Uncensored Footage of the Atomic Bomb’s Devastation in Hiroshima-ZZ

It is an atomic bomb.

It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe.

The force from which the sun draws his power has been loosed against those who brought war to the far east.

All war is a crime arguably, but the best thing you can do in a war is to end it.

We are now prepared to destroy every productive enterprise the Japanese have in any city.

The use of the atomic bomb in in the theater of war was something that I think America was perfectly prepared to do.

Let there be no mistake.

We shall completely destroy Japan’s power to make war.

If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a reign of ruin from the air the like of which has never been seen on this earth.

Behind this air attack will follow sea and land forces in such numbers and power as they have not yet seen and with the [music] fighting skill of which they are already well aware.

5 4 3 2 1 T-minus 4 hours 30 minutes 2:45 a.

m.

The Anola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress sits on the runway on Tinian Island.

11 crew members are aboard.

Their mission to drop the first atomic bomb in history.

The aircraft is loaded with little boy, a uranium bomb weighing nearly 9,700 lb.

Inside, it carries a force unlike anything ever unleashed.

If the atom bomb could be safely transported by air to a point over Japan, its use could well have such a devastating effect that the war might be materially shortened.

The final clearance is given.

Colonel Paul Tippetsz pushes the throttles forward.

The roar of the engines fills the night sky as it climbs, heading north over the Pacific.

Its course is set.

Hiroshima is still hundreds of miles away, unaware of the destruction to come.

The flight will last 4 hours and 30 minutes.

For now, all is calm.

But this story, this fateful flight did not begin in the skies over the Pacific.

It began years earlier when the world was drawn into a conflict unlike any before.

The year is 1941.

The world is already at war.

Nations are locked in a struggle for survival.

Their fates intertwined in the fires of battle.

In the early hours of December 7th, 1941, a moment occurs that will change everything.

Japan, a rising imperial power, launches a surprise attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor.

What happened in December 1941 in what President Roosevelt called a day that shall live in infamy is that Japan first thing in the morning sent various planes to attack Pearl Harbor.

This is before this was a crucial thing later.

This is before any any formal declaration of war.

And the big question is this why does Japan attack the United States? Japan a relatively small country.

The United States the most powerful nation in the world.

Now, the reason why Japan does it is [music] because Japan wants to take out the United States Pacific Fleet.

Why does Japan want to do that? To stop that fleet [music] getting in the way of what Japan wants to do in Asia, and that’s to invade lots of other countries.

The United States, [music] stunned by the brutality of the attack, rallies with newfound resolve.

It becomes clear this is no longer just a fight for territory but a fight for survival will cost millions of lives and demand the creation of weapons that hold unimaginable power.

And so as the Anola Gay takes off from Tenian Island on August 6th, 1945, heading toward Hiroshima, it carries with it the weight of four years of war, of untold suffering, of choices made in desperation.

A weapon is now in the hands of those who will decide the fate of nations.

December 8th, 1941, 12:30 p.

m.

Washington, D.

C.

President Franklin D.

Roosevelt stands before Congress.

His voice is steady, yet carries the heavy burden of a nation’s grief and anger.

I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.

In that instant, the United States steps into the global conflict.

The storm has begun, and the world will never be the same.

War spreads like wildfire.

The Pacific is a battleground.

When Japan and the United States are fighting this war in the Pacific, what they’re doing [music] is fighting for island strongholds.

And so you have huge battles [music] on islands like Iima, Pelu, which are very bloody, very attritional fights in which the Japanese [music] are often dug in and fight to the last man, and it costs an enormous amount of lives.

Hitler saw what Japan did.

he hadn’t been aware they were going to attack P Harbor because they hadn’t bothered to inform him it was going to happen.

He thought, “Oh, marvelous.

” Because obviously what he had been doing all along is that he’d been attacking countries without any warning and any kind of negotiation.

So he was completely on board with it, there was no sense whatsoever of his having any kind of moral objection to it.

And he thought that if we could be taking on the entire world simultaneously and win, [music] there’d be no limits to German expansionism.

And so this is why, you know, war breaks out.

It’s Hitler saber rattling.

He doesn’t know what it’s going to lead to.

