Tomorrow is the 65th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. In honor of that, Life Magazine has posted photos from the immediate aftermath taken by its photographers who were on the ground around that time. As they point out in a 1945 article:
20 men and one woman [all LIFE photographers] spent a total of 13,000 days outside the U.S., of which half the days and nights were spent in combat zones.... [Five] were wounded in action, two were torpedoed ... and about a dozen contracted malaria, sometimes complicated by dysentery and dengue fever." No fewer than five of those photographers spent time in Nagasaki, Hiroshima, or both, in the late summer and fall of 1945.
Nagasaki After the Bomb: A Waste Land
One scene shared by all of the 20th century's bloodiest wars might have been lifted straight from The Road Warrior: a spectral landscape; buildings obliterated; blasted trees; a lifeless wasteland. The picture above, for instance -- a photograph never published, until now-- while mirroring every bleak, war-battered panorama from Verdun to Iwo Jima to Pork Chop Hill, was in fact made by LIFE's Bernard Hoffman in September, 1945, in Nagasaki, Japan. But far from chronicling the aftermath of sustained, slogging armed conflict, Hoffman's picture -- along with others seen here for the first time -- depicts devastation produced in a few, unspeakably violent seconds. On the 65th anniversary of American planes dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9) -- killing 120,000 people outright, and tens of thousands more through injury and radiation sickness -- LIFE.com presents never-before-seen pictures from both cities taken in the weeks and months following the bombings. Included, as well, are excerpts from issues of LIFE published after the war that convey the powerful, discordant reactions -- relief, horror, pride, fear -- that the bombings, and the long-sought victory over Japan, unleashed.
A Hole in the Clouds
"We circled until we found a hole in the clouds over Nagasaki. About half a mile in front of us was the [B-29 bomber] The Great Artiste with its precious load. 'There she goes!' someone said. Out of the belly of The Great Artiste a black object went downward. Our pilot swung around to get out of range. Despite the fact that it was broad daylight in our cabin, all of us became aware of a giant flash that broke through the barrier of our arc-welder's lenses. We removed our glasses after the first blast but the light still lingered, a bluish-green light that illuminated the entire sky." -- From "Nagasaki Was the Climax of the New Mexico Test," LIFE, 9/24/45, by reporter William Laurence, who flew in a B-29 bomber behind the plane that dropped the atomic bomb, codenamed "Fat Man," on Nagasaki. NOTE: The Great Artiste did not, in fact, drop the bomb. Another B-29, Bockscar, performed that role, while The Great Artiste (originally slated to carry the payload) deployed instruments to monitor the explosion. Pictured: Urakami Cathedral (Roman Catholic), Nagasaki, September, 1945, by Bernard Hoffman.
Hiroshima Streetcar, September, 1945
A passenger-filled streetcar traverses a ravaged Hiroshima in this never-published J.R. Eyerman photo, a month after the American bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the city of 300,000, August 6, 1945. An estimated 80,000 people were killed (many of them, quite literally, vaporized) in the blast; tens of thousands more died within a year from radiation poisoning. "In the moment of its incomparable blast, air became flame, walls turned to dust. 'My God,' breathed the crew of the B-29 at what they saw. Members reported, 'there was a terrific flash of light, even in the daytime ... a couple of sharp slaps against the airplane.' White smoke leaped on a mushroom stem to 20,000 feet where it spilled into a huge, billowy cloud. Then an odd thing happened. The top of this cloud broke off the stem and rose several thousand feet. As it did so, another cloud formed on the stem exactly as the first had done." -- From the article "War's Ending," LIFE, 8/20/1945. The Hiroshima bomb, codenamed "Little Boy," was the first of the only two nuclear devices ever used, by any nation, against an enemy in wartime.
