Hiroshima & Nagasaki
Discover Hiroshima and Nagasaki — the first and only use of nuclear weapons in war, ending World War II and beginning the atomic age.
The atomic bombings of Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9, 1945) were the first and only use of nuclear weapons in warfare. The bombings killed an estimated 110,000–210,000 people — mostly civilians — and remain the most destructive single acts of warfare in history. Japan announced its surrender on August 15, ending World War II.
The bombs were the product of the Manhattan Project, a massive secret American research program that harnessed nuclear fission to create weapons of unprecedented destructive power. The decision to use them remains one of the most debated in modern history. Proponents argue they prevented a land invasion of Japan that would have cost millions of lives on both sides. Critics argue Japan was already near defeat, that the bombings were primarily intended to intimidate the Soviet Union, and that their use against civilian populations was morally indefensible.
The bombings inaugurated the nuclear age. The destructive power demonstrated at Hiroshima and Nagasaki — a single bomb destroying an entire city — fundamentally transformed international relations. The subsequent nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union created the terrifying possibility of human extinction that shaped the entire Cold War era and remains a defining challenge of the modern world.