Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Day the world change
SEVENTY-FIVE years ago today, at 8.15am on August 6 1945, there was a flash above the Japanese city of Hiroshima so intense it blinded those who looked directly at it.
A white-hot blastwave pulsed across the city, obliterating any building within a five-mile radius. Some 80,000 died immediately and the mushroom cloud rained deadly radioactivity on those left.
Another 60,000 died of horrific injuries within days. The bomb was called Little Boy – the world’s first atomic weapon.
Three days later another atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki.
Setsuko Nakamura, 13, was arriving for her first day as a codebreaker with the army in Hiroshima on August 6th. Survivors of the world’s only atomic attacks are called “hibakushas” – “person affected by a bomb” – and there are just 50,000 left.
Setsuko, now 88 and living in Canada, joined The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, accepting the Nobel Peace Prize for the group in 2017.
Here, she recounts what happened the day the world changed for ever...
It was Monday morning. We were on the second floor of the wooden building. The major was giving us a pep talk. At that moment I saw the bluest white flash outside and all around the building.
“My body flew in the air. I was floating. I lost consciousness. I came to in total darkness. I couldn’t move. I was pinned under collapsed timbers and knew I was facing death. I was calm. I heard girls whispering. ‘Mother, help me, I am here’, ‘God help me’. Then a strong male voice told me, ‘Don’t give up. Keep moving, I am trying to free you, there is light ahead of you, crawl towards it.’
“I did and I escaped along with two other girls. I looked back and the building was on fire. About 30 girls with me in the room were burned alive. Outside, it was as dark as twilight.
“As my eyes adjusted, I saw a procession of human beings, they looked like ghosts. They were almost naked, their clothes in tatters, they were burned and blackened, swollen and bleeding, skin and flesh was coming off their bones. They were slowly shuffling from the centre of the city. Some people were carrying their eyeballs in the palms of their hands. Some fell and their stomachs burst open. Soldiers told us to join them and escape to a nearby hill. We walked over the bodies.
“At the foot of the hill was a training field. It was packed with dead and dying. No one was screaming or crying. Just moans and whispers. Tens of thousands were begging for water. There was not a single doctor or nurse. The people were left there. “With the other two girls, I worked all day trying to help. When darkness fell, we climbed the hill and I watched all night as huge balls of fire incinerated my hometown. My mind was empty. I sat there without any emotion watching the horror. Some envied the dead. To live in the aftermath was as hard or harder than dying. We were starving. There was no medical attention. The government was in chaos.
“The next day people started to come from neighbouring cities, they tried to rescue survivors, started cremating the corpses. Those who came to assist started to get sick too. At that time, we had no idea what radiation wou rescuers became victims. I s my hair, there was internal b
“Before the bomb, about students from all the schools brought to the city to work.
“They died instantly, som There were 351 from m school there. All those peopl were wiped from the Earth.
“My own sister-in-law wa a teacher supervising thos students. We tried to find he body. We never did. Th temperature was 4000C People melted. I lost nine two uncles, two aunts, tw cousins, my sister-in-law, m sister and her four-year-old child. They survived the blas but were badly burned.
“My mother was rescu crushed building. My fathe town fishing. From the boa mushroom cloud. He got t house stood. It had been fl parents found me and we w after my sister and her chi