Scenes From a Life: Nagasaki, September, 1945
A photo album. Shards of pottery. A pair of scissors. Of this scene, photographer Bernard Hoffman wrote to LIFE's legendary photo editor, Wilson Hicks, on September 9, 1945: "Assume this had been a private dwelling. The album was water soaked and some of the pix stuck together ... However, since this album came through the blast intact, and remains the only evidence of what once had been a home and family, I'm sending the pictures on for what they're worth to you." For reasons largely lost over the intervening seven decades, this photo -- like many other quietly revelatory pictures made by LIFE photographers on the ground in Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- was not published. Perhaps a family album too-readily humanized an enemy that had been so effectively demonized and dehumanized for four long, bloody years. Maybe it too-closely resembled another image that ran the week before. As with almost all of the photographs that never made it into the magazine, we'll never know why the remarkable pictures in this gallery went unpublished for so long.
Waves of Destruction
"In the following waves [after the initial blast] people's bodies were terribly squeezed, then their internal organs ruptured. Then the blast blew the broken bodies at 500 to 1,000 miles per hour through the flaming, rubble-filled air. Practically everybody within a radius of 6,500 feet was killed or seriously injured and all buildings crushed or disemboweled." -- From the article "Atom Bomb Effects," LIFE, 3/11/1946. Above: Hiroshima, 1945, by Bernard Hoffman. To this day, of course, historians, politicians, and military men and women the world over argue whether the American use of atomic weapons in WWII was, in fact, justified. That the bombs hastened the end of the war is, on the other hand, something that even the United States' fiercest critics generally concede. One week after the obliteration of Nagasaki, Japan surrendered.
'We Saw Hiroshima Today ...'
Photographer Bernard Hoffman's typed notes -- addressed to LIFE's photography editor at the time, Wilson Hicks, back in New York -- describing his first impressions of Hiroshima, less than a month after the Enola Gaydropped the bomb that destroyed the city and forever changed the face of war. "We were so shocked with what we saw," Hoffman wrote, "that most of us felt like weeping. Not out of sympathy for the Japs, but because we were so shocked and revolted by this new and terrible form of destruction.... What was formerly Japan's most modern, most westernized city, is now nothing more than a two foot layer of twisted tin and rubble." The use of what is now considered a vile slur, "Jap," was common in the vast majority of American publications during -- and for some time after -- the war.
A Flat, Silent Plain
"Japan's premier, Prince Higashi-Kuni ... on September 5 paid despairing tribute to the atomic bomb: 'This terrific weapon was likely to result in the obliteration of the Japanese people.' The atomic bomb, he indicated, was the immediate inducement to surrender ... As far as a man can walk for an hour in any direction there is only a flat, silent plain, a still-stinking junkpile. Americans visiting the city have to keep reminding themselves that this enormous destruction was caused by one bomb." -- From "What Ended the War," LIFE, 9/17/1945. Above: Nagasaki, 1945, a few months after the bombing, photographed by Alfred Eisenstaedt. No publication in the world covered World War II as thoroughly as LIFE: "After Pearl Harbor," the magazine noted in November, 1945, "20 men and one woman [all LIFE photographers] spent a total of 13,000 days outside the U.S., of which half the days and nights were spent in combat zones.... [Five] were wounded in action, two were torpedoed ... and about a dozen contracted malaria, sometimes complicated by dysentery and dengue fever." No fewer than five of those photographers spent time in Nagasaki, Hiroshima, or both, in the late summer and fall of 1945.
'They Dropped It on Nagasaki'
"A crewman met us at the door, a big smile on his face. 'The strike report is in,' he said. 'They dropped it on Nagasaki.' The colonel was surprised. 'That was the third target,' he said. Inside the hut everybody was cheerful. The men felt Sweeney [Major Charles W. Sweeney, who commanded the B-29 bomber,Bockscar] would reach Okinawa from Nagasaki, or at least ditch in the sea near there and get picked up by a Navy rescue plane. We heard later that Sweeney reached Okinawa with 'enough gas to fill a cigarette lighter.'" -- From "The Week the War Ended," published in LIFE, 7/17/1950, by reporter Robert Schwartz, who spent a week with the 509th Composite Group, a U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF) unit that bombed both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The USAAF was the immediate precursor to the United States Air Force, which was formed as its own branch of the military in 1947. Pictured: Nagasaki, 1945, photographed by Bernard Hoffman.
