On August 6, 1945, the U.S. bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb named "Little Boy" on Hiroshima, a Japanese city with a population of about 300,000. The force of the atomic blast was greater than 20,000 tons of TNT. According to U.S. statistics, 60,000-70,000 people were killed by the bomb. Other statistics show that 10,000 others were never found, and more than 70,000 were injured. Nearly two-thirds of the city was destroyed.

Three days later, on August 9, the day after the U.S.S.R. declared war on Japan, another atomic bomb called "Fat Man" was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, which had...