5705 AM · 1945 CE · world history
Hiroshima and the Atomic Age
One bomb destroys a city, and humanity acquires the means of its own destruction.
On 6 August 1945 a uranium bomb detonates over Hiroshima, and a plutonium bomb over Nagasaki three days later. More than two hundred thousand die, many from radiation in the months after. Japan surrenders. War between great powers becomes potentially suicidal, a fear that would keep the Cold War cold.
Sources
Documents of the period
- documents and chronicles of the period — the reports on the bombings of 6 and 9 August 1945 and the Japanese surrender
Scholarship
- general histories of the region — radiation sickness, the death toll, and the birth of nuclear deterrence
Basis: documents and evidence.