rads in Hiroshima and 200 in Nagasaki were found, with the risk of mental retardation generally rising directly with increasing dose. The lower dose-effect in Hiroshima may have been due to irradiation by neutrons which were virtually absent in Nagasaki. |doi=10.1148/106.3.617 |pmid=4684805|title = Mental Retardation Following ''In'' Utero ''Exposure'' to the Atomic Bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki|journal=Radiology|volume=106|issue=3|pages=617–619|year = 1973|last1 = Blot|first1 = William J.|last2=Miller|first2=Robert W.}}</ref> From the [[radiation dose reconstruction]] work, the estimated [[dosimetry]] at Hiroshima still has the largest uncertainty as the Little Boy bomb design was never tested before deployment or afterward
Many other investigations into cognitive outcomes, such as [[schizophrenia]] as a result of prenatal exposure, have been conducted with "no statistically significant linear relationship seen". There is a suggestion that in the most extremely exposed, those who survived within a kilometer or so of the hypocenters, a trend emerges akin to that seen in SMR, though the sample size is too small to determine with any significance.<ref>{{Cite journal | doi=10.1111/j.1600-0447.1999.tb10877.x|pmid = 10563451|title = Lifetime prevalence of schizophrenia among individuals prenatally exposed to atomic bomb radiation in Nagasaki City| journal=Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica| volume=100| issue=5| pages=344–349|year = 2007|last1 = Imamura|first1 = Y.| last2=Nakane| first2=Y.| last3=Ohta| first3=Y.| last4=Kondo| first4=H.|s2cid = 39187806}}</ref>
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[[File:Sanno torii boxed in red.jpg|thumb|right|''[[Torii]]'', [[Nagasaki]], Japan. One-legged torii in the background]]
The survivors of the bombings are called {{Nihongo|''[[hibakusha]]''|被爆者|extra={{IPA
If they discuss their background, ''hibakusha'' and their children were (and still are) victims of fear-based [[discrimination]] and exclusion for marriage or work<ref>{{cite news |last1=Simons|first1=Lewis M. |title=Children of Hiroshima, Nagasaki survivors facing prejudice, discrimination in Japan |url= https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2194&dat=19840607&id=Z6QyAAAAIBAJ&pg=1441,3702452 |access-date=29 January 2016 |agency=Knight-Rider News |work=Ottawa Citizen |date=7 June 1984}}</ref> due to [[radiophobia|public ignorance]]; much of the public persist with the belief that the ''hibakusha'' carry some hereditary or even contagious disease.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.nci.org/0new/hibakusha-jt5701.htm | title=Prejudice haunts atomic bomb survivors | work=[[Japan Times]] | first=Hiroshi | last=Matsubara | date=8 May 2001 | access-date=25 August 2007 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070810060050/http://www.nci.org/0new/hibakusha-jt5701.htm | archive-date=10 August 2007 }}</ref> This is despite the fact that no statistically demonstrable increase of birth defects/congenital malformations was found among the ''later conceived'' children born to survivors of the nuclear weapons used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or has been found in the later conceived children of cancer survivors who had previously received [[radiotherapy]].<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Heath|first=Clark W.|date=5 August 1992|title=The Children of Atomic Bomb Survivors: A Genetic Study |url= https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/398912 |journal=JAMA |language=en |volume=268 |issue=5 |pages=661–662 |doi=10.1001/jama.1992.03490050109039|issn=0098-7484}}</ref><ref>{{cite book | url= http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/78218/1/9789241505130_eng.pdf | title=Health risk assessment from the nuclear accident after the 2011 Great East Japan and Tsunami, based on a preliminary dose estimation | pages=23–24 | publisher=[[World Health Organization]] | year=2013 | isbn=978-92-4-150513-0 | access-date=9 August 2020 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171215065509/http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/78218/1/9789241505130_eng.pdf |archive-date= Dec 15, 2017 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|title=Sex ratio among offspring of childhood cancer survivors treated with radiotherapy|first1=J. F.|last1=Winther|first2=J. D.|last2=Boice|first3=B. L.|last3=Thomsen|first4=W. J.|last4=Schull|first5=M.|last5=Stovall|first6=J. H.|last6=Olsen|date=1 January 2003|journal=Br J Cancer|volume=88|issue=3|pages=382–387|doi=10.1038/sj.bjc.6600748|pmid=12569380|pmc=2747537 |doi-access=free }}</ref>
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Nagasaki was rebuilt in dramatically changed form after the war. The pace of reconstruction was initially slow, and the first simple emergency dwellings were not provided until 1946. The focus on redevelopment was the replacement of war industries with foreign trade, shipbuilding and fishing. This was formally declared when the Nagasaki International Culture City Reconstruction Law was passed in May 1949.<ref name="After the Bomb">{{cite web|url=http://atomicbombmuseum.org/4_ruins.shtml |title=After the Bomb|publisher=Atomic Bomb Museum |access-date=22 February 2017 }}</ref> New temples were built, as well as new churches owing to an increase in the presence of Christianity. The [[Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum]] opened in the mid-1990s.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.world-guides.com/asia/japan/kyushu/nagasaki/nagasaki_history.html|title=Nagasaki History Facts and Timeline|publisher=World Guides |access-date=22 February 2017}}</ref>
Some of the rubble was left as a memorial, such as a ''[[torii]]'' at [[Sannō Shrine]], and an arch near ground zero. In 2013, four locations were designated [[List of Registered Monuments (Japan)|Registered Monuments]] to provide legal protection against future development. These four sites, together with "ground zero" (the hypocenter of the atomic bomb explosion) were collectively designated a [[Monuments of Japan|National Historic Site]] in 2016.
