Second World War
Kokura was the primary target of the nuclear weapon "Fat Man" on August 9, 1945, but on the morning of the raid, the city was obscured by clouds and smoke from an earlier fire-bombing of the neighboring city of Yahata. Since the mission commander Major Charles Sweeney had orders to drop the bomb visually and not by radar, he diverted to the secondary target, Nagasaki. People use the phrase "Kokura luck" meaning the lucky avoidance of some great misfortune, coined after Kokura was twice spared an A Bomb attack.
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