THE BLAST IN JAPAN-NAGASAKI

Nagasaki suffered the same fate as Hiroshima in August 1945. The bombing of Nagasaki on August 9th was the last major act of World War Two and within days the Japanese had surrendered.

Nagasaki was not America's primary target. This was Kokura. Nagasaki was a major shipbuilding city and a large military port. But it was not a favoured target as it had been bombed five times in the previous twelve months and any damage caused by an atomic bomb would have been difficult to assess. Also, the way Nagasaki had grown as a port meant that the impact of a powerful bomb might be dissipated as the city had grown across hills and valleys. The city was also broken up with stretches of water. However, fate and the weather was to be Nagasaki's undoing. 

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By the time 'Bockscar' got near to its primary target, Kokura, it became clear that the weather had saved the city. The city was covered by cloud. Sweeney made three runs over the city but could find not break. With lack of fuel an issue, he decided to move to his only other target - Nagasaki. Sweeney only had enough fuel for one run over the city and not enough to fly back to Tinian. He would have to land at Okinawa.

Most of Sweeney's bombing run was done using radar but at the last minute a break in the cloud was found by the bomb aimer. He targeted a race track and at 28,900 feet, 'Fat Man' was dropped.

As Nagasaki had been targeted in the past, people in the city had become blasé when the air raid siren sounded. The same was true on August 9th. The irony was that Nagasaki was well served with good bomb shelters and far fewer people would have been killed or injured if the air raid sirens had been listened to. The surrounding hills had tunnels dug into them which would have been very effective for the people who could have reached them.

'Fat Man' was a very effective bomb. Its blast was bigger than 'Little Boy's'  but its impact was reduced by the natural topography of the city. Where the bomb blast hit at its peak, massive damage was done. An area about 2.3 miles by 1.9 miles was destroyed but other parts of the city were saved from the blast. Curiously, the city's train service was not interrupted and the fire damage that followed Hiroshima did not occur in Nagasaki as many parts of the city were broken up by water. The fires simply could not cross these gaps and they burned out. 

However, considerable damage was done to the city. The horrific injuries suffered at Hiroshima were also witnessed at Nagasaki. The city's medical facilities were not totally destroyed by 'Fat Man' as at Hiroshima - but nobody was capable of coping with those who were injured in the blast. 

One survivor, Sadako Moriyama, had gone to a bomb shelter when the sirens sounded. After the bomb had gone off, she saw what she thought were two large lizards crawling into the shelter she was in, only to realise that they were human beings whose bodies had been shredded of their skin because of the bomb blast.

Death and injury in Nagasaki and the surrounding areas, depended on where you lived. People who lived on the Koba hillside, just three and a half miles from ground zero, were protected from the blast by a mountain. People caught up in the blast came to Koba for help and Fujie Urata, who lived in Koba and had seen a large flash, could not believe what she was seeing. As in Hiroshima, many in Nagasaki died after the immediate impact of the bomb had gone away from mysterious ailments which we now associate with radiation poisoning. No-one, understandably, knew what to do to help the victims of this newest of illnesses.

In 1953, a report by the US Strategic Bombing Survey put the number of deaths at 35,000, wounded at 60,000 and 5,000 missing. In 1960, the Japanese put the number of dead at Nagasaki at 20,000 and the number of wounded at 50,000. Later, the Nagasaki Prefectural Office put the figure for deaths alone at 87,000 with 70% of the city's industrial zone destroyed.

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