After Germany's surrender in May 1945, the Allies focused on Japan. The US Navy's strategy for capturing islands in the Pacific has paid off. In the hands of the Americans were the islands from which the B-29 bombers could reach Japan. Massive bombing began with conventional and incendiary ammunition and, finally, two recently invented atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After 80 days of fighting, in June, allied forces captured the island of Okinawa, but this came at a very high cost. On both sides, casualties totaled 150,000, not counting tens of thousands of civilians killed. The Allied Command foresaw colossal losses in a full-scale invasion of Japan. Soon after the nuclear strike on Japan, the USSR declared war on it and the Soviet Army, having invaded Manchuria, quickly defeated the Kwantung Army located there. Six days after the second nuclear strike, on August 15, 1945, Japan announced its surrender. The Second World War is over.
1. On Monday, August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb dropped from an American B-29 Enola Gay plane exploded over Hiroshima. The blast killed 80,000 and another 60,000 survivors died over the next five years from wounds, burns and radiation sickness. (AP Photo / U. S. Army via Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum)
2. North American B-25 Mitchell bombing a Japanese destroyer, April 1945. (USAF)
3. American soldiers from the 25th division on the island of Luzon, Philippines, pass by the body of a Japanese, thrown by an explosion on a sharp stump. (AP Photo / U. S. Signal Corps)
4. This aerial view gives an idea of how much power was needed to break the Japanese defenses on Iwo Jima, March 17, 1945. Landing ships await the opportunity to approach the shore, small boats scurry from shore to transports and back, delivering reinforcements to the shore and taking away the wounded. On the horizon, transports and escorts from destroyers and cruisers. On the coast, next to the first airfield on the left, the offensive of the Marine Corps tanks is visible. (AP Photo)
5. A US Marine next to the bodies of the Japanese, thrown by an explosion from a concrete fortification on Iwo Jima, March 3, 1945. (AP Photo / Joe Rosenthal).
6. The Japanese surrender, Iwo Jima, April 5, 1945. Twenty Japanese hid in a cave for several days before surrendering. (AP Photo / U. S. Army Signal Corps)
7. An anti-aircraft gun is firing at an already knocked out Japanese aircraft going into a collision with the American escort aircraft carrier Sangemon during the battle near the Ryukyu Islands, May 4, 1945. This plane crashed into the sea, but another crashed to the deck, causing severe damage. (AP Photo / U. S. Navy)
8. Flame on the deck of the American aircraft carrier "Bunker Hill", into which two kamikaze pilots crashed within 30 seconds, May 11, 1945 off the island of Kyushu. 346 people died, 264 were injured. (U. S. Navy)
9. Tanks of the 6th US Marine Division on the outskirts of Naha, the capital of Okinawa, May 27, 1945. (AP Photo / U. S. Marine Corps)
10. A US Marine looks through a hole in the wall at the aftermath of the bombing of Naha, Okinawa, June 13, 1945. The city, where 433,000 people lived before the invasion, was reduced to ruins. (AP Photo / U. S. Marine Corps, Corp. Arthur F. Hager Jr.)
11. A flight of Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers from the 73rd Air Force wing of the United States Air Force over Mount Fuji, 1945. (USAF)
12. Fires after the incendiary bombing of the city of Tarumiza, Kyushu, Japan. (USAF)
13. Toyama at night, Japan, August 1, 1945 after 173 bombers dropped incendiary bombs on the city. As a result of this bombing, the city was destroyed by 95.6%. (USAF)
14. View destroyed by the bombing of Tokyo areas, 1945. Next to the burnt down and destroyed neighborhoods - a strip of surviving residential buildings. (USAF)
15. In July 1945, the development of the atomic bomb entered its final stage. Head of the Los Alamos Center, Robert Oppenheimer, oversees the assembly of the "device" at the New Mexico test site. (U. S. Department of Defense)
16. Fireball and blast wave, 0.25 sec. after the explosion of the atomic bomb in New Mexico, July 16, 1945. (U. S. Department of Defense)
17. Incendiary bombs from American B-29s fall on Kobe, July 4, 1945, Japan. (USAF)
18. The charred corpses of civilians in Tokyo, March 10, 1945 after the bombing of the city by the Americans. 300 B-29 aircraft dropped 1,700 tons of incendiary bombs on Japan's largest city, killing 100,000 people. This air raid was the most brutal in the entire Second World War. (Koyo Ishikawa)
19. Destruction in residential areas of Tokyo caused by American bombing. Photo taken on September 10, 1945. Only the strongest buildings survived. (AP Photo)
20. B-29 Superfortress over Kobe, Japan, July 17, 1945. (AP Photo)
21. After the Potsdam conference on July 26, at which the Allies discussed the terms of Japan's surrender and emphasized the need for "complete defeat" in case of refusal to surrender, secret preparations were made for the use of the world's first atomic bomb. This photo shows the "Kid" bomb on the platform, ready to be loaded into the bomb bay of the "Enola Gay" aircraft, August 1945. (NARA)
