Report of the British Mission to Japan
Introduction
1. On August 6th, 1945, shortly after 8 a.m., an American Super-Fortress flying at 30,000 feet dropped a single atomic bomb over the Japanese mercantile city of Hiroshima. The bomb exploded over the city centre. Three days later, on August 9th, just after 11 a.m., a Super-Fortress flying at the same height, which had found its primary target cloud-obscured, dropped a second atomic bomb over the industrial city of Nagasaki. This bomb exploded over the city's factory area. In Hiroshima more than four square miles of city were destroyed and 80,000 people were killed. In the smaller city of Nagasaki about one and a half square miles were destroyed and nearly 40,000 people were killed. The causes of destruction and of death differed in many points from those which had acted in the conventional raids of the past. It was clear that bombing had changed its character and its scale beyond recognition.
2. The British Mission which spent the month of November, 1945, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been concerned in the past with the appreciation of air raid damage in Great Britain, and subsequently on the Continent of Europe. While some of its members had for other reasons made a wartime study of Japanese conditions, it was not as a whole expert in Japanese affairs. Nor was it instructed to obtain a detailed picture of those effects of the bomb which were peculiar to Japan. The report which follows tells what was seen and what could be learnt three months after the bombing in Hiroshima and in Nagasaki. But its intention is, as it was the object of the Mission, to point to general conclusions on the effects to be expected from similar atomic bombs, should they fall outside Japan, and in particular in Great Britain. The reader should picture the destruction here set down as it would strike a city which he knows well, in its people, its houses, its public buildings, its factories and its public services.