The bombing of Tokyo and other cities in Japan during World War II caused widespread destruction and over 200,000 deaths, nearly all civilians. For example, Toyama, an urban area of 128,000, was nearly 100% destroyed, and incendiary attacks on Tokyo are credited with claiming 90,000 lives. [8] There were numerous such air raids in Hiroshima. To protect against potential firebombings in Hiroshima, students were mobilized to demolish houses and create firebreaks.[9]
On Monday[10], August 6, 1945, the nuclear weapon Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima by the crew of the American B-29 bomber Enola Gay, directly killing an estimated 80,000 people. By the end of the year, injury and radiation brought total casualties to 90,000-140,000.[11] Approximately 69% of the city’s buildings were completely destroyed, and 6.6% severely damaged.
Research about the effects of the attack was restricted under Allied occupation, and information censored until the signing of the San Francisco Peace Treaty in 1951, restoring control to the Japanese.[12]
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Hiroshima after the attack: Image via Wikipedia
For those who may possibly be labouring under some of the upper-right-WingNut historical revisionism regarding the bombing of Hiroshima being an exercise in precision bombing.
The release at 08:15 (Hiroshima time) was uneventful, and the gravity bomb known as “Little Boy”, a gun-type fission weapon with 60 kg (130 pounds) of uranium-235, took 57 seconds to fall from the aircraft to the predetermined detonation height about 600 meters (1,900 ft) above the city. Due to crosswind, it missed the aiming point, the Aioi Bridge, by almost 800 feet and detonated directly over Shima Surgical Clinic.[15] It created a blast equivalent to about 13 kilotons of TNT. (The U-235 weapon was considered very inefficient, with only 1.38% of its material fissioning.)[16] The radius of total destruction was about 1.6 km (1 mile), with resulting fires across 11.4 km² (4.4 square miles).[17] Infrastructure damage was estimated at 90 percent of Hiroshima’s buildings being either damaged or completely destroyed.
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“an exercise in precision bombing” and nuclear weapons is an oxymoron. It is like calling a machine strafing of a crowd and a sniper attack.