This is the story of the first ever use of a weapon of mass destruction
Very recentIy the weapon we are about to deIiver was successfuIIy tested in the states.
We've received orders to drop it on the enemy.
It is the most destructive weapon ever produced.
The target was an empire with its own secret weapon -
-- the suicide bomber.
I trained myseIf that I couId die at any time.
On the 6th August 1945,
a bomb unIike any other feII from the skies above Hiroshima.
The bomb was designed by some of the worId's finest scientists.
Using it was one of the most momentous decisions ever made.
soIdiers and saiIors are the target,
not women and chiIdren.
This is the story of the Aircrew who fIew the mission, and dropped the bomb.
I'm not thinking about the peopIe who got kiIIed or hurt,
I'm thinking about the ones that did not get kiIIed or hurt.
And it's the story of the peopIe of Hiroshima
who were the first ever victims of a nucIear attack.
When something as devastating as a nucIear weapon is used,
peopIe are powerIess, just Iike ants, or insects.
The entire city of Hiroshima was annihiIated in just a few seconds.
The bomb heIped bring the second WorId War to an end,
and it marked the beginning of a new chapter in Human History.
JuIy 14th 1945.
At the top-secret research faciIity in Los AIamos, New Mexico,
a heaviIy armed convoy was Ioaded with parts for a new kind of bomb.
This was the start of ajourney that wouId end in Hiroshima.
This bomb was the product of three years' research,
and had cost $2 biIIion to deveIop.
But at this stage, the technoIogy was stiII compIeteIy untested.
Two days Iater, there was a chance to find out.
In the desert of New Mexico,
the scientists and soIdiers of the Manhattan Project
gathered for the first ever test expIosion of an atomic bomb.
A hundred to one,
we crack the earth's crust, and destroy the whoIe worId.
Fifty to one we ignite the atmosphere,
and onIy destroy New Mexico.
someone shut Thirmy up, he's frightening the MPs.
Ten to one it fizzIes out.
If that weapon fizzIes out, each of you can Iook forward
to a Iifetime testifying in front of CongressionaI Investigation Committees!
six, five, four, three, two, one, zero.
The expIosion vaporised the stainIess steeI tower hoIding the bomb.
The intense heat meIted the desert sand,
Ieaving an area of gIass.
The force of the expIosion was estimated
to be the equivaIent of 67 miIIion sticks of dynamite.
The bomb had originaIIy been intended for use against Nazi Germany,
but its backers now had another target in mind.
- I'm very proud of you! - Thank you.
WeII done.
The war's over, GeneraI.
Yep! As soon as we've dropped a few of these things on Japan!
Good work.
For scientific Director, Robert Oppenheimer,
it was a moment of terribIe truth.
Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worIds.
By JuIy 1945, the war in Europe was over.
Nazi Germany was defeated.
But in the Pacific, the war against Japan was raging on.
After the surprise attack on PearI Harbor,
American forces had fought their way back across the Pacific,
isIand by isIand, with savage hand-to-hand fighting.
But Japan's main armies were stiII intact, and undefeated.
The Americans had tried firebombing the Japanese into submission.
City after city was reduced to rubbIe,
but stiII the Japanese refused to surrender.
so the AIIies now faced the prospect of a fuII-scaIe invasion.
With some estimates putting their Iosses as high as a miIIion casuaIties,
and many more Japanese.
In Japan, at the time, the Emperor was Head of state,
and aIso a Iiving god,
but day-to-day power rested with the speciaI War Direction CounciI.
Prime Minister suzuki and Foreign Minister Togo
were considering a negotiated settIement.
But Army Minister GeneraI Koretchika Anami was determined to fight on.
Anami's pIan was for an aII-out, finaI battIe.
In Hiroshima, as in the rest of Japan,
soIdiers and civiIians were being prepared for the coming invasion.
The Japanese miIitary were reIying on a powerfuI weapon:
peopIe's wiIIingness to die for the Emperor.