Behind closed doors, whispers grow into urgent warnings.

Scientists, refugees from war torn Europe bring troubling news.

Germany is investigating nuclear fishing.

The implications are clear.

If Hitler succeeds, no army, no city, no nation will be safe.

But in reality, the Nazi nuclear program is fragmented, underfunded, and stalled by internal conflict.

The US doesn’t know that yet.

It cannot afford to wait.

August 13th, 1942.

Under the highest secrecy, the United States embarks on the most ambitious scientific endeavor in history, the Manhattan Project.

A gathering of the greatest minds, Oppenheimer, Fermy, Teller, Boore, and Lawrence, assembled under one goal, to harness the atom’s power before the enemy does.

The Manhattan Project has got lots of different roles, if you like.

The primary role, of course, is to build a nuclear bomb that you can use, you know, in the war.

Some of the other roles are also to try and establish what level of nuclear capacity do other countries have and of course especially Nazi Germany.

I think there was also a sense that America wanted to be top dog in terms of its technology and its research.

It wanted to be this this country that was dominant because obviously at this stage Germany was seen as as the threat.

wasn’t Russia or Britain or anywhere else.

And it’s very much a race against time as to who was going to be the first to harness this energy and to come out on top.

And of course, the Manhattan project is also there to construct all the stuff around to build a nuclear bomb.

So, it’s got to mastermind factories.

It’s got a mastermind getting hold of uranium.

It’s got a mastermind creating plutonium.

Here it is, General Groves.

Plutonium.

Well, that’s the uh first I’ve ever seen.

But uh after this, if you don’t mind, I wish you’d uh hold something under it because after all, there’s about over $50 million in that, too.

The operation is overseen by General Leslie Groves, a man as ruthless with bureaucracy as he is with timelines.

It is Groves who selects the remote desert of Los Alamos, New Mexico as the birthplace of the bomb.

Vast resources are poured into the project.

Secret laboratories in the deserts of New Mexico.

Reactors hidden in the woods of Tennessee.

Massive plants rising in Washington State.

An entire city, Oak Ridge, is built from nothing, filled with thousands of workers.

Scientists and soldiers all sworn to silence.

What they are creating many do not know.

But those at the top understand this is no ordinary weapon.

This is something new, something terrible.

July 16th, 1945.

5:29 a.

m.

The Trinity test.

Scientists and military officials wait in tense silence, eyes fixated on the steel tower.

The countdown begins.

Then light.

A flash brighter than the sun erupts across the desert, blinding all who are watching.

The steel tower is obliterated, vaporized instantly.

Then comes the shock wave.

A wall of fire explodes outward, stretching across the valley.

This was the first time that this gadget, as the first nuclear bomb was known, was ever tested.

So, you know, all these scientists like Oppenheimer watching from a reasonable distance for obvious reasons.

You know, they were terribly worried that this thing might just go biz.

There was no way whatsoever of actually knowing what was going to happen.

And there was a fear.

I mean, relatively small fear because Oppenheimer was a genius, but a fear nonetheless.

But if you launched this energy source that it could have a much, much more catastrophic basis than anyone had ever imagined.

There’s a real fear they were dealing with something that they didn’t know.

The observers, overwhelmed, can only watch as the cloud billows higher, unable to process the enormity of what they’ve just witnessed.

Then Oppenheimimer deeply moved by what he’s just witnessed recalls the famous words quoting the ancient Hindu scripture the Bavad Gita.

Now I am become death the destroyer of worlds.

I suppose we all thought that one way or another.

Well, after the E day was declared in Europe, there was a real problem that America and the rest of the Allied powers were still at war with Japan.

And Japan showed absolutely no signs of surrendering because the nature the difference between Germany and Japan was Germany, especially after Hitler died, knew they were beaten, knew there was nowhere else to go.

They just basically had to settle for a humiliating peace, the best possible terms they could get.

The thing about Japan is that there is no concept of surrender in their national identity that the whole idea was that they would literally fight until the last man.

So America was looking at the idea of having to have this waterborn invasion of Japan which would have taken up countless millions of lives.

I mean it would have been devastation on a grand grand [music] scale.

