Human Wrongs Watch
By Peter Symonds*
6 August 2015 (WSWS)* – Seventy years ago today, an American B-29 bomber dropped an atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The massive blast, equivalent to about 13,000 tonnes of TNT, killed 80,000 people, or 30 percent of the population, immediately or within hours and laid waste to much of the city. Three days later, on August 9, 1945, the US unleashed another atomic weapon on the city of Nagasaki, killing another 40,000 people outright.

**Image: Aircraft of the 509th Composite Group that took part in the Hiroshima bombing. Left to right: Big Stink, The Great Artiste, Enola Gay | Photo taken by Harold Agnew on Tinian Island in 1945 | Source: private collection of Harold Agnew | Wikimedia Commons
Many more people died subsequently of their injuries, including from radiation sickness.
Estimates of the total number of men, women and children killed by the two bombs ranged from 200,000 to 350,000, just in the first four months.