Hiroshima and Nagasaki aerial images released

Aerial photographs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are now accessible on the NCAP website. The images were taken only weeks after the destruction of both cities by atomic bombs in August 1945.

 

The first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. It immediately devastated the city and instantaneously killed more than 60,000 people. A second bomb destroyed Nagasaki three days later. The images record the unprecedented effect of the bombs on both cities. In both locations, only a few concrete structures survived. When the surrender of Imperial Japan was announced on 15 August 1945, and formally signed on 2 September 1945, the hostilities of the Second World War were brought to a close.

 

Over 500 aerial images of Japan, dating from 1944 and 1945 can now be viewed on the NCAP website. They have been digitised courtesy of the NARA Digitisation Partnership. Website subscribers can zoom-and-pan all of these images.