And it would have been horrendous because it would have prolonged the war for at least months, [music] possibly years.

And so talking about situation that even if you’ve got this peace in Europe, you’ve got a much much worse situation in Japan.

So when it became clear to Truman that you have this atomic bomb which would cause absolute devastating damage, but its use would also end for war more or less overnight if Japan would actually surrender.

But he considers it was worth doing.

The question was, of course, could it be such an enormous thing that would actually persuade Japan to go against the most deeply held aspect of a national character and surrender? Truman finally gives the order to drop the atomic bomb because he’s basically done a costbenefit [music] analysis in lives and he knows that hundreds of thousands of Americans may die invading Japan and many millions of Japanese may die and he’s thinking actually if I drop this bomb this could just short circuit all that.

Yes, I’m going to kill tens of thousands of people, but it’s going to be far fewer than if we have a costly traditional invasion.

Also, he wants to show the world that America cannot be messed with forever more.

Because don’t forget, for those few years, America is the only country on this planet that has [music] the A- bomb.

The first target is chosen.

Hiroshima, a military and industrial city.

The decision is final.

July 26th, 1945.

The pot steam declaration is issued by the United States, Britain, and China calling for Japan’s unconditional surrender.

Japan’s response is defiant.

The Japanese government rejects the declaration, refusing to accept the terms.

The stage is set.

Despite the growing pressure, Japan stands firm.

The world waits.

Tinian Island, 1,500 m south of Japan.

The USS Indianapolis arrives, carrying the most destructive weapon ever created.

The bomb’s uranium core is transported in complete secrecy.

Its presence known only to a handful of men.

Military police stand guard as the precious cargo is carefully unloaded.

No one outside the project knows what is on the horizon.

August 1st, 1945.

On the sweltering airirstrip, scientists and engineers from Project Alberta work under tight security.

This select team led by Captain William S.

Parsons is tasked with final assembly.

Every bolt, wire, and explosive charge is checked and rechecked.

The bomb must function perfectly.

There will be no second chance.

August 2nd, 1945, the military command holds a final strategic meeting.

General Curtis Lmé and senior members of Project Alberta assess the last reconnaissance reports.

Weather conditions, wind speeds, and cloud cover are analyzed.

The target must be clear with no obstructions.

The goal is total devastation.

August 4th, 1945.

General Curtis Lameé personally signs off on the final mission orders for Operation Centerboard 1, the code name for the atomic strike on Hiroshima.

The decision cements what has been in motion for months.

There is no turning back now.

At the heart of the Pacific, deep within the command center on Tinian Island, final attack details are reviewed.

The strike will be carried out by a single B29 escorted by observation planes to record the bomb’s impact.

Hiroshima remains the primary target.

Nagasaki and Kakura are secondary targets.

The launch time is set.

That same day, the final pieces arrive.

Even with all preparations in place, one crucial element is still missing.

In the dead of night, a modified C-54 transport plane touches down Antennian’s airirstrip.

Its cargo is small but holds unimaginable power.

The final bomb components including the uranium 235 core required to make Little Boy a fully operational nuclear weapon.

This is the last step before assembly is complete.

With the mission now fully armed and authorized, the countdown begins.

August 5th, 1945.

Tminus 16 hours, Northfield, Tinian Island.

Mission commander Colonel Paul Tibbitz delivers the orders.

There is no room for hesitation.

The men know they are carrying a weapon unlike anything in history.

As night falls over Tinion, the air is thick with [music] anticipation.

By sunrise, the world will cross a threshold it can never return from into an age defined by fire.

On the tarmac, the ordinance crew prepares Little Boy for loading.

The bomb, 10 feet long and weighing just over 9,000 lbs, sits on a transport [music] cradle.

A special loading pit designed for these missions allows the aircraft to be positioned directly over the weapon.

The process [music] is slow.

Deliberate.

Its firing mechanism will only be activated in flight.

After [music] several tense minutes, little boy is locked into place.

The bay doors close.

The ground crew steps away.

The weapon [music] is secure.

T-minus 12 hours.

Mission briefing room.

North field.

The air crew gathers in the briefing room for final instructions.

