Hiroshima Nagasaki And Kokura The Luckiest City On Earth Poem by Shaun Cronick

Hiroshima.
Was the first.
Nagasaki.
Was the second.
Many people have never heard of Kokura.
For this most fortunate city was,
The intended second target city to be
Cruelly obliterated after Hiroshima.
Nagasaki was only the secondary target.
If.
And only if.
Kokura was unsuitable for a bombing attack run,
If it's bomb aim point was obscured and impaired.
Which it was by smoke and clouds.
And at 10.30 a.m August 9th 1945,
And after three bombing runs to no avail.
With anti-aircraft fire getting closer.
And Japanese fighters could be seen climbing to intercept.
And with limited fuel.
The Boeing B29 Superfortress,
Named Bockscar by it's crew,
And commanded by Major Charles Sweeney.
Left the airspace of the city of Kokura,
And departed.
To it's secondary target of that morning.
Twenty minutes later at 10.50 a.m.
This aircraft reached it's secondary target.
And dropped the world's second atomic bomb.
A plutonium bomb code named Fat Man.
On the city and people of Nagasaki.
Between 90,000 and 146,000 were killed in Hiroshima.
Between 39,000 and 80,000 were killed in Nagasaki.
Roughly half the deaths in each city occurred on the first day.
Kokura is the luckiest city on earth.