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Now it is, according to Dr Hachiya, “no longer a city but a burnt-over prairie”, a City of Fire. Hiroshima was known as Mizu no Miyako or the ‘City of Water’. At the moment of detonation it replaces the historic city of Hiroshima with something new. It took some of the world’s finest and most creative minds, and $2 billion (more than £18 billion in today’s money), to bring it to life. The mountains that surround the city, which gave Hiroshima such pleasant weather, produce a ‘focussing effect’ for the shockwave. One quarter of a city of 350,000 are killed instantly. Winds of more than 650 miles per hour turn every shard of wood not immediately incinerated into shrapnel. Almost everything within one mile of the centre is vaporised instantly. The fireball is hotter than the surface of the sun. There is no siren.Ġ8.15 The bomb bay doors open. The citizens of Hiroshima hear nothing but a distant thrum. A tone warns the crew of the aircraft to brace themselves. Only now is the target set.Ġ8.14 Bombardier Thomas Ferebee on board Enola Gay spots the Aioi Hashi, a T-shaped bridge at the heart of the city.
An air raid siren greets it, but it’s just Mr B making his rounds. High above, the weather plane assigned to check conditions in Hiroshima ahead of the mission passes over the city. “Shimmering leaves, reflecting sunlight from a cloudless sky, made a pleasant contrast with shadows in my garden as I gazed absently through wide-flung doors opening to the south.” The chance of catastrophe is too great.Ġ7.29 “The hour was early the morning still, warm, and beautiful,” Dr Hachiya noted in his diary. Little Boy weighs 9,700 lbs and required special sunken bays to be dug just to load it into the aircraft. Four heavily-laden B-29s have recently crashed taking off from the Tinian runway, which ends in a cliff. He has taken it upon himself to do this en route, dismantling and reassembling Little Boy in the freezing bomb bay. There is nothing to report.Ġ6.41 Captain Parsons begins arming the warhead. As the aeroplane heaves itself into the air, the crew still do not know where they are heading.Ġ4.00 Dr Michihiko Hachiya, a physician at the Hiroshima Communications Hospital, finishes his air raid duty. In Tibbett’s pocket are cyanide capsules, one for each member of his crew, in case of capture. It has been named after pilot Colonel Paul Tibbett’s “courageous red-haired mother”.
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In Hiroshima, it is a clear night full of shooting stars.Ġ2.45 The Enola Gay takes off.
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Captain William ‘Deak’ Parsons informs them it will be the most furious explosion since creation, that it might crack the Earth’s crust. 00.02 For the first time, the crew of the B-29 named Enola Gay is told what weapon they will be carrying. The ultimate decision will be chosen based on prevailing weather conditions.Ħth August. The US Targeting Committee has narrowed the possible targets down to three: Hiroshima, Kokura and Nagasaki. Little Boy’s final destination is still not set. They do not know that Hiroshima has deliberately been spared conventional bombing so its devastating effects will be clear.
Like the rest of the world, they have never heard of the atom bomb. They have grown so used to American B-29 bombers passing overhead, they have nicknamed them ‘B-San’ or ‘Mr B’. That night the people of Hiroshima feel relatively safe. On board is Little Boy, only the second nuclear bomb ever created. Just four hours after the ‘Trinity’ test, the first nuclear detonation in history, a ship leaves San Francisco, bound for Tinian Island in the South West Pacific. It lighted every peak, crevasse, and ridge of the nearby mountain range with a clarity and beauty that cannot be described but must be seen to be imagined.” “It was golden, purple, violet, gray, and blue. “The whole country was lighted by a searing light with the intensity many times that of the midday sun,” writes General Thomas Farrell, deputy commander of the Manhattan Project, the secret team in Los Alamos dedicated to creating the bomb. It is Monday 16 July 1945, 5.30 am, and a sodden night in the New Mexico desert is suddenly a sunny day.