Thursday Evenings at All Hallows (August 6, 2026)
Welcome to Thursday Evenings at All Hallows. On this day, August 6, in 1945, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later, on August 9, 1945, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki. The loss of life from both atomic bombings was horrific. Roughly 80,000 people were killed immediately or shortly afterwards at Hiroshima. By the end of 1945 the total number of dead had risen above 140,000 due to serious injuries and radiation sickness. A further 74,000 died at Nagasaki. Of the dead, an estimated 38,000 were children. Kokura had been the intended target of the second atomic bomb but heavy cloud cover over that Japanese city caused the bomber’s commander to switch to the alternative target, Nagasaki. The two atomic bombings ushered in a new age in warfare, the nuclear age in which a single bomb could destroy a city and a war fought with nuclear weapons could wipe out not only human civilization b...
