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 Civilian casualties on the footpath in a Hiroshima street awaiting medical treatment after the atomic bomb was dropped on the city on 6 August 1945.
Thousands of people were killed immediately and thousands more died later from the effects of radiation.
[AWM P01234.010] enlarge
 A street scene in Hiroshima after the atomic bomb was dropped on 6 August 1945. All that remains is the entrance to a temple and the remnants of a cart.
[AWM P01991.004] |
'a-bomb'
 Hiroshima, Japan, 6 August 1945.
The white ‘mushroom cloud, rising into the air after an atom bomb was dropped by the United States aircraft ‘Enola Gay’. [AWM P02018.405]
By the end of 1944, Allied air raids over Japan had become more common and prisoners of war (POWs) in Japan saw regular Allied reconnaissance flights over their camps. Allied aircraft dropped incendiary bombs causing widespread fire damage and casualties in the major cities and some of the POWs were removed to different camps around the cities of Kobe and Hiroshima. On 6 August 1945, a United States B-29 bomber known as the ‘Enola Gay’ dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima killing more than a third of the city’s population of 350,000. Three days later on 9 August 1945, a second atom bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki killing more than 70,000 people. Both cities were destroyed and more than 200,000 people were killed. The Japanese Government, convinced of the futility of continuing to fight, accepted an unconditional surrender on 15 August 1945.  A section of the bomb damaged ruins
of buildings looking south from the centre of Hiroshima, 29 February 1946. [AWM 131583]
video
 Atom Bomb Damage, Hiroshima
[AWM F07489]
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