| On this day an atomic bomb carried from Tinian Island in the Marianas in a specially equipped U.S. B-29 was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, at the southern end of Honshu. The combined heat and blast pulverized everything in the explosion's immediate vicinity, generated spontaneous fires that devastated almost 11.4 square km (4.4 square miles), and killed between 70,000 and 80,000 people, as well as injuring more than 70,000 others. Deaths from radiation injury mounted in later years. ... |