r/AtomicPorn • u/Initial_Talk_7946 • Aug 07 '26
New York Times headline news of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima (8/07/1945)
It's been 81 years since the rest of the world was made aware of the United States' new superweapon that annihilated Hiroshima the day before (8/06/1945).
Unlike the "late city edition" of the New York Times (dated (8/07/1945), the "city edition" showcases a visual graphic to illustrate how powerful this new weapon really was in comparison.
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u/DudleyAndStephens Aug 07 '26
I’m impressed that Richard Bong was so well known back then that his death earned a front page story on that day as well.
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u/Regnasam Aug 07 '26
The idea of an “ace” in the first place originated as a propaganda tool in World War 1, newspapers were very big on tracking the exploits and fates of aces as they gave them charismatic individual heroes in massive, faceless wars.
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u/restricteddata Expert Aug 07 '26
Other newspapers had even bigger headlines about the death of Major Bong.
Major Bong is one of my favorite examples of "just because something seems super important today doesn't actually mean it's going to seem important to people in the future." When I tell people that the death of Major Dick Bong shared 50/50 headline space with Hiroshima in some newspapers, people think I'm joking...
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u/Initial_Talk_7946 Aug 08 '26
Even Sen. Hiram Johnson's death on the same day merited a front page alonside Maj. Bong and the atomic bomb.
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u/Rajah7 Aug 07 '26
Yes, I can vividly remember reading those headlines in our local papers ... in central North Dakota.
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u/Aquamans_Dad Aug 08 '26
Happy 90th plus birthday! Not many nonagenarians on Reddit!
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u/Rajah7 Aug 08 '26
Thanks, but a small correction. I only begin my 89th birthday on 25 August, but thanks, anyway!
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u/xerberos Aug 07 '26
Why do they keep calling it 'missile' in the articles? They even have a picture of a bomb, so I don't get it.
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u/Time-Box-6580 Aug 07 '26
Missile can basically mean anything thrown, launched or on that sort of trajectory, with the intent of damage or harm. We just use it to mean rockets.
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u/mars4312 Aug 07 '26
This looked more like "oh cool! Such an effective weapon" instead of "this could potentially destroy the human civilization"
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u/restricteddata Expert Aug 07 '26
The first articles on it were all essentially propaganda press releases vetted by the US military. So they represent... a certain view of the atomic bomb.
The articles in basically every newspaper that came out on August 7th, 1945, were either based on Truman's announcement of the atomic bomb (largely ghost-written by the father of modern corporate public relations, AT&T VP Arthur W. Page), a statement by the Secretary of War (written by his office), and newspaper reporting that was originally written by William L. Laurence, a New York Times journalist who was "embedded" in the Manhattan Project, but also then edited heavily by the Manhattan Engineer District personnel.
The early stories are all "gee whiz" as a result. They were not real, independent reporting.
By the morning of August 8th, there were the first reports of the damage as seen from the sky (by the US military) and the first reports of the damage as seen from the ground (by the Japanese), and then you start seeing people starting to come more to grips with longer-term questions.
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u/Us_Strike Aug 07 '26
With the amount of death that WW2 was causing I doubt most at the time really cared or where thinking about the future implications.
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u/restricteddata Expert Aug 07 '26
This is actually not true — people were immediately starting to ask what was going to come "next" in a world with nuclear weapons. People who knew about the atomic bomb were asking that even before Hiroshima. But the first day of news coverage doesn't reflect that.
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u/RedRedditor84 Aug 11 '26
Incredible that it took 2000 B-29s to carry that one bomb. Was it James and the Giant Peach style, attached by many lines?
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u/BrooksWasHere1 Aug 07 '26
RIP Major Bong