Andrew Langley - Hiroshima and Nagasaki

About 8,000 students from Hiroshima junior and senior high schools were helping tear down damaged buildings at five places in the citythe Prefectural Office, City Hall, Dobashi, Hatchobori, and Tsurumi Bridgeon August 6, 1945. All of the areas were near the Aioi Bridge, which was where the bomb struck.

More than 5,900 of the students were killed. In the Prefectural Office area, 96 percent of 1,891 students were killed. Their bodies were so badly burned that they couldnt be identified. In the Dobashi area, where Keiko Kimura was helping, 1,264 of 1,530 students died. Twelve-year-old Hiroka Nishimoto, a student at Hiroshima Municipal Junior High School, was one of them. His mother searched for days for his body, but found only five buttons from his shirt. Other families found shoes and school bags belonging to their children. Clothing was burned from the bodies of most of the children who werent killed immediately.

Japanese Emperor Hirohito

Keiko Kimura was among about 80,000 of Hiroshimas 255,000 inhabitants who were killed or fatally wounded in the first few seconds after an American B-29 bomber dropped a 9,700-pound (4,400-kilogram) atomic bomb on the city. Three days later another U.S. B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on the port city of Nagasaki, about 180 miles (290 kilometers) from Hiroshima. That blast immediately killed or fatally wounded about 45,000 of the citys 240,000 people.

Japanese leaders knew there was no way to keep fighting after the death and devastation caused by the atomic bombs. Japanese Emperor Hirohito announced on August 15 that the country was surrendering to the Allied forces. World War II was over. But for the Japanese people, the horror was just beginning.

World War II wasnt the first global conflict. The first began in 1914 when a Serbian, Gavrilo Princip, shot and killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary and his wife. The assassination was the trigger for World War I, which was fought between the Allied forces, including the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan, and the Central Powers, including Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and Bulgaria. At least 8 million soldiers and civilians died during the war. New weapons such as machine guns, explosive shells, poison gas, and airborne bombs caused many of the deaths.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, were assassinated while riding in a car on June 28, 1914.

When World War I ended with an Allied victory in November 1918, people throughout the world hoped there would never be another terrible war. But World War I had done nothing to solve international tensions, especially in Europe. Germany received most of the blame for the war and the destruction it brought. Under the Treaty of Versailles, which ended the war, Germany was stripped of its army and much of its territory. It was also ordered to pay reparations to other countries for the damage they had suffered during the war. Germanys economy became increasingly unstable, and during a period of high inflation its currency, the mark, became nearly worthless.

Germans were trying to deal with poverty as well as their feelings of anger and humiliation. In 1933 they elected a new government led by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) Party. Hitler blamed the Treaty of Versailles for ruining Germanys economy and national pride. He also believed that Jewish people in Germany had betrayed their country by pushing government leaders to sign the treaty. Hitler wasnt alone in his feelings. Many people in Germany and other areas of Europe were anti-Semitic, meaning that they hated and resented Jewish people.

Backed by a brutal army and a secret police force, Hitler quickly took complete control of the country. He imprisoned his enemies, crushed his opponents, and promised to make Germany a major world power again by reviving the economy, building a new military, and taking land from other countries. He began by annexing Austria and then seizing most of Czechoslovakia. He then set his sights on Poland.