At 2:45 A.M. on August 6, 1945, an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, took off from the island of Tinian in the Mariana Islands carrying an atomic bomb. Shortly after 8:15 A.M. from an altitude of about 31,600 feet, the bomb was released over Hiroshima, Japan. It exploded with terrible fury over the center of the city, immediately killing more than eighty thousand people and maiming thousands more. The searing heat that resulted from the explosion set …showed first 75 words of 949 total…

…showed last 75 words of 949 total…government chose not to reply to the declaration, while it waited for a reply to the peace overtures it had made through the Soviet government. Meanwhile, for home consumption the Japanese government called the Potsdam declaration "unworthy of public notice." In the Mariana Islands, two bombs had been readied for use, and the B-29 crews were standing by. Truman ordered the U.S. Air Corps to drop them. The age of atomic warfare had begun.