The last surviving member of the crew that flew over Hiroshima that day died in November. If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.' Speech to the nation hours after the bombing of Hiroshima. 'Let there be no mistake we shall completely destroy Japan's power to make war,' President Harry Truman, who ordered the attacks, declared in a 15, 1945, and the end of World War II.Īt the time, the morality and legality of those nuclear attacks were hardly the subject of public debate. The dropping by American warplanes of that first atomic bomb,Ĭode-named Little Boy - and another, code-named Fat Man, three days later in Nagasaki - led to Japan's surrender on Aug. An estimated two-thirds of that population - nearly all civilians - would soon be dead. on a Monday, the start of another workday in a city of nearly 300,000 inhabitants.

The dawn of the nuclear age began with a blinding, flesh-melting blast directly above the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Aug.