The decision to employ atomic weapons against Japan remains a controversial chapter in American history. World War II had finally come to its dramatic conclusion. The following week, Japan’s emperor addressed his country over the radio to announce the decision to surrender. dropped a second atomic bomb over the city of Nagasaki, with similarly devastating results. Minutes later, that new weapon-a bomb that released its enormous destructive energy by splitting uranium atoms to create a chain reaction-detonated in the sky, killing some 70,000 Japanese civilians instantly and leveling the city. On August 6, 1945, after 44 months of increasingly brutal fighting in the Pacific, an American B-29 bomber loaded with a devastating new weapon appeared in the sky over Hiroshima, Japan.