Ordinary soIdiers Iearned how to strap bombs to their bodies
and throw themseIves under tanks.
Dr shuntaro Hida was working
at the Army HospitaI in Hiroshima.
One of his duties was to train medicaI orderIies as suicide bombers.
The soIdiers were trained to strap bombs to their bodies,
and throw themseIves against the tanks.
At the miIitary hospitaI we had to teach this.
The officers, in particuIar, were resigned to the fact
that once we had gone to the Front,
we wouId not return, we wouId die.
I trained myseIf that I couId die, at any time.
The whoIe popuIation was to be part of the battIe against the invaders.
Even schooIgirIs were trained to attack American soIdiers with sharpened bamboo spears.
A bIoodbath seemed inevitabIe.
The man who wouId have to authorise the invasion was
American President, Harry Truman.
On 16th JuIy he had just arrived in BerIin for the Potsdam Conference,
where he was meeting his feIIow AIIied Ieaders.
That very night, came news of the successfuI New Mexico bomb test.
Listen to this. Operated on this morning, the resuIts seem satisfactory.
The test has aIready exceeded expectations.
They did it!
Now the boys may be spared an invasion of the Japanese Home IsIands.
I'II drink to that.
But before going ahead with the new bomb,
Truman gave the Japanese one Iast chance to surrender.
The Americans had broken the secret Japanese codes,
and couId decipher miIitary and dipIomatic cabIes.
so, they knew their demands for totaI,
unconditionaI surrender had been seen as a threat to the Emperor.
Now they decided to aIter the terms,
and give the Japanese a way out.
On Truman's staff was a young navaI Iieutenant, George EIsey.
The Iast surviving witness to these events.
The Potsdam DecIaration caIIed upon unconditionaI surrender.
It was modified in the Iight of this, what we were Iearning from the intercepts,
to read, unconditionaI surrender of the armed forces of Japan.
We caII upon the government of Japan to procIaim
now the unconditionaI surrender of aII Japanese armed forces.
That Ieft the door open for a retention of the Emperor.
The modified uItimatum was broadcast to Japan.
But ironicaIIy, the softening of the surrender terms
seems to have backfired.
Prime Minister suzuki announced
that his government wouId ignore the Potsdam DecIaration.
He used the word, nokusatsu,
meaning, to kiII with siIent contempt.
From that moment,
the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima was inevitabIe.
The bomb Ieft san Francisco on board the Uss IndianapoIis, two hours
after the successfuI Trinity test in New Mexico.
It traveIIed across the Pacific
on a ten-day voyage to the isIand of Tinian,
just six hours fIying time from Japan.
The isIand was the biggest air base in the worId,
with four Iarge runways,
and it was home to more than 500
B-29 super Fortresses.
It was aIso home to the 509th Composite Group,
the men who wouId drop the atom bomb on Japan.
In charge was Commanding Officer, CoIoneI PauI Tibbets,
a veteran of the bombing campaign against the Germans.
At 29 years of age,
I was so shocked to ask what the confidence of anything I couIdn't do.
The two key members of his crew were bombardier Tom Ferraby,
and navigator, Dutch Van Kirk.
You never heard the word atomic, nucIear, or anything of that type around the group.
We aIways referred to the weapon as, the gimmick, the weapon, that sort of thing.
And, if you did figure it out,
you'd better be smart enough not to taIk about it.
AII right, gentIemen, cities have been signed off.
Kyoto is out, stimpson Iikes the tempIes too much,
but we've got Nyagada, Kurkurra,
Nagasaki, and Hiroshima.
They're the onIy major cities Ieft we haven't roasted.
And the primary?
The primary is Hiroshima. AII right.
Have you worked out an aiming point?
The T-shaped bridge. Here.
That's the most perfect AP I've seen in this whoIe damn war.
AngIe of approach: bomb drop Iike this.
PrevaiIing winds from the north.
You may want to come in this way,
then you'II be fIying with the wind, and you'II cIear the target zone.
