THE HIROSHIMA MEN

Really outstanding Jonathan Dimbleby At 8 15 a m on August 6th 1945 the Japanese port city of Hiroshima was struck by the world s first atomic bomb Built in the US by the top secret Manhattan Project and delivered by a B 29 Superfortress a revolutionary long range bomber the weapon destroyed large swaths of the city instantly killing tens of thousands The world would never be the same again The Hiroshima Men s unique narrative recounts the decade long journey towards this first atomic attack It charts the race for nuclear technology before and during the Second World War as the allies fought the axis powers in Europe North Africa China and across the vastness of the Pacific and is seen through the experiences of several key characters General Leslie Groves leader of the Manhattan Project alongside Robert Oppenheimer pioneering Army Air Force bomber pilot Colonel Paul Tibbets II the mayor of Hiroshima Senkichi Awaya who would die alongside over eighty thousand of his fellow citizens and Pulitzer Prize winning novelist John Hersey who travelled to post war Japan to expose the devastation the bomb had inflicted upon the city and in a historic New Yorker article described in unflinching detail the dangers posed by its deadly after effect radi