The impact and aftermath of Nagasaki's bombing
Hear Encyclopædia Britannica editor Michael Ray talk about the atomic bombing of Nagasaki by the United States during World War II, including facts about casualties and damage.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
-
Great Museums Television (A Britannica Publishing Partner)A discussion of the United States' immigrant past, from the documentary Face of America: Ellis Island Immigration Museum.
-
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.Maximilien Robespierre was a radical democrat and key figure in the French Revolution of 1789.
-
Contunico © ZDF Studios GmbH, Mainz; Thumbnail Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1972-025-10 (CC BY-SA 3.0)Learn about the July Plot of 1944, in which Claus, Count Schenk von Stauffenberg, and others tried to assassinate Hitler and overthrow the Nazi regime.
-
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; thumbnail © Universal PicturesJ. Robert Oppenheimer became involved in nuclear research in 1941. His biopic, Oppenheimer, was released in 2023.
-
Contunico © ZDF Studios GmbH, MainzLearn about the Japanese giant salamander (Andrias japonicus).
-
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.On the deck of the battleship USS Missouri, Gen. Douglas MacArthur inviting representatives of Japan to sign the terms of surrender that would formally end World War II. From The Second World War: Allied Victory (1963), a documentary by Encyclopædia Britannica Educational Corporation.
-
Contunico © ZDF Studios GmbH, Mainz; Thumbnail Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.Learn about the Potsdam Conference, attended by Winston Churchill, Harry Truman, and Joseph Stalin, to decide the future of Germany and Europe after World War II.
Transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING] On August 9, 1945, an American B29 bomber dropped an implosion fission bomb on the city of Nagasaki. Nagasaki was the secondary target that morning. And the bomber Bockscar spent 45 minutes over the city of Kokura before it left that city, because it could not find its aiming point through the clouds.
Nagasaki was hit with a much more powerful weapon than the Hiroshima bomb several days earlier. However, the unique terrain of Nagasaki-- the city is shaped roughly like an amphitheater-- limited the destruction of the bomb's initial blast. Although much of the city was destroyed, a significant portion of it did survive the bomb.
There were fewer casualties at Nagasaki than Hiroshima, largely owing to the terrain, although both cities suffered fewer immediate casualties than those suffered in the incendiary bombing of Tokyo, which took place several months earlier.
Allied planners, notably Robert McNamara, observed that if the war had gone the other way, the directors of the Allied Bombing Campaign would have been prosecuted as war criminals due to the deaths of civilians in the Allied Bombing Campaign of Japan. Nagasaki was thoroughly rebuilt after the war and remains one of Japan's key ports. Like Hiroshima, Nagasaki became a spiritual center of the peace and nuclear disarmament movement after the war.
Nagasaki was hit with a much more powerful weapon than the Hiroshima bomb several days earlier. However, the unique terrain of Nagasaki-- the city is shaped roughly like an amphitheater-- limited the destruction of the bomb's initial blast. Although much of the city was destroyed, a significant portion of it did survive the bomb.
There were fewer casualties at Nagasaki than Hiroshima, largely owing to the terrain, although both cities suffered fewer immediate casualties than those suffered in the incendiary bombing of Tokyo, which took place several months earlier.
Allied planners, notably Robert McNamara, observed that if the war had gone the other way, the directors of the Allied Bombing Campaign would have been prosecuted as war criminals due to the deaths of civilians in the Allied Bombing Campaign of Japan. Nagasaki was thoroughly rebuilt after the war and remains one of Japan's key ports. Like Hiroshima, Nagasaki became a spiritual center of the peace and nuclear disarmament movement after the war.