Living and the Dead
"Japanese doctors said that those who had been killed by the blast itself died instantly. But presently, according to these doctors, those who had suffered only small burns found their appetite failing, their hair falling out, their gums bleeding. They developed temperatures of 104, vomited blood, and died. It was discovered that they had lost 86 percent of their white blood corpuscles. Last week the Japanese announced that the count of Hiroshima's dead had risen to 125,000." -- From the article "What Ended the War," in LIFE, 9/17/1945. Above: Hiroshima, 1945, two months after the August 6 bombing, photographed by Bernard Hoffman. Descriptions of the suffering endured by survivors in both Nagasaki and Hiroshima -- burns that would not heal; agonizingly bent, twisted limbs; ceaseless, excruciating headaches -- lend weight to the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's oft-quoted (and perhaps apocryphal) utterance that, in the the event of an all-out nuclear war, "the living will envy the dead."
No Trace
An excerpt from LIFE photographer Bernard Hoffman's notes to Wilson Hicks in New York, typed and sent from Nagasaki on Sept. 9, 1945 -- the day he arrived in the city. "There is no way of comparing Atom Bomb damage with anything we've ever seen before," he wrote. "Whereas HE [high explosive] bombs leave gutted buildings and framework standing, the Atom Bomb leaves nothing... There were some hotels in the area we photographed, but we couldn't find even a trace of one."
'The Gimmick' and Its Aftermath
"I never heard an enlisted man in the 509th use the words 'atom bomb' or 'atomic bomb' or 'A-bomb.' Everyone in the squadron called it 'The Gimmick.' During the months of their secret work they had to have a name for the vague something that they were supposed to be working on, and when somebody referred to it as 'The Gimmick' that name stuck." -- From "The Week the War Ended," published in LIFE, 7/17/1950. Pictured: Nagasaki, photographed by Alfred Eisensatedt.
Among the Ruins
"When the [Nagasaki] bomb went off, a flier on another mission 250 miles away saw a huge ball of fiery yellow erupt. Others, nearer at hand, saw a big mushroom of dust and smoke billow darkly up to 20,000 feet, and then the same detached floating head as at Hiroshima. Twelve hours later Nagasaki was a mass of flame, palled by acrid smoke, its pyre still visible to pilots 200 miles away. The bombers reported that black smoke had shot up like a tremendous, ugly waterspout. With grim satisfaction, [physicists] declared that the 'improved' second atomic bomb had already made the first one obsolete." -- From the article "War's Ending" in LIFE, 8/20/1945. Pictured: Two women pay respects at a ruined cemetery, Nagasaki, 1945. Photographed by Alfred Eisenstaedt.
A Nation's Unease
In September, 1945, LIFE's J.R. Eyerman rode the Tokyo Express -- "Japan's best train," LIFE crowed -- from the nation's capital to Hiroshima. "Along the way," LIFE reported, in language hinting at optimism and reconciliation, while straining against four years of racially charged hatred and mutual savagery, "when the Japanese espied [Eyerman's] foreign uniform, they quickly turned their backs. But when they thought he was not looking, they stared at him with polite curiosity. Many posed willingly and answered his questions with courteous care. When the trip was over, Eyerman cabled, 'It is a significant sidelight on the Japanese character that an unarmed American could travel through unoccupied Japan 30 days after the blast, talk with defeated soldiers and victims of the blast, and find no evidence of surliness, resentment, or fear... The Japs are either the most disciplined or the most deceitful people in the whole world." Today, 65 years on, America and Japan are allies, trading partners, and avid fans of one another's goods, foods, and popular culture. The war is history -- bloody, complicated, indelible history. Pictured: Hiroshima, September, 1945, photographed by J.R. Eyerman.
