August 6th, 1945

I'm holding a rock from the Church grounds in Nagasaki where "Fat Man" was released by the US B-29 Bomber "Superfortress Bockscar" at 11:01 AM on August 9th, 1945. On August 6th, 1945 at 8:15M "Little Boy" was released by the US B-52 Bomber "Enola Gay" on the unsuspecting city of Hiroshima, Japan. This is the 64th Anniversary of the United States killing over 1 million Japanese citizens. (Although Japan did surrender on August 12th, 1965.)

Here's an image of the Memorial that has been set-up on the impact site of "Fat Man" in Nagasaki, Japan: http://tinyurl.com/a4u5on. More information can be found on the Wikipedia entry for the Atomic Bomb - found here: http://tinyurl.com/3u583.

You can watch video of the explosions (from both bombs) on YouTube here: http://tinyurl.com/63dygm.

A 3rd bomb was planned for release towards the 3rd week of August. Another 3 bombs were being prepared for September and yet another 3 bombs were scheduled for release in October. Had the Japanese not surrendered we had planned on killing millions of innocent Japanese citizens.

The argument used to justify the dropping of the bombs is that thousands of US and Japanese soldiers would have died in a war that could of lasted years. Plus President Truman had pressure from the US citizens to strike back at Japan for the Bombing of Pearl Harbor.

For those of you interested in the bombings I highly suggest the BBC Documentary: Hiroshima. It includes cgi recreations of the blast along with interviews from survivors, military experts and those involved with the bombing.

Those who survived the bombings are called Hibakusha which translates to "explosion-affected people." Some individuals were un-lucky (or lucky) enough to have survived BOTH bombings.

EDIT: There is a typo in the 1st post. Japan announced their surrender on August 15th, 1945 and signed the papers of surrender on the deck of the USS Missouri on September 2nd, 1945.

BTW: Those wondering: Nope, the rock I have is not radioactive. (Thanks to that Civil Defense Radiation Meter (Geiger Counter) I got off of Ebay.)