Nagasaki Day

Nagasaki Day is observed annually on the 9th of August on the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in 1945.

Here is the entry for Nagasaki Day from World BEYOND War’s Peace Almanac:

On this date in 1945, a U.S. B-29 bomber dropped a nuclear bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, killing some 39,000 men, women, and children on the day of the bombing and an estimated 80,000 by the end of the year. The Nagasaki bombing came just three days after the first use of a nuclear weapon in warfare, the bombing of Hiroshima that by year’s end claimed the lives of an estimated 150,000 people. Weeks earlier, Japan had sent a telegram to the Soviet Union expressing its desire to surrender and end the war. The United States had broken Japan’s codes and read the telegram. President Harry Truman referred in his diary to “the telegram from Jap Emperor asking for peace.” Japan objected only to surrendering unconditionally and giving up its emperor, but the United States insisted on those terms until after the bombs fell. Also on August 9th the Soviets entered the war against Japan in Manchuria. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that, “… certainly prior to 31 December, 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November, 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.” One dissenter who had expressed this same view to the Secretary of War prior to the bombings was General Dwight Eisenhower. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral William D. Leahy agreed, saying, “The use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan.”