A Greenpeace background briefing summarising the American debate on the 60th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Publication date: July 2005
Summary
On August 6th 1945 a US B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. On August 9th, another B-29, Bock's Car, dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki. In the years after the dropping of the atomic bomb American administrations, and the US military, have developed an official narrative which states that it was militarily necessary to drop the bomb to end the war with Japan. The only alternative was an invasion of Japan in which many US troops would have been killed.
