The date for the second bombing was set for August 11, but bad weather expected that day pushed the date up to the 9th. Despite the devastation caused by the first atomic bomb, Japan still had not accepted the Allies’ demand for an unconditional surrender. Three days later, August 9, 1945, a second B-29 “Superfortress,” Bockscar dropped the second and last atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki, Japan. The five ton atomic bomb, nicknamed Little Boy, delivered a blast roughly equal to 15,000 tons of TNT and leveled four square miles of the city. President Harry Truman had two decisions: launch an invasion of the home islands, resulting in thousands of American casualties, or use the atomic bombs.
The threat of a nuclear Germany passed when Germany surrendered in May 1945, leaving Japan the only Axis power left fighting. In development since 1940, the United States had been warned that Germany was researching nuclear weaponry. On August 6, 1945, a B-29 “Superfortress” bomber, nicknamed Enola Gay, dropped the world’s first atomic bomb over the city of Hiroshima, Japan. The dawn of the atomic age cannot be defined by a single event as the series of events that lead to it and those that followed play just as an important place in history as the single action.
