Through the eyes of the dead... the horror of Hiroshima
As the world stops to mark the 70th anniversary, the haunting images found by a Scots pilot
AS a young pilot stationed not far from Hiroshima in 1946, Clifford Ferns was surrounded by the horrific aftermath of the world’s first nuclear bomb. Following the city’s catastrophic bombing by the United States, Mr Ferns was thrust into a daily routine which included witnessing the burning of bodies outside his bedroom window. But what he did not know is that he would end up taking a little piece of the disaster home with him to Balgonie, Fife.
A budding photographer, Mr Ferns purchased a second hand camera from a ‘burnt out little shop,’ in Hiroshima, while he was visiting the city.
The shop owner told him it had been found lying next to the body of a cameraman who had died shortly after the blast on August 6, 1945.
It was not until weeks later that Mr Ferns found a collection of haunting images which, like the camera, had survived when its owner and 160,000 other people had not.
Yesterday, on the 70th anniversary of the bombing, people across Japan fell silent at 8.15am to mark the exact moment the bomb dropped.
A memorial service was held in the city’s Peace Park led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who called for President Barack Obama to visit Hiroshima and see the scars which have not yet healed.
He said: ‘President Obama and other policymakers, please come to the Abombed cities, hear the hibakusha (survivors) with your own ears, and encounter the reality of atomic bombings. Surely, you will be impelled to start discussing a legal framework, including a nuclear weapons convention.
‘Today Hiroshima has been revived and has become a city of culture and prosperity. Seventy years on I want to re- emphasise the necessity of world peace.’
The United States ambassador to Japan, Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of John F Kennedy, attended the service where dozens of white doves were released as a symbol of peace.
Representatives from Britain, France and Russia were also present at the memorial service. A further 5,359 names were added to the cenotaph in Peace Park, marking the passing of yet more victims of the attack who died within the last 12 months.
Thousands of paper lanterns were later placed in the city’s Motoyasu River – symbolising the journey to the afterlife of those who died.
Just three days after the Hiroshima bombing, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb, Fat Man, on Nagasaki, killing a further 70,000 people.
And yesterday, Scotland al s o remembered the devastating attacks on Japan, as an exhibition of the pictures found on Mr Ferns’ camera was launched at the Secret Bunker in Troywood, Fife.
The harrowing photographs were taken just minutes after the nuclear bomb ‘Little Boy’ was dropped, and show the burned bodies of victims, survivors clinging to each other and the mass destruction as radioactive dust settles across the city.
One of the haunting images shows a mother trying to feed her infant child,
while another shows an injured baby being held by a bandaged man, Now Mr Ferns’ son, John, has decided to share the images with the public to mark the 70th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing.
He has released the 13 photographs which were kept, but believes his father destroyed as many as five others which were ‘too horrific’ for anyone else to see.
MR FERNS was an officer in the RAF during the war and was sent to join occupying forces in the Japanese city of Iwakini, 15 miles from Hiroshima, in 1946. Even a year after the bomb was dropped, mass destruction lay where homes, offices and shops had once stood.
The bodies of the dead littered the streets as others were still succumbing to radiation poisoning.
Just yards from the building where Mr Ferns was staying in Hiroshima, bodies of the dead were being burned. But his son said that he rarely ever spoke in detail of his time in Japan, until the months leading to his death in 2000.
John Ferns, said: ‘My father would very seldom speak about the war, or his time in Japan in detail, but he was very meticulous and wrote everything down.
‘The pictures were taken by a cameraman immediately after the bomb, and the camera was taken from beside his body. My father later bought the camera and was able to develop the pictures.
‘I believe there were more but my father believed they were too horrific, so we never got to see these.
‘We do have 13 photographs which show the complete and utter devastation, the bodies, the nuclear cloud dust and one remaining temple that stands on its own.’
Mr Ferns kept the photographs in an album with detailed descriptions of what was in each. This was then inherited by his son, who added: ‘I don’t think I understood as a child about the photographs. I gathered there was something horrible in the albums, but my father was never one to talk about the war.’
One of the handwritten picture captions reads: ‘More casualties: At left is a Japanese “red cross” worker. Very little could be done for the injured. A large percentage of Drs perished – as did most medical supplies, bandages, etc.’
While another states: ‘During my 3-week stay not a night passed but more victims of the A-bomb died and cremated. Mostly 6 to 8 a night, although early on it was a mass cremation, by the hundreds, daily.’
Little Boy was dropped from the Enola Gay B-29 bomber, destroying 90 per cent of Hiroshima. A ‘black rain’ of radioactive particles followed the blinding blast and fireball, and has been linked to the higher rates of cancer and other radiation-related diseases among the survivors.
The mission was led by Colonel Paul Tibbets, and the final target was decided less than an hour before the bomb was dropped. Good weather conditions made Hiroshima an ideal candidate. Three days after the death of thousands, Nagasaki was next.