S. casualties of up to a million. Truman then determined that the use of the atomic bomb would bring the war to a swift end.
Hiroshima was a manufacturing center of approximately 350,000 people located 500 miles from Japans capital Tokyo, was selected because it not only held an important military base, but also it had not been targeted by conventional bombing raids, and it had been regarded as being a suitable place to test the effect of this first atomic bomb. Then at 8:15 in the of August 6, 1945, an American B-29 bomber, named the "Enola Gay" had dropped the first atomic bomb, known as the "Little Boy". It then exploded approximately 2,000 feet over Hiroshima, with a blast equivalent to 15,000 tons of TNT, which instantly killed between 60,000 and 80,000 people, and destroyed five square miles of land2. Although this bomb had engendered tremendous damaged in a matter of seconds there was no immediate Japanese surrender and three days after Hiroshima America sent another atomic bomb on its way. On August 9, another B-29 bomber, named the Bockscar was sent to the Japanese city of Kokura, nominated after Kyoto was removed for being too large of an important culture center2. After flying over its initial target that morning it was deterred from dropping the bomb due the thick clouds covering the visual drop target. The Bockscar then flew to the back up plane Nagasaki releasing the atomic bomb known as the "Fat Man" at 11:02 that morning near an important port. This bomb was even more powerful then the last killed 40,000 people instantly and destroyed 2.6 square miles of land, but it's damage was limited due to Nagasaki being in-between narrow mountains. Finally at noon on August 15, 1945, Hirohito the emperor of Japan announced surrender. Then on September 2, He had signed a formal surrender agreement aboard the United Sates battleship Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay.