Summary

Chapter 21 takes place in Hiroshima as the Enola Gay approaches. By this point the citizens of Japan have become complacent, the book asserts, thinking that it was too late in the conflict for their city to be targeted. The arrival of a single B-29 sets off air raid sirens, but does not trigger any unusual reactions. The scene returns to Yosaku Mikami as his shift ends, Akira Onagi reading on his parents’ floor in protest, and Akiko Takakura arriving at her workplace just in time to notice the clock striking 8:15 am.

At that moment, from an altitude of 30,700 feet, the Enola Gay releases Little Boy, after which Tibbets hurries to move his plane away from the coming shockwaves. Forty-three seconds after release the bomb explodes, slamming the plane but not knocking it from the sky, and the radiation causing the fillings in Tibbets...