Aerial Reconnaissance Map of Hiroshima

An aerial reconnaissance map photographing Hiroshima. It was prepared by U.S. Air Intelligence for post-attack analysis on the destructiveness of atomic weapons following the atomic bombing of August 6, 1945. The total area devastated by the atomic strike on Hiroshima is shown in the darkened area within the circled area. The numbered items are military and industrial installations with the percentages of total destruction. 

On the morning of August 8, 1945, the first damage reports came back from Japan. The photograph of the aerial reconnaissance map of Hiroshima was shown to President Harry S. Truman by Secretary of War Henry Stimson that morning. The New York Herald Tribune reported that 60% of Hiroshima had been destroyed by the bomb. 

Hiroshima was chosen to be bombed because it remained largely untouched by the US Air Force's conventional bombing raids on Japan, and was therefore more suited to measure the effects of the atomic bomb more accurately. It was also an important military base and a major port. The Allies feared that any conventional attempt to invade the Japanese home islands would result in enormous casualties. Hence, the bomb was seen as a swifter way of concluding the war against Japan.

The photograph is signed by Jacob Beser, a lieutenant in the United States Army Air Forces who served during World War II. Beser was the radar specialist aboard the Enola Gay on August 6, 1945, when it dropped the Little Boy atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later, Beser would become a crewmember aboard Bockscar when the Fat Man bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. He was the only person to have served as a strike crew member of both of the 1945 atomic bomb missions.