At 3:49 am on the morning of August 9, 1945, the crew of the Bockscar, a United States Army Air Forces plane set off. It carried the ‘Fat Man’ atomic bomb towards its primary target, the city of Kokura in Japan.
Clouds and smoke obscured Kokura so the Bockscar headed for its second target, the city of Nagasaki.
At 11.01 am the target was sighted & the Fat Man bomb was dropped.
The bomb was devastating. 22% of Nagasaki’s buildings were consumed by flames. The death toll and destruction was less than in Hiroshima because of Nagasaki’s hilly geography, but as many as 50,000 to 100,000 died instantly and others died slowly and agonisingly as a result of burns and radiation.
A staggering 340,000 were killed by the bombs on Hiroshima & Nagasaki.
The bomb on Nagasaki won’t be the last unless nuclear bombs are eradicated. That’s why we campaign tirelessly to see them abolished, so the world can be free from the fear of nuclear annihilation.
There is hope. The international momentum behind the UN’s nuclear ban treaty is enormous. We must do all we can to support these efforts and to strengthen the consensus against Trident here in Britain.