CITY OF HIROSHIMA

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The city of Hiroshima is located in the western portion of the main island of Japan, Honshu, on the Seto Inland Sea, the body of water that separates the islands of Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku. Hiroshima is built on the delta of the Ota River, which divides into several channels, leaving the city divided into numerous islands. The city was founded in 1589 and became the base for local warlords. The city remained a regional hub through the end of the 19th century, when it became a major industrial center during the first Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). The concentration of industry in Hiroshima made it a compelling target for the military planners contemplating where to drop the first atomic bomb.

On August 6, 1945, Col. Paul Tibbets piloted the Enola Gay, a B-29 bomber, from Tinian Island in the Pacific Ocean to Hiroshima. The Enola Gay carried "Little Boy," a gun-type uranium weapon. Read about the events of that morning here. The military personnel in charge of the decision to drop the bomb believed that it could provide the necessary inducement for the Japanese government to surrender. However, the nature of the destruction wrought upon Hiroshima was unprecedented, and Japanese authorities could barely comprehend what had happened to the city. Today Hiroshima is synonymous with the first use of an atomic bomb on an inhabited city. That August morning, the survivors of the attack struggled to understand what had happened.

Reports from Hiroshima in the days, weeks, and months after the attack made an international public aware of the horrors brought to the city during the bombing and contributed to the sense that nuclear weapons were fundamentally different from other sorts of weapons. In the years after the war, Hiroshima was rebuilt and remains a regional center in Japan. The rebuilding of Hiroshima was facilitated by contributions from all over Japan, and from international support for the first city to be attacked by an atomic bomb. Today both Hiroshima and Nagasaki are home to museums to record the memory of the bombings.

Sources and notes for this page

The text for this page is original to the Department of Energy's Office of History and Heritage Resources. Major sources consulted include Martin J. Sherwin, A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and its Legacies (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003). A classic account from the city immediately after the bombing is John Hersey, Hiroshima (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946). The photograph of the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima is courtesy the United States Air Force (USAF) (via NARA). For information on the aerial photographs of Hiroshima, see here.