Video: How many people were killed by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

The only instances of atomic weapons being used against a civilian population occurred in 1945 at the tail end of World War II. On August 6, 1945, “Little Boy” was detonated above the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later, “Fat Man” was detonated above Nagasaki. The aftermath of the bombings was the complete devastation of both cities in which countless numbers of people lost their lives.

In 2020, nuclear historian Alex Wellerstein published original research with the Bulletin, describing the challenges of tabulating the casualties of the bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Without accurate records of the population prior to the bombings, Allied forces and the Japanese government relied on proxy figures to come up with their estimates. Decades later, those estimates were revisited to account for information that was excluded at the time. The result is a recognition that we may never be able to fully account for the devastation of one of the world’s deadliest weapons.

Learn more in the Bulletin’s latest video and read more in Alex Wellerstein’s original piece for the Bulletin, Counting the dead at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel.