September 2nd marked 75 years since the Japanese Emperor, Hirohito, signed the surrender documents that officially ending WWII.

Japan’s position in the war was undeniably loose. The US had pushed them back across the Pacific Ocean and the British armies in India were liberating its colonies in south-east Asia. But the worst was yet to come.

On the night of August the 5th 1945, Colonel Paul W. Tibbets’s bomber, The Enola Gay, set off from Tinian. At about 8:00am it had reached Hiroshima, a city in south-west Japan—there was no Japanese resistance. An atomic bomb named “Little Boy” was released from the aircraft. It is estimated that between 90,000 and 146,000 people were killed by the blast, some even fading into dust as the explosion swept through the city.

After the tragedy, Soviet troops stormed into Manchuria (north-east China), massively outnumbering the Japanese garrisons stationed there.

“The war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage” Emperor Hirohito - 1945