*{{nihongo|'''former Nagasaki City Shiroyama Elementary School''' |旧城山国民学校校舎}}. There were no children in the school building at the time as the building was being used for the payroll department of the Mitsubishi Arms Factory, but 138 of the 158 people inside, mostly civilian payroll staff, died.
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By 2020, [[List of states with nuclear weapons|nine nations had nuclear weapons]],<ref>{{cite news |title=Nuclear weapons: Which countries have them and how many are there? |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-51091897 |publisher=BBC News |date=14 January 2020}}</ref> but Japan was not one of them.{{sfn|Ellsberg|2017|p=269}} Japan reluctantly signed the [[Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons]] in February 1970,{{sfn|Quester|1970|p=765}} but is still sheltered under the American [[nuclear umbrella]]. American nuclear weapons were stored on Okinawa, and sometimes in Japan itself, albeit in contravention of agreements between the two nations.{{sfn|Ellsberg|2017|pp=80–82}} Lacking the resources to fight the Soviet Union using conventional forces, [[NATO]] came to depend on the use of nuclear weapons to defend itself during the [[Cold War]], a policy that became known in the 1950s as the [[New Look (policy)|New Look]].{{sfn|Hewlett|Holl|1989|p=272}} In the decades after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United States would threaten many times to use its nuclear weapons.{{sfn|Ellsberg|2017|pp=319–322}}
On 7 July 2017, more than 120 countries voted to adopt the UN [[Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons]]. Elayne Whyte Gómez, President of the UN negotiations, said, "the world has been waiting for this legal norm for 70 years".<ref>{{cite news |title=122 countries adopt 'historic' UN treaty to ban nuclear weapons |url=https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/un-treaty-ban-nuclear-weapons-1.4192761 |publisher=CBC News |date=7 July 2017}}</ref> {{As of|2023}}, Japan has not signed the treaty.<ref>{{cite news |title=Editorial: It's time for Japan to step up and join nuclear ban treaty |url=http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13522651 |newspaper=The Asahi Shimbun |date=7 July 2020}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Nagasaki marks 75th A-bomb anniversary with call for Japan to sign nuke ban as new arms race looms |url=https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/08/09/national/nagasaki-75th-anniversary-atomic-bombing/ |newspaper=Japan Times |date=9 August 2020 |access-date=15 August 2020 |archive-date=31 August 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200831072109/https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/08/09/national/nagasaki-75th-anniversary-atomic-bombing/ |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Japan | Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons |publisher= International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons |url=https://www.icanw.org/japan |access-date=23 November 2022}}</ref>
== Notes ==
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* {{Cite book |last=Merton |first=Thomas |title=Original Child Bomb: Points for Meditation to be Scratched on the Walls of a Cave |location=New York |publisher=New Directions |year=1962 |oclc=4527778 |ref=none}}
* {{cite book |last=Murakami |first=Chikayasu |title=Hiroshima no shiroi sora (The White Sky in Hiroshima) |publisher=Bungeisha |location=Tokyo |year=2007 |isbn=978-4-286-03708-0 |ref=none}}
* {{cite journal |last=O'Brien |first=Phillips Payson |title=The Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Atom Bomb, the American Military Mind and the End of the Second World War |journal=
* {{cite book |last=Ogura |first=Toyofumi |title=Letters from the End of the World: A Firsthand Account of the Bombing of Hiroshima |publisher=Kodansha International |location=Tokyo |year=2001 |isbn=978-4-7700-2776-4 |ref=none}}
* {{cite book |last=Sekimori |first=Gaynor |title=Hibakusha: Survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki |publisher=Kosei Publishing Company |location=Tokyo |year=1986 |isbn=978-4-333-01204-6 |url=https://archive.org/details/hibakushasurvivo00seki |ref=none}}
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| archive-url =https://web.archive.org/web/20111005023340/http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/index.php
}}
* {{cite web | title = Correspondence Regarding Decision to Drop the Bomb | publisher = Nuclear Age Peace Foundation | url = http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/library/correspondence/index.htm#decision | access-date = 3 January 2012 | archive-date = 31 March 2010 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20100331230143/http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/library/correspondence/index.htm#decision | url-status = dead }}
=== Effects ===
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{{USWWII}}
{{World War II}}
{{US history}}
{{WWII city bombing|state=collapsed}}
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[[Category:August 1945 events in Asia]]
[[Category:Explosions in 1945]]
[[Category:History of Hiroshima]]
[[Category:History of Nagasaki]]
[[Category:History of the Manhattan Project]]
[[Category:Presidency of Harry S. Truman]]
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