08/06/2025
This image was captured 80 years ago today over Japan from the cockpit of the Enola Gay, returning to base after the completion of its mission on 6 August, 1945: to unleash an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.
Occurring just weeks after the birth of the atomic age, the event would spell the end of the war.
In the days leading up to the blast that killed upwards of 70,000 people almost at once, the Potsdam Declaration had demanded the unconditional surrender of Japan.
But as the NP explains (in American History Part 4):
“Eleven days passed—with no Japanese reply.
“‘If they do not now accept our terms,’ threatened President Truman, in a speech announcing America’s use of the bomb over Hiroshima, ‘they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.’
“Two days after Hiroshima, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. Stalin’s armies now invaded Manchuria; over the next few months, millions of Japanese living in the region would flee back to Japan. The day after the Soviet declaration, the U.S. dropped a second atomic bomb over Nagasaki.
“Almost a week later, on 15 August, Emperor Hirohito of Japan addressed the Japanese public over the radio to announce his country’s unconditional surrender. By the end of the month, General Douglas MacArthur had landed at Atsugi Air Base in Kanagawa, Japan, to oversee the Allied occupation of the country. Two days later, on 2 September, Mamoru Shigemitsu, Hirohito’s Foreign Minister, officially signed an instrument of surrender in Tokyo Bay, aboard the USS Missouri. Scores of U.S. ships now steamed into the harbor, carrying some 13,000 occupation troops.
“World War II—the bloodiest war in human history—had ended.”