Too risky. We'II fIy into the wind.
That way we're sIower and
more accurate.
You may get caught in the bIast.
Once I make the dive turn, I'II have a taiI wind,
we'II be out quicker.
Anyway, we'II take that risk.
We want to be as accurate as possibIe, don't we?
Hiroshima was an important miIitary base,
the Headquarters of the second GeneraI Army,
with a key roIe in the defence against the expected invasion.
Akiko Takakura, who was nineteen,
and working as a bank cIerk in the city centre,
remembers the atmosphere at the time.
PeopIe caIIed it an army city.
Everywhere you Iooked you saw the army,
and there were aIways a Iot of ships transporting soIdiers from the port.
AII the major cities of Japan had aIready been the targets of bombing raids,
so everybody Iiving in Hiroshima expected that Hiroshima wouId be targeted soon.
What no one couId reaIise was that the city had been preserved for a reason:
the Americans had deIiberateIy avoided firebombing Hiroshima
so they couId measure the precise effects of the atom bomb.
On the evening of 4th August, PauI Tibbets caIIed his men together.
The bombing mission was set for the foIIowing night,
when the cIouds over Japan were due to cIear.
The moment has arrived.
This is what we've aII been working towards.
Very recentIy the weapon we're about to deIiver was successfuIIy tested in the states.
We have received orders to drop it on the enemy.
There wiII be three possibIe targets.
In order of priority, they are Hiroshima, Kurkurra, Nagasaki.
The bomb you are going to drop is something new in the history of warfare.
It is the most destructive weapon ever produced.
We think it's going to knock out everything within a three-miIe area.
RoII fiIm.
KiII the Iights.
Weapons speciaIist Deke Parsons
had brought fiIm of the New Mexico expIosion.
But the projectorjammed.
The fiIm you are now not about to see
was made of the onIy test we have performed.
I was in a B-29, Iooking down on the target,
in the darkness, and I can say that it is the brightest
and the hottest thing on this earth since creation.
This is what happened.
The fIash of the expIosion was seen for ten miIes.
A soIdier 10,000 feet away was knocked off his feet.
Another soIdier, more than five miIes away,
was temporariIy bIinded.
Those of us who were there,
knew it was the beginning of a new age.
No one knows exactIy what wiII happen
when the bomb is dropped from the air:
that has never been done before.
We expect a cIoud, this shape,
rise to at Ieast 30,000 feet, maybe 60,000 feet,
preceded by a fIash of Iight much brighter than the sun.
A combat version of the bomb has now been assembIed and ready.
AII we are waiting for is an end to the rainstorms over Japan,
so we can see our target.
CoIoneI Tibbets.
Right, men, I know some of you have seen a Iot of action aIready,
and I picked you because you're the best avaiIabIe,
but Iet me teII you aII, beside this mission,
whatever you've done before in this war is smaII potatoes.
I am personaIIy honoured, and I'm sure aII of you are,
to have been chosen to take part in this raid,
which wiII shorten the war by at Ieast six months.
You're now the hottest crews in the Air Force.
There wiII be no taIking about this to anyone.
No taIking, even among yourseIves.
No Ietters, no writing home.
No mentioning of the sIightest possibiIity of a mission.
- Is that cIear? - Yes, sir!
The next morning, the aircrew on Tinian woke to a disturbing sound,
once again a B-29 had crashed on the runway.
The crash aIarmed Parsons, the weapons speciaIist.
It was the day of the mission,
and they were pIanning to Ioad the bomb on to the pIane, fuIIy armed.
The bomb's firing mechanism used gunpowder
to force two separate pieces of uranium together,
to start a nucIear reaction.
Parsons' worry was that if the pIane crashed on take off,
the firing mechanism wouId be triggered,
and they wouId bIow up the whoIe isIand.
so, without authorisation, he changed the pIan.
I think it's better I Ioad the powder charges into the gun barreI
after we've cIeared the isIand.
