CHAPTER 11 - NAGASAKI
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As Bockscar approached the cloud-covered city of Nagasaki the morning of August 9, 1945, she was running low on fuel. Her crew had originally planned to drop the B-29's payload - a Plutonium 239 bomb dubbed "Fat Man" - on the Japanese city of Kokura. Bad visibility over the primary target caused Bockscar's crew to divert to Nagasaki. Although the skies above Nagasaki had been fairly clear earlier in the morning, a front was moving in. The city was covered by a thick cloud layer at 11:02 a.m. Using radar, Bockscar's bombardier released "Fat Man" about 1.6 miles from the intended "aiming point." Instead of exploding over the center of Nagasaki, the bomb exploded 1,540 feet above the Urakami River Valley. Like Hiroshima, Nagasaki was devastated. Ground photographs taken by Yosuke Yamahata document the gruesome scene even more. President Truman's White House statement (scroll to the last paragraph) told the American people: We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city. We shall destroy their docks, their factories, and their communications. Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan's power to make war. Except that, for the moment, America's supply of atomic bombs had already been used. Japan, however, didn't know that and was finally ready to unconditionally surrender to the Allied Powers. |
