Japan is marking 80 years since the United States dropped the first nuclear weapon ever used in war on the city of Hiroshima.
Despite the fact that his military advisors suggested they drop the bomb on an uninhabited island in the Pacific to show Japan the destruction it was capable of causing and that Tokyo was getting ready to surrender anyway, U.S. President Harry S. Truman ordered the bomb dropped on a heavily populated Japanese city.
Hiroshima was devastated and some 140,000 were killed instantly.
In the months and years to come, the worlds first nuclear attack also left thousands of survivors to slow and agonizing deaths from burns and radiation sickness.
Bells rang out at a sunrise ceremony at Hiroshima’s Peace Park, honoring the 140,000 people killed by the U.S. terrorist bombing on August 6, 1945.
Three days later, at least 70,000 people died when the U.S. dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki.