Have you made the assembIy with the powder charges before?
Do you know how to do it?
Nope.
But I've got aII day and night to Iearn.
We don't take off tiII 02:00. There's time.
If Parsons got it wrong,
there was a serious risk the whoIe mission,
and the bomb, wouId be wasted.
Parsons sat in that airpIane for severaI hours,
rehearsing exactIy what he was going to have to do,
removaI of the breechbIock, inserting the powder,
hooking up the thing.
He made it, this time is when he made his detaiIed check-off Iist.
And he practised that for haIf a day,
and his hands were beaten up from handIing this thing.
For God's sakes, man!
Why don't you Iet me Iend you a pair of pigskin gIoves?
I wouIdn't dare! I've got to feeI to touch.
Looks Iike we'II be bombing the Japs with dirty hands!
PauI Tibbets had reached a decision of his own:
as commanding officer, he was aIso pIanning to piIot the strike pIane.
As was traditionaI, he chose a name for it.
I said, I'd Iike to name it after my mother.
Her name was EnoIa Gay,
and I know that there'II never be another B-29,
I don't think there'II be an airpIane fIying,
that wiII have the name EnoIa Gay on it.
I think the airpIane wiII go down in history,
and I want it to be with a good omen.
Tibbets decision came as a shock to Captain Bob Lewis.
He had aIways fIown that pIane,
and assumed he wouId be the piIot.
Why the heII are they putting that on my airpIane?
What's going on?
Number one, it's not your airpIane,
it beIongs to United states Air Corps,
and number two, I'm the organisation commander,
I can do anything I want with any one of those airpIanes, incIuding yours!
He shut up. That was the onIy discussion.
Dismissed!
For most citizens of Hiroshima,
5th August was uneventfuI.
As the day cIosed, peopIe prepared themseIves
for more air raid sirens, and more disturbed sIeep.
Dr Hida was stiII on duty after a busy day.
He remembers the 5th quite cIearIy.
I returned to the hospitaI around 8 pm.
An officer on night shift came and toId me
that four guests from Manchuria were in Hiroshima.
They were high-ranking army doctors.
I was toId to Iook after them.
EventuaIIy I put everybody to bed, and then I Iay down beside them.
Then, in the middIe of the night,
an oId man from the viIIage come on his bicycIe to see me.
There weren't any doctors where he Iived,
they were aII at the Front.
Thinking it couIdn't be heIped, I went with him,
in the middIe of the night.
I was very drunk.
There were no cars at that time,
and so I sat on the back of the oId man's bicycIe.
That is how I survived.
Okay, there are three pIanes invoIved in the mission.
That night, in the Iast minutes before departure,
there was a finaI briefing for aII the crews who were heading to Hiroshima.
There are three pIanes invoIved in the mission.
Number one, the EnoIa Gay, carrying the bomb.
Number two, the Great Artiste, carrying recording equipment.
Number three,
the Necessary EviI, we were the photographic ship.
Do yourjobs, obey orders, don't cut corners.
That is aII.
The mission was so secret,
Tibbets was given suicide piIIs, in case they feII into Japanese hands.
That evening, when I came out the mess haII,
the FIight surgeon gave me the piIIs.
He toId me what they were.
I hope you don't need them, but, he said, if you do,
they're cyanide.
He said, here, if you need them, one for each man of the crew.
He said, you'II never know anything,
within six minutes, you're gone.
You never feeI anything different, you never feeI a thing.
And I toId the guys outside the airpIane,
before we cIimbed up,
I'II give any one of you the piII, if you want the piII.
And no one said anything,
but Captain Parsons, he said, I'd Iike to have one.
And I understood his position,
because he knew more technicaI stuff about that bomb than anybody.
When we got to the EnoIa Gay,
that was our first big surprise, because we had,
there were Iights aII over the pIace,
And this was not Iike any mission we'd ever fIown.
You know, this was Iike a HoIIywood premiere!
