Nagasaki
On the day of the nuclear strike (August 9, 1945) the population in Nagasaki was estimated to be 263,000, which consisted of 240,000 Japanese residents, 10,000 Korean residents, 2,500 conscripted Korean workers, 9,000 Japanese soldiers, 600 conscripted Chinese workers, and 400 Allied POWs. That day, the Boeing B-29 Superfortress "Bockscar", commanded by Major Charles Sweeney, departed from Tinian's North Field just before dawn, this time carrying a plutonium bomb, code named "Fat Man". The primary target for the bomb was Kokura, with the secondary target being Nagasaki, if the primary target was too cloudy to make a visual sighting. When the plane reached Kokura at 9:44 a.m. (10:44 a.m. Tinian Time), the city was obscured by clouds and smoke, as the nearby city of Yawata had been firebombed on the previous day. Unable to make a bombing attack on visual due to the clouds and smoke and with limited fuel, the plane left the city at 10:30 a.m. for the secondary target. After 20 minutes, the plane arrived at 10:50 a.m. over Nagasaki, but the city was also concealed by clouds. Desperately short of fuel and after making a couple of bombing runs without obtaining any visual target, the crew was forced to use radar in order to drop the bomb. At the last minute, the opening of the clouds allowed them to make visual contact with a racetrack in Nagasaki, and they dropped the bomb on the city's Urakami Valley midway between the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works in the south, and the Mitsubishi-Urakami Ordnance Works in the north. 53 seconds after its release, the bomb exploded at 11:02 a.m. at an approximate altitude of 1,800 feet.
First Into Nagasaki
The "Boston Evening Globe" on September 15, 1945 published a page one article "By George Weller Nagasaki" with bold all caps headline "American Saw Atom Bomb Hit Nagasaki" using content described as "unpublished" [page 24 "First into Nagasaki"] and at the end of the article "Continued on Page 2" is the following: "(Copyright, 1945, by the Boston Globe and Chicago Daily News.)". Text from Dispatch #6 and Dispatch #1 is used (example: "Walk in Nagasaki's streets today and you walk in ruins." This is the first line of Dispatch #1). Weller's interview with the Japanese lieutenant (Dispatch #1) is used in the "Boston Evening Globe" article as is Weller's interview with Captain Farley (Dispatch #5), and Weller's interview with Dr. Nakashima (Dispatch #8). Quoted statements by ex-POWs Bridgman and King (Dispatch #5) are in this "Boston Evening Globe" article, which covers both Japanese and Allied observers' eyewitness accounts of the bomb as well as Dr. Nakashima's description of the bomb's medical symptoms. The Boston article reads: "However, about 70 percent of deaths have been from plain burns." (Dispatch #6). The "New York Post" on September 15, 1945 published an article by George Weller headlined "U.S. Prisoners Held at Nagasaki Describe Terrors of Atom Blast" using the same line of text as the Boston article (Dispatch #1), death statistics (Dispatch #3) and re-located position of POW camp (Dispatch #4). The New York article includes Weller's interviews with Captain Farley, Dr. Vink, Harold Bridgman, and Fred King (Dispatch #5). The article concludes with the bomb's "peculiar 'disease'" (Dispatch #8).