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The 65th anniversary event at the site of the world’s first A-bomb attack echoed with the choirs of schoolchildren and the solemn ringing of bells Friday as Hiroshima marked the occasion. At 8:15 a.m. – the time the bomb dropped, incinerating most of the city – a moment of silence was observed. On Aug. 6, 1945, during World War II, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. About 140,000 people were killed or died within months when the American B-29 “Enola Gay” bombed Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. Three days later, about 80,000 people died after the United States also bombed Nagasaki. Japan surrendered on Aug. 15, ending World War II. To this day, the bombings remain the only time nuclear weapons have been unleashed. The United States decided to drop the bombs because Washington believed it would hasten the end of the war and avert the need to wage prolonged and bloody land battles on Japan’s main island. That concern was heightened by Japan’s desperate efforts to control outlying islands such as Iwo Jima and Okinawa as the Allies closed in. A giant column of smoke rises more than 60,000 feet into the air, after the second atomic bomb ever used in warfare explodes over the Japanese port town of Nagasaki, on August 9, 1945. Dropped by the U.S. Army Air Forces B-29 plane "Bockscar," the bomb killed more than 70,000 people instantly, with ten thousands dying later from effects of the radioactive fallout. An unidentified young boy carries his burned brother on his back Aug. 10, 1945 in Nagasaki, Japan. This photographs was not released to the public by the Japanese military but was disseminated to the world press by the United Nations after the war. Arrow marks the spot where the A-bomb struck at Nagasaki, Japan, August 10, 1945. Much of the bombed area is still desolate, the trees on the hills in the background remained charred and dwarfed from the blast and little reconstruction, except of wooden shacks as homes, has taken place.
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