After securing airfields in Saipan and Guam in the summer of 1944, the United States Army Air Forces undertook an intense bombing campaign, using incendiary bombs, burning Japanese cities in an effort to pulverize Japan's industry and shatter its morale. While these campaigns led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians they did not succeed in persuading the Japanese military to surrender. In mid August 1945, the United States dropped two nuclear weapons on Japan. These atomic bombings were the first, and so far only, use against another nation. These two bombs killed approximately 100,000 to 200,000 people in a matter of minutes, and many more people died as a result of nuclear radiation in the following weeks, months, and years. The bombs killed as many as 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki by the end of 1945.

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