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The Pentagon ordered hundreds of thousands of Purple Hearts for wounded soldiers, and there was discussion of the possible need to draft nurses. The bloody fighting that was still going on at Okinawa and elsewhere suggested that invasion of the home islands would result in huge casualties. Both the final go-ahead for this assault, scheduled for November 1, and the subsequent landing on Tokyo Bay (Operation Coronet) scheduled for March 1, 1946, would have to come later. The planning for an invasion of the Japanese home islands went forward on June 18 President Truman gave his tentative approval of the landing on Kyushu (Operation Olympic). The Americans and Australians launched one invasion after the other in the East Indies, and the British prepared to follow up on their reconquest of Burma with a landing on the coast of Malaya in order to retake Singapore. While havoc reigned on the home islands, the Japanese land forces in China and those forces still holding islands and parts of islands in the South and Southwest Pacific found themselves without many of the supplies they needed. In addition, aircraft carriers brought additional planes to raid coastal cities, and land-based planes dropped mines in the main shipping lanes.
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Similar if somewhat smaller raids were mounted against other large Japanese cities in the following months. Some 16 square miles of the city were burned, more than 80,000 people were killed, and a million Japanese civilians were left homeless. The raid on Tokyo on March 9, 1945, was the first large incendiary raid. Under a new commander, Major General Curtis LeMay, the Americans shifted much of their effort from high-level aimed bombing with explosives to low-level area bombing with incendiaries. From those islands, especially Tinian and Saipan, long-range B-29 bombers began to pound the home islands in the fall of 1944 and the winter of 1944-1945. A year earlier, the American bomber force was built up on the conquered islands of the Marianas. Oil and other raw materials could not be delivered by sea. Allied aircraft and submarines had decimated its already inadequate merchant fleet. There is no reason to fear that unconditional surrender means obliteration of the Japanese people or bondage.By the summer of 1945, Japan's situation had become desperate. Present hardships and sickness will be stopped forever. Families who love their sons who are fighting uselessly in the front lines will see them return quickly to their old jobs. The power of the military group which has resulted in the present chaos will be destroyed. In short, it means the ending of the war. This unconditional surrender includes Japanese civilians too. Our forces demand unconditional surrender from your military abandoning of hostilities and laying down of weapons. The production of munitions which support Japanese operations, transportation, and manpower is obviously declining, and continuing the war not only increases the hardships of the people of Japan tremendously, but also is of no avail. "If your political and military leaders continue the war, our forces will overwhelm your's more and more, expanding our movements and increasing our attacks. These two photographs show the Atomic mushroom cloud over Hiroshima and aim point.īy Senior Photo Editor Radhika Chalasani Japan's Emperor Hirohito announced his country's unconditional surrender on August 15, 1945, describing the devastating power of "a new and most cruel bomb."
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Their destructive power was unprecedented, incinerating buildings and people, and leaving lifelong scars on survivors, both physical and psychological, and on the cities themselves.ĭays later, World War II was over. Tens of thousands died later in both cities from the effects of the nuclear bombs. dropped a second bomb, "Fat Boy," on Nagasaki killing an estimated 40,000 on August 9. The bomb wiped out 90 percent of the city and instantly killed an estimated 80,000 people. More than seventy years ago, the world changed forever when an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, dropped the first atomic bomb, "Little Boy," over the Japanese city of Hiroshima, during World War II, on August 6, 1945.