Today marks one of the United States' most important – but least celebrated – anniversaries. It is remarkable not only for what happened on this date in 1945 but for what did not happen subsequently.
What did happen was that the “Enola Gay,” an American B-29 bomber from the intentionally obscure 509th Composite Group (a U.S. Army Air Force unit tasked with deploying nuclear weapons), dropped “Little Boy,” a uranium-based atomic bomb, on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. That dramatic act hastened the end of World War II, which concluded within a week after the August 9 detonation of “Fat Man,” a plutonium-based bomb, over Nagasaki.
Approximately 66,000 died in Hiroshima from the acute effects of the “Little Boy” bomb and about 35,000 more in Nagasaki from the “Fat Man” device. (The subsequent short-term death toll rose precipitously due to the effects of radiation and wounds.)
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