22. An American B-29 Superfortress bomber named Enola Gay took off from Tinian Island in the early morning of August 6 with the Kid on board. At 8:15 am, the bomb was dropped from a height of 9400 meters, and after 57 seconds of free fall, it exploded at an altitude of 600 meters above Hiroshima. At the moment of detonation, a small charge initiated a reaction in 7 out of 64 kg of uranium. Of these 7 kg, only 600 milligrams turned into energy, and this energy was enough to incinerate everything within a radius of several kilometers, raze the city to the ground with a powerful blast wave and pierce all living things with deadly radiation. In the photo: a column of smoke and dust over Hiroshima reached an altitude of 7000 meters. The size of the dust cloud on the ground reached 3 km. (NARA)
23. Smoke over the ruins of Hiroshima, August 7, 1945. The explosion killed 80,000 people, and about 60,000 more survivors died over the next five years from wounds, burns and radiation. (AP Photo)
24. "Eternal shadows" on the bridge over the Ota River, formed from the flash at the moment of the explosion of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima. Lighter areas on the asphalt remained where the cover was protected from the flash of the bridge railing. (NARA)
25. Military medics assist the survivors of the nuclear explosion in Hiroshima, August 6, 1945. (AP Photo)
26. Shadow of a valve on a gas pipe, 2 km from the epicenter of the explosion, Hiroshima, August 6, 1945. (AFP / Getty Images)
27. Victim of a nuclear explosion in quarantine, Hiroshima, August 7, 1945, the day after the bombing. (AP Photo / The Association of the Photographers of the Atomic Bomb Destruction of Hiroshima, Yotsugi Kawahara)
28. A Japanese soldier walks on scorched earth in Hiroshima, September 1945. (NARA)
29. A few days before the bombing of Hiroshima, the second atomic bomb, Fat Man, prepares to be loaded onto a transport cart, August 1945. When, after the attack on Hiroshima, the Japanese refused to surrender, US President Harry Truman made a statement containing the following lines: "If they do not accept our terms of surrender, they can expect devastating air strikes, the likes of which have never been seen before." (NARA)
30. The Fat Man atomic bomb was dropped from a B-29 Bokskar aircraft and detonated at 11:02 am at an altitude of 500 m above Nagasaki. The explosion killed 39,000 people and injured 25,000. (USAF)
31. Photo taken shortly after the atomic bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. This image, obtained by the U. S. Army from the Domei News Agency, showing workers clearing a road at the site of the blast, was the first photograph taken since the bombing of Nagasaki. (AP Photo)
32. The only thing that retained at least some form on this hill after a nuclear explosion was the ruins of a Catholic cathedral, Nagasaki, Japan, 1945. (NARA)
33. Dr. Nagai, a medical radiologist from the Nagasaki hospital after the atomic explosion. A few days after this photo was taken, Nagai died. (USAF)
34. People in the ashes of Nagasaki. The explosion of the atomic bomb at the epicenter had a temperature of about 3900 degrees Celsius. (USAF)
35. On August 9, 1945, the Soviet army entered Manchuria and with the forces of three fronts with a total number of about a million people struck the Kwantung Army of Japan. Soon the Soviet army was victorious, which hastened the surrender of Japan. In the photo: a column of tanks on a street in the Chinese city of Dalian. (Waralbum.ru)
36. Soviet soldiers on the banks of the Songhua River in the city of Harbin. Soviet troops liberated the city from the Japanese on August 20, 1945. At the time of Japan's surrender, there were about 700,000 Soviet soldiers in Manchuria. (Yevgeny Khaldei / waralbum.ru)
37. Japanese soldiers surrender their weapons, and a Soviet officer makes notes in a notebook, 1945. (Yevgeny Khaldei / LOC)
38. Japanese prisoner of war on the island of Guam after the announcement by Emperor Hirohito of Japan's unconditional surrender on August 15, 1945. (AP Photo / U. S. Navy)
39. Sailors in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, listen to the radio announcement of the surrender of Japan, August 15, 1945. (AP Photo)
40. A crowd in Times Square in New York meets the news of Japan's surrender, August 14, 1945. (AP Photo / Dan Grossi)
41. A sailor and a nurse kiss in Times Square in New York. The city celebrates the end of World War II on August 14, 1945. (AP Photo / U. S. Navy / Victor Jorgensen)
42. The signing of the documents of surrender aboard the battleship Missouri of the US Navy in Tokyo Bay, September 2, 1945. General Yoshihiro Umetsu on behalf of the Japanese Armed Forces and Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu on behalf of the government signed the act of surrender. Both were later charged with war crimes. Umetsu died in custody, and Shigemitsu was pardoned in 1950 and worked for the Japanese government until his death in 1957. (AP Photo)
43. Dozens of F-4U Corsair and F-6F Hullcut aircraft over the battleship Missouri during the signing of Japan's surrender, September 2, 1945. (AP Photo)
44. US military in Paris celebrate Japan's unconditional surrender. … (NARA)
45. Allied journalist on a pile of radioactive ruins in Hiroshima, Japan, a month after the explosion of the world's first atomic bomb. In front of him are the remains of the building of the exhibition center, right above the dome of which a bomb exploded. (AP Photo / Stanley Troutman)