Weather reports indicate clear skies over Hiroshima.

Captain William Deak Parsons outlines the bomb’s arming procedure.

To minimize risk, Little Boy will be armed manually during flight.

The planned drop altitude is 31,000 ft.

Estimated yield approximately 15 kilotons, equivalent to 15,000 tons of TNT.

The blast will generate temperatures exceeding several thousand° at the hyperenter with a shock wave capable of flattening buildings within a mile of impact.

Radiation effects will extend even further.

Major Thomas Farbe reviews the bombing run.

The Nordan bomb site, one of the most advanced [music] targeting systems of the war, will be used for precision aiming.

Designed for highaltitude bombing, the device uses gyroscopes and mechanical calculators to adjust for speed, altitude, and wind, allowing the bombader to guide the bomb with pinpoint accuracy.

The designated aim point is the IEO Bridge, a distinctive T-shaped structure near Hiroshima’s center.

The briefing concludes.

Detailed pre-flight checklists are meticulously followed.

The crew confirms that all bomb arming mechanisms, communication systems, navigational aids, and weather tracking instruments are fully operational.

Every system must function flawlessly.

In half a day, history will alter its course.

T-minus 8 hours 45 minutes Northfield, Tinian Island.

The crew is awakened from their quarters.

Sleep has been brief.

Outside, the air is thick and still.

Conversation is sparse.

The gravity of the mission needs no discussion.

August 6th, 1945.

T-minus 7 hours 45 minutes.

Final preparations begin.

Checklists are reviewed.

Colonel Paul Tibbitz ensures the flight plan is in order.

Among the equipment issued, the crew receives something unusual.

Cyanide tablets, a precaution.

No one speaks of it, but each man knows what it means.

If the aircraft is forced down and they are captured, suicide is the only option.

On the tarmac, the Anola Gay waits under flood lights, its polished aluminum reflecting the pre-dawn darkness.

T-minus 5 hours 40 minutes.

The crew boards.

Each man runs through his final checklist.

The four right R3350 [music] engines roar to life.

T-minus 5 hours 30 minutes.

The overloaded bomber begins its takeoff roll.

The engines strain as the aircraft gathers speed, using nearly the full length of the strip before lifting into the night sky.

The Anola Gay is airborne.

The mission is underway.

T-minus 2 hours 30 minutes over the Pacific Ocean.

The Anola Gay cruises at 31,000 ft, leaving the Marana Islands behind.

The Pacific stretches endlessly below.

The sky is clear.

Ahead of them, three weather reconnaissance B-29s, Straight Flush, Jabat 3, and Full House are in route to Hiroshima Kakura, and Nagasaki.

Their task, confirm visibility over each target.

The crew waits for the report.

The mission depends on it.

T-minus 90 minutes over the Philippine Sea.

Inside the Bombay, Captain William Deak Parsons moves carefully.

Little boy remains secured, unarmed.

Parsons and Second Lieutenant Morris Jeepson work in cramped quarters, replacing three safety plugs with live ones.

The bomb is now fully armed.

There is no fail safe.

For over a hundred years, the city of Hiroshima had [music] garrisoned some of the Japanese Empire’s finest troops.

The city had never been subjected to actual bombing, but had been warned repeatedly.

Now its army headquarters, barracks, ordinance, and quartermaster depots, factories, mills, and shipyards were to feel the weight of the atom’s destructive power.

T-minus 66 minutes south of Japan.

Japanese radar stations detect incoming aircraft over the sea.

An air raid alert is issued.

Sirens wail.

Some residents of Hiroshima move toward shelters, a precaution ingrained by years of war.

At a regional command center, officers analyze the radar signatures.

Only three aircraft, no large bomber formation, no sign of an imminent raid.

It fits the pattern of a routine reconnaissance.

T-minus 44 minutes.

Hiroshima, Japan.

The all clear is given.

The sirens fall silent.

Morning life resumes.

Workers return to their tasks.

Street cars continue their routes.

The city is unaware that the countdown continues.

T-minus 30 minutes over the sto inland sea.

The Anola Gay crosses the Japanese coastline.

The city of Hiroshima comes into view.

Bombadier Major Thomas Farbe readies the Nordan bomb site, adjusting for altitude, wind, and air speed.

Below, a few Japanese fighter planes are spotted.

They do not engage.

They are conserving fuel for larger bombing raids.

No anti-aircraft fire, no resistance.

The target is wide open.

T-minus 10 minutes.

The final approach.

The Inola Gay holds steady at 31,000 ft with the two accompanying aircraft maintaining formation.

The great artist carries scientific instruments to measure the force of the blast while necessary evil is positioned to capture the detonation on film.

The crews of all three planes dawn dark goggles prepared for a flash brighter than the sun.

Major Thomas Farbe peers into the northern bomb site finetuning his aim.

Below the AIoy Bridge comes into focus.

A distinct T-shaped landmark in the heart of Hiroshima, chosen for its visibility.

The city spreads out beneath them, unaware.

Morning traffic moves through the streets.

Street cars run on schedule.

Factories hum with production.

Thousands of people go about their routines, oblivious to the weapon, now locked onto their center.

Colonel Paul Tibbitz grips the controls, making a final course correction.

The bomb bay doors will open in moments.

There are no fighters, no flack, no alarms.

The attack is unchallenged.

History is 10 minutes away.

T minus one minute.

The bomb bay doors yawn open, exposing little boy to the rushing air.

The 10,000lb bomb hangs motionless, its weight pressing against the release mechanism.

Inside the cockpit, hands move across dials [music] and switches with practiced precision.

Final calculations [music] are confirmed.

Altitude 31,000 ft.

Speed 328 mph.

[music] Wind drift minimal.

The Aioi Bridge remains centered in the crosshairs of the Nordan bomb site.

Below, Hiroshima moves [music] as it always has.

Tramas roll along their tracks.

Workers file into factories.

Children walk to school.

Radios playing morning broadcasts.

The city is awake but unaware of the impending annihilation.

A slight movement of the bombader’s hand.

A mechanical click.

The clamps release.

Little boy plummets into the open air, beginning its silent but deadly descent toward the unsuspecting city below.

T-minus 43 seconds.

For 43 seconds, it drops in silence, accelerating to 600 mph.

At 600 meters above the ground, the firing mechanism ignites.

In less than a microscond, a neutron surge triggers a self- sustaining chain reaction.

15 kilotons of energy erupt into a fireball.

Well, what was very interesting about Hiroshima was that the atomic bombs detonated over the city.

And what it did more or less straight away was just wipe out the center.

I mean, it was if you look at photographs of Hiroshima, you can just see it’s turned into kind of desert and this vast area in in the city center just ceased to exist in [music] seconds.

Around 140,000 people [music] are killed and will die by the end of 1945.

Well over 50% of the city is destroyed.

And one of the reasons why the devastation of Roshima is so great is because it’s on a fairly flat surface, flat plane.

In the ruins of Hiroshima, time stands still.

Among [music] the charred remains, pocket watches and wall clocks are found.

their hands frozen [music] at 8:15 a.

m.

the exact moment of detonation.

[music] You can imagine that if you are in Hiroshima and you’re going about your your daily business, there’s just this flash of blinding white light and then all of a sudden everything around you is destroyed.

And it’s something that you could never have imagined it because that [music] never existed before.

And it is something biblical.

I mean, you would have genuinely imagined if you’d [music] seen it that this was the end of days because of course many people it was literally the end of days.

But it was also a sign as if you ever needed [music] to have it that we were not anymore in this old-fashioned war of guns and [music] of military invasions and stuff.

It was this new much more terrifying world that was ahead of people.

So, Hiroshima was the first place to bear the [music] brunt of that.

An eerie silence hangs over Hiroshima, broken only by the distant [music] echoes of collapsing buildings and the cries of the wounded.

[music] In the immediate aftermath of the detonation, Hiroshima is engulfed in chaos.

Emergency signals and fragmented reports begin [music] to surface as both US military personnel and Japanese authorities grapple with understanding the [music] magnitude of the catastrophe.

T plus 1 hour, a new horror begins.

Thick, oily raindrops begin to fall over Hiroshima.

The detonation has sucked debris and moisture into the upper atmosphere, forming highly radioactive black rain.

