Nagasaki was hit by the second atomic bomb before Japan's 1945 surrender announcement.
The United States dropped the plutonium bomb known as Fat Man on Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. The attack followed the bombing of Hiroshima three days earlier. The Nagasaki mission was flown by the B-29 bomber Bockscar, piloted by Major Charles W. Sweeney. Nagasaki had been the secondary target after clouds obscured the primary target, Kokura.
The bomb detonated at approximately 11:02 a.m. over the city’s Urakami Valley. Hills limited the blast’s reach compared with what might have happened across a flatter urban area, but the attack caused enormous destruction and loss of life. Nagasaki was an important industrial and port center with shipbuilding and weapons production.
Japan’s surrender announcement came six days later, on 15 August. Historians continue to debate the relative influence of the atomic bombings, the Soviet declaration of war, and Japan’s internal political crisis. The two nuclear attacks remain the only uses of nuclear weapons in warfare.