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Why was Nagasaki chosen as target of second atomic bombing?

It was the second nuclear bomb dropped by the US, three days after the attack on Hiroshima.

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The city of Nagasaki in southern Japan is marking the 75th anniversary of the US atomic bombing.

It was the second nuclear bomb dropped by the US, three days after the attack on Hiroshima.

A giant column of smoke rises after the second atomic bomb ever used in warfare explodes over the Japanese port town of Nagasaki
A giant column of smoke rises after the atomic bomb attack over Nagasaki (AP)

Dwindling survivors, whose average age exceeds 83, increasingly worry about passing their lessons on to younger generations.

Here are some questions and answers about that fateful event:

– Why was Nagasaki chosen as the target?

Shacks made from scraps of debris from buildings that were levelled in the aftermath of the atomic bomb that was dropped over Nagasaki
Nagasaki was not the initial target (AP)

– What happened in the attack?

A battered religious figure on a hill above a burn-razed valley in Nagasaki, Japan
A battered religious figure on a hill above a burn-razed valley (US Marines via AP)

– How many died?

The Urakami Catholic Cathedral in Nagasaki, Japan, in the aftermath of the detonation of the atom bomb
The Urakami Catholic Cathedral in the aftermath of the bomb (Stanley Troutman/AP)

– What about radiation?

Survivors of the atomic bomb attack of Nagasaki, Japan, walk through the destruction as fire rages in the background
Survivors walk through the destruction as fire rages in the background (AP)

– Who is the boy in a photo distributed by the pope?

All that is left of the Mitsubishi weapons factory is a sagging, skeletal hulk more than a month after the atomic attack of August 9 1945
The remnants of the Mitsubishi weapons factory more than a month after the attack (AP)
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