Those desperate for water drink from puddles.

They do not yet know it carries death.

The rain persists for about 30 minutes, staining everything it touches and posing severe health risks to those who come in contact with it.

The survivors, now contending with radioactive fallout, face an environment fraught with unseen dangers, compounding the immediate horrors of the blast.

For many, the suffering will not end in the days or even years to come.

T plus 3 hours.

News of the bombing reaches the world.

President Harry S.

Truman delivers a public address confirming that the United States has deployed an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

His words echo across radio waves.

A short time ago, an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima and destroyed its usefulness to the enemy.

That bomb has more power than 20,000 tons of TNT.

The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor.

They have been repaid many fold and the end is not yet.

With this bomb, we have now added a new and revolutionary increase in destruction to supplement the growing power of our armed forces.

Both science and industry worked together under the direction of the United States Army which achieved a unique success in an amazingly short time.

It is doubtful if such another combination could be got together in the world.

What has been done is the greatest achievement of organized science in history.

3 days after Hiroshima, a second bomb was dropped.

Nagasaki [music] was never the intended target, but fate intervened.

Clouds over Kakura spared one city and condemned another.

At 503 m, Fat Man exploded with even greater force than the first, tearing through the valley below.

The mountains shielded part of the city, but still tens of thousands perished.

Now there is no choice.

Japan is no longer fighting for victory.

It is fighting for its own survival.

The war is over.

The world has changed.

August 15th, 1945.

Tokyo, Japan.

Radio static gives way to a trembling voice.

Emperor Hirohito, heard by his people for the first time, announces Japan’s surrender.

He speaks of suffering, of devastation, of a new and terrible weapon that has brought the nation to its knees.

What was very interesting about American public reaction to the atomic bomb was that it was sold exceptionally well by Truman Truman managed to to convince them in such a way that if the atomic bomb hadn’t been launched a vastly prolonged war with vastly more people dying so there was actually almost unanimous public support for it.

I mean this faded over time because obviously people became aware of the enormous number of civilian deaths in Hiroshima and so on.

But in 1945 around the time of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, it was pretty much universally popular.

The reaction in the United States was was one largely of jubilation.

Obviously immense source of national pride.

It also meant an immense source of relief because of course what those two a bombs led to was the Japanese surrender just a few days later.

War was over.

And who was not going to be happy about that? October 6th, 1945, Hiroshima, Japan.

The first US occupation troops arrive in the vicinity of the city.

3 days prior, on October 3rd, 1945, a group of American scientists from the Manhattan Engineer District entered Hiroshima to conduct radiological surveys.

These scientists [music] meticulously measured radiation levels, assessed structural damage, and documented the bomb’s effects on the city’s infrastructure and population.

Their findings provided crucial data that would influence future understandings of nuclear fallout and its long-term consequences.

The devastation you see here was caused by the explosion of the bomb above this zero point.

Only the strongest buildings are left standing and they are gutted.

Looking north from zero point, this is what was left.

Looking east, the camera records a scene of complete devastation in the immediate area.

To the south, these are the ruins.

Looking west from zero point, the same complete leveling is evident, the same inability of structures to withstand atomic power.

Early reports suggest Hiroshima will remain uninhabitable for 75 years due to radiation contamination.

Scientists and military officials struggled to understand the bomb’s long-term effects, but the predictions prove incorrect.

Survivors begin returning within months, rebuilding among the ruins.

Despite lingering radiation exposure, the city, once thought lost, slowly rises from the ashes.

Signs of life return sooner than expected.

In the ruins, amid the ash and twisted steel, oleander flowers bloom.

The unexpected regrowth defies early fears that nothing would grow in Hiroshima for decades.

The oleander is later chosen as the city’s official flower, a quiet emblem of survival.

Amid the devastation, one structure remains eerily intact.

The Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, its reinforced concrete frame still standing, having withstood the blast [music] shockwave, while the city around it crumbled.

Later renamed the atomic bomb dome, it becomes a [music] haunting symbol of what was lost and what must never happen again.

Today, Hiroshima stands.

A city rebuilt [music] but never forgetting.

A monument to the past, a warning to the future.