At this instant 75 years ago (8:15am August 6, local time), Little Boy—a 15-kiloton atomic bomb—destroyed Hiroshima, killing (per US military estimates) ~70,000 men, women, and children, including 12 American POWs. Later independent estimates argued ~140,000 people were killed. 
At the time, there were 76,000 buildings in Hiroshima; 70,000 (92 percent) were damaged or destroyed, 48,000 (63 percent) completely. As a Japanese assessment later reported, "It is no exaggeration to say that the whole city was ruined instantaneously.”
18 emergency hospitals and 32 medical clinics were destroyed and 90 percent of all medical personnel were killed or severely wounded. Below, view panoramic photographs of the destruction along with "before and after" images of key locations in Hiroshima: abc.net.au/news/2015-08-0…
In an excellent new @BulletinAtomic article, @wellerstein meticulously explores why it is so difficult to know with any certainty how many people were killed in the only two atomic bombings in history, and how to make sense of the competing estimates. thebulletin.org/2020/08/counti…
Read John Hersey's powerful and unforgettable 1946
@NewYorker article, “Hiroshima," describing the horrific devastation of the city as recounted by six survivors: a clerk, a doctor, a tailor’s widow, a German priest, a surgeon, and a Methodist pastor. newyorker.com/magazine/1946/…
@NewYorker article, “Hiroshima," describing the horrific devastation of the city as recounted by six survivors: a clerk, a doctor, a tailor’s widow, a German priest, a surgeon, and a Methodist pastor. newyorker.com/magazine/1946/…
The US nuclear stockpile currently comprises some 3,800 bombs and warheads, which collectively contain a maximum total firepower equivalent to about 68,576 Little Boy-size bombs. If you exploded one of those 15-kiloton bombs every minute, it would take 47.6 days to use them all.
More about the 12 American POWs killed by Little Boy: 10 died immediately. Naval aviator Normand Brissette and Army Staff Sgt. Ralph Neal dove into a water-filled cistern but were still burned by the thermal pulse and received lethal radiation doses. Both died on Aug. 19, 1945.
