On August 6, 1945, an American B-29 bomber named theEnola Gay left the island of Tinian for Hiroshima, Japan. The uranium 235 gun-type bomb, namedLittle Boy, exploded at 8:16 a.m. In an instant 80,000 to 140,000 people were killed and 100,000 more were seriously injured. The blast wave shattered windows for a distance of ten miles and was felt as far away as 37 miles. Hiroshima had disappeared under a thick, churning foam of flames and smoke. The co-pilot, Captain Robert Lewis, commented, "My God, what have we done?"

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On August 9, 1945, another American B-29 bomber,Bock's Car, left Tinian carryingFat Man, a plutonium implosion-type bomb. The primary target was the Kokura Arsenal, but upon reaching the target, they found that it was covered by a heavy ground haze and smoke and were unable drop the bomb. The pilot, Major Charles Sweeney, turned to the secondary target of the Mitsubishi Torpedo Plant at Nagasaki. The bomb exploded at 11:02 a.m. over the narrow Urakami Valley northwest of downtown Nagasaki. Of the 286,000 people living in Nagasaki at the time of the blast, 74,000 people were killed and another 75,000 sustained severe injuries. The damage was less extensive, since the blast was boxed in by the river valley and partly to the fact that the bomb was dropped about 2 miles off target.

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