The Treaty On The Prohibition Of Nuclear Weapons

Introduction

On 6 August 1945 (Monday) at approximately 8.15 a.m., an American B-29 Super Fortress, dropped a 9,000-pound uranium-325 bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later, another American B-29 Super Fortress dropped a plutonium-239 bomb, weighing approximately 10,000 pounds, on Nagasaki.¹

These attacks wreaked unimaginable devastation on Japan, causing a loss of 130,000 to 215,000 civilian lives in both cities, many through slow painful deaths from exposure to radiation. These tragic events led to Japan's immediate surrender, bringing an end to World War II. The victors justified these atrocities on the ground that it avoided the loss of the lives of one million American soldiers by ending the conflict in the Pacific without an invasion of Japan.