Hiroshima, city, capital of Hiroshimaken (prefecture), southwestern Honshu, Japan. It lies at the head of Hiroshima Bay, an embayment of the Inland Sea. On August 6, 1945, Hiroshima became the first city in the world to be struck by an atomic bomb.
Hiroshima, whose name means “broad island,” is situated on the delta of the Ōta River, whose six channels divide it into several islets. It was founded as a castle town by the feudal lord Mōri Terumoto in the 16th century. From 1868 onward it was a military centre, which made it a potential target for Allied bombing during World War II. However, the city had not been attacked before the atomic bomb was dropped by a B-29 bomber of the U.S. Army Air Forces at about 8:15 on the morning of August 6. Most of the city was destroyed, and estimates of the number of people killed outright or shortly after the blast have ranged upward from 70,000. Deaths and illnesses from radiation injury continued to mount through the succeeding decades. Continue reading from Encyclopedia Britannica
Hiroshima was chosen as the primary target since it had remained largely untouched by bombing raids, and the bomb's effects could be clearly measured. While President Truman had hoped for a purely military target, some advisers believed that bombing an urban area might break the fighting will of the Japanese people. Hiroshima was a major port and a military headquarters, and therefore a strategic target. Also, visual bombing, rather than radar, would be used so that photographs of the damage could be taken. Since Hiroshima had not been seriously harmed by bombing raids, these photographs could present a fairly clear picture of the bomb's damage. Continue reading from Atomic Archive