Hiroshima was the first Japanese city targeted by an atomic bomb during the final weeks before Japan surrendered in 1945.
The United States dropped the uranium bomb known as Little Boy over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The B-29 bomber Enola Gay carried the weapon, which exploded at approximately 8:15 a.m. local time. The blast devastated much of the city and caused enormous civilian casualties, many of them occurring later from burns, injuries, and radiation exposure.
Hiroshima was a military headquarters and an industrial center, but it also contained a large civilian population. The bombing became one of the decisive events in the end of the Pacific War, although historians continue to debate how much weight it carried compared with the Soviet entry into the war and Japan’s internal political crisis.
A second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki three days later, on August 9. Japan announced acceptance of the Allied terms on August 15.