The TIME Magazine Vault

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Voices of Hiroshima

60 years after the atomic bomb hit Hiroshima, survivors—and the men who dropped the bomb—shared their perspectives with TIME.

Voices of Hiroshima

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"Five days before, the Japanese radio still talked of 100 years' resistance, and there seemed little question of Japan's ability to hold out for months at least," TIME reported the week after the atomic bomb was first used, on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, 1945. "Then in shattering succession came atomic bombing and the Russian declaration of war. The concussion destroyed more than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Fear and despair gripped the Japanese nation. Over Hiroshima's 'most awesome' destruction, Radio Tokyo moaned: 'Diabolic weapon. . . . The corpses are too numerous to be counted. . . . Practically all living things, human and animals, were literally seared to death. . . .'"

After the Bomb

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TIME Explains the Atomic Bomb

When the U.S. dropped atomic weapons on Japan in August of 1945, TIME grappled with not just explaining the wartime, political and moral implications of the decision—but also the scientific side of the new atomic age. "When a piece of paper is lighted with a match, the paper particles first heated set others on fire; these in turn ignite others, and so on," the magazine noted. "The same sort of chain reaction must be started for a successful large-scale atomic explosion."

TIME Explains the Atomic Bomb

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President Obama Departs White House For Chicago

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Happy Birthday, President Obama

The President of the U.S. celebrates his birthday on August 4. During his 2008 run for the White House, TIME took a look back at the world into which he was born in 1961: "At the time, 19% of white women in Hawaii married Chinese men, and that was considered radical by the rest of the nation. Black people made up less than 1% of the state's population. And while interracial marriage was legal there, it was banned in half the other states," TIME noted. "When [Obama's mother] told her parents about the African student at school, they invited him over for dinner. Her father didn't notice when his daughter reached out to hold the man's hand, according to Obama's book. Her mother thought it best not to cause a scene."

Happy Birthday, President Obama

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The Story Behind ‘In God We Trust’

After the phrase 'In God We Trust' officially became the motto of the United States on July 30, 1956—about a year after it started appearing on all currency—TIME explained its genesis:

"'What if our republic were now shattered?' wrote the Rev. M. R. Watkinson to Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Portland Chase on Nov. 13, 1861. 'Would not antiquaries of succeeding centuries reason from our past that we were heathen nation?' Secretary Chase's response was the motto, 'In God We Trust,' which first appeared on the bronze two-cent pieces of 1864."