An Allied correspondent stands amid rubble in Hiroshima on Sept. 8, 1945. FILE/ASSOCIATED PRESS

They were the first two and only atomic bombs detonated during wartime.

Fifty-six years ago today, at 11:02 a.m. Japanese time, the United States dropped an atomic bomb called ''Fat Man'' on Nagasaki - instantly killing an estimated 40,000 people.

Three days earlier, ''Little Boy'' blasted Hiroshima, killing 70,000 to 100,000 people. Japan agreed to surrender Aug. 14, 1945 - bringing an end to World War II.

The death toll of the bombings continued to grow for decades, but two Augustans fighting in the Pacific Theater and awaiting orders for ground war say the drastic action saved countless American and Japanese lives.

Above, World War II veteran Edward Giusto holds a book with the front page of the Baltimore News-Post from Dec. 8, 1941, the day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. JONATHAN ERNST/STAFF

American soldiers were on the island of Ie Shima, near Okinawa, waiting for orders to parachute into Tokyo.

That Aug. 6, Augustan Edward Giusto was floating in the Pacific, enjoying the peace of the clear ocean waters.

Then he heard the news of Hiroshima.

''Everyone was stunned, even the American troops,'' Mr. Giusto said. ''We were stunned just as much as the Japanese.''

The bombings negated the need for Mr. Giusto's mission, and the airmen at Ie Shima were sent home.

Dallas Bahm poses with his gallery of medals from World War II, Korea and Vietnam. JONATHAN ERNST/STAFF

''Oh, thank Lord,'' he says was his response to the bombings.

Mr. Giusto, 86, said he had heard the fighting in Japan would have been particularly brutal, with even the women and children armed. He couldn't have been happier with Japan's surrender.

Even today, the bomb's power amazes and frightens him.

''Wiping out a complete civilization, a complete city with one bomb ...'' he said. ''That was unheard of, horrifying.''

Dallas Bahm, 76, knew he, along with three of his brothers, was going to war. He had no idea what he would really see.

Edward Giusto, an control tower operator, taking a break during his duty in the Pacific Theater. COURTESY EDWARD GIUSTO

Drafted by the Army in September 1944, Mr. Bahm was sent to the Pacific and eventually Japan, where his division was one of the first to enter Hiroshima after the bombing.

Mr. Bahm was stationed in Zamboanga City on Mindanao Island in the Philippines, preparing for war in Japan, when he heard about Hiroshima. It was Aug. 7 - his 20th birthday.

The dropping of the bomb changed his division's mission. They now would be an Army of occupation. Their mission was to destroy weapons and ammunition.

After landing on Japan's Honshu Island at Kure naval base Sept. 11, Mr. Bahm realized he would not have survived if his division had been sent into combat there.

The Japanese had installed guns with 16-inch-diameter barrels on tracks built behind 3-foot-thick concrete doors.

''If the bombs had not gone off, that's what we would have been facing,'' he said. ''I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I wouldn't be here today.''

Dallas Bahm (right) and his machine gun assistant posed for this photograph during WWII at Zamboanga in the Phillippines. COURTESY DALLAS BAHM

Nothing could have prepared him for the devastation at Hiroshima. Tears filled his eyes as he described the scene.

''The city was in complete shambles,'' he said. ''Smoke was still rising from some of the burning buildings.... The tops of the trees were burned completely out. Nothing was left but the trunk of the tree.''

The residents were hungry, and he and other GIs gave their rations to women and children.

The city was just smoke, soot and fire. Weeks after the bombing, ''it was still smoldering.''

He remained in Hiroshima until Aug. 31, 1946, before moving on to other Japanese cities.

He still struggles 56 years later to relate what he saw.

''Words cannot describe ...''

Reach Rebecca Whitehead at (706) 823-3340.