80 years after atomic bombing, Nagasaki and Tri

Half a world apart, the Tri-Cities in Washington and Nagasaki in Japan are linked forever by the birth of the Atomic Age.

In the community that became the Tri-Cities, workers raced during World War II to create the plutonium for the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, just three days after an atomic bomb fueled with uranium was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.

At 11:02 a.m. Aug. 9, 1945, from 1,650 feet above Nagasaki, “Fat Man,” an atomic bomb fueled with Hanford site plutonium, was dropped.

In one-fifth of one second, the fireball was a quarter-mile wide. Its mushroom cloud climbed to 30,000 feet in eight minutes. Heat vaporized humans into ashes. Rivers ran red with blood. The rubble that was once a city burned.

The mood in the United States was intense relief.

There would be no bloody ba