On this day, 76 years ago, Japan’s Hiroshima was attacked by a nuclear bomb. With the gap of just two days, Nagasaki was attacked with another atomic bomb. In 1945, America dropped nuclear bombs which caused the death of around 80,000 people and tens of thousands of people were later killed because of the radiation of the nuclear bomb. The bomb was dropped with the help of a parachute at 8:15 am and around five miles of the area was immediately devastated.
This year, Japan would mark the seventy-sixth anniversary of the nuclear bomb attack. Japanese emperor Hirohito described the bomb as “a new and most cruel bomb.”
Here are the eyewitness accounts of these harrowing bombings that’ll make you understand the devastation caused.
Taeko Teramae
Hiroshima survivor Taejo Teramae was just 16 years old when the unfortunate incident occurred. According to a 1985 article in Heiwa Bunka magazine, Teramae tells “on the day of the bombing, she was one of the thousands of students mobilized to help fill Hiroshima’s wartime labor shortages.”
She was assigned to the city's Telephone Bureau and was on the second floor when she spotted a shiny item falling in the clear blue sky outside her window. She heard a "tremendous noise" as she turned to her friend to ask what it was. The walls crumbled, and "a powerful flash engulfed us, turning our surroundings bright white."
Teramae recalls a huge cloud of dust blowing into her mouth and eyes, turning everything dark. Teramae began to cough and vomit excessively as a result of the toxic fumes.
Teramae escaped by jumping from a second-story window and descending down a telephone pole with the help of her teacher Wakita. Watika died of injuries sustained during helping other students in Hiroshima.
Fujio Tarikoshi
Fujio Tarikoshi was 14 when the bombing took place. He told in a 1945 documentary project that he and his mother heard planes in the sky during breakfast. He walked outside and noticed no planes. But he was perplexed when he noticed a black dot in the sky to the northeast.
Tarikoshi's surroundings were suddenly filled with blinding light as the dot burst. He was struck in the face by a blast of warm air. He knelt down on the ground and closed his eyes. “Another gust of wind pushed me up and I collided with something hard as I struggled to regain my balance. "I don't recall what occurred after that."
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Tosu Norimitsu
Norimitsu Tosu (then 3 years old), his twin brother, and his mother had just returned from their regular walk and were washing their hands in the bathroom. Then the walls came crashing down, burying the brothers behind a pile of rubble. Their mother awoke to the sound of her sons' screams after a brief loss of consciousness. "She rescued them from the debris, bleeding all over, and carried them to a relative's house," Tosu told David E. DeCosse of the National Catholic Reporter in 2016.
The bombing killed two of Tosu's seven family members. His father, who was imprisoned on bribery charges, was protected by the prison's thick walls, but two of his siblings, an elder brother named Yoshihiro and a sister named Hiroko died. Only Yoshihiro's death was only known to the family and they never found the body of Hiroko.
Emiko Okada
When the bomb exploded, Emiko Okada was eight years old. Her 12-year-old sister went to work on a building demolition project early and never came back. Okada began vomiting excessively as soon as the radiation touched her. Okada told the documentary team, "My hair came out, my gums bled, and I was too sick to go to school."
Ryoga Suwa
Ryoga Suwa recalled that his sister was killed in the blast, and his parents were never found. Suwa, on the other hand, was not in the area on the day of the bombing and was evacuated to a place 50 kilometres distant from Hiroshima. “What remained of the land was a clump of toppled tombstones from the temple cemetery” when he returned one month and ten days later.