At 2:45 A.M. on August 6, 1945, an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, took off from the island of Tinian in the Mariana Islands carrying an atomic bomb. Shortly after 8:15 A.M. from an altitude of about 31,600 feet, the bomb was released over Hiroshima, Japan. It exploded with terrible fury over the center of the city, immediately killing more than eighty thousand people and maiming thousands more. The searing heat that resulted from the explosion set the city afire and utterly destroyed it. Two days later, on August 8, the U.S.S.R. declared war on Japan. On August 9, over Nagasaki, Japan, at about 11:00 A.M. the United States dropped a second atomic bomb, which killed more than forty thousand of the city's inhabitants. The destruction of Hiroshima was a shock to the Japanese, but Russia's declaration of war was devastating. The declaration of war removed all hope of Soviet mediation with the West to end the war. …