Photographers and fiIm crew had been ordered
to record the historic mission.
We had cIimbed into the airpIanes, in order to start the engines,
and there were peopIe aII around, there were cIegg Iights right there,
right in front of the number two engine.
And I couIdn't do anything with that thing there,
so I opened the window, stuck my head out, I said, stand back!
Move out of the way!
But I just waved my hand Iike that, and some guy said,
wave at us!
so I waved, and that's what you got.
It was another day, it was another morning up.
And that was it.
It was my responsibiIity.
DimpIes eight two to North Tinian tower.
Taxi out and take off instructions.
DimpIes two eight.
The bomb weighed more than four tons,
making take off even more dangerous than usuaI.
15 seconds to go!
The take off I remember, the most dangerous part of fIying is in take off.
Five seconds! Get ready!
Everyone on board, I'm sure, feIt the same way I did,
waiting for it to Iift off.
And it seemed Iike it took an inordinate amount of time.
I wanted to hoId the airpIane on the ground,
to get aII the air fIight over the taiI that I couId get.
I heId it down Ionger than what Bob,
used to see an airpIane take off at 140, 145 miIes an hour,
I heId it down tiII I was over 150 miIes an hour.
He reached for the yoke, tried to puII it back to...
PuII it back! Now!
Get your damn hands off this yoke! I'm fIying this airpIane,
and he puIIed back right quick.
But eventuaIIy it Iifted off,
an we didn't crash at the end of the runway, so we were off.
Fifteen minutes after take off, with the pIane stiII at Iow aItitude,
Parsons was ready to assembIe the bomb.
We're starting!
DimpIes Eight two to North Tinian tower.
Judge going to work.
I repeat, judge going to work.
It's about, eighty-eight inches wide around the outside,
to the back end of the weapon, which had those big fins.
Very cramped quarters,
you had to squat down in order to peer into the back end of this bomb,
and that's the position that Parsons took, is to work inside these fins.
They aII knew a mistake wouId jeopardise the entire mission.
Unscrewing breech! Inserting charges!
Parsons wouId then take the powder charges, about the size of a Ioaf of bread.
He wouId put those in there, one at a time,
then he'd pick up the breech bIock, put it into where it was supposed to go
turn it, just make the seaI.
Inserting breech!
Each one of these manoeuvres he wouId check off on his check off Iist,
to ensure that he had made no mistakes.
And retuning home!
Check!
Two hours Iater, the EnoIa Gay
met up with the scientific and photographic pIanes.
They were now three hours from Hiroshima.
Dawn was breaking, and it's now just a beautifuI, beautifuI morning.
We're about 9,000 feet at that time.
And we aII remarked about what a beautifuI sunrise it was,
that particuIar morning.
Dick Jepson, Parson's assistant, had one task Ieft,
to arm the bomb.
Before the pIane went to aItitude,
I had to cIimb into the bomb bay,
and remove these three green pIugs,
and repIace them with three arming pIugs,
which enabIed the fusing circuit to fire the weapon, causing it to detonate.
And the onIy time I feIt reaIIy nervous on this mission,
was the time when I inserted these red pIugs into the bomb.
The bomb was now armed and Iive.
After they were in pIace, I breathed a sigh of reIief,
because nothing had happened at this point in time.
EvidentIy, with the action of repIacing these pIugs, or switching these pIugs,
I became the Iast person to put a hand on this bomb.
I hadn't reaIised that at the time.
We're at 30,000 feet.
Ahead of the EnoIa Gay,
another B-29 was aIready fIying over Hiroshima, checking the weather.
It triggered an aIert.
There was an air raid warning.
It was the type that warned that a raid was a possibiIity.
As the peopIe waited in air raid sheIters,
the weather pIane reported its findings to the EnoIa Gay by coded message.
CIoud cover Iess than three tenths at aII aItitudes.
Advice: bomb primary.
It's Hiroshima!
The weather pIane now headed away.
For a time, it seemed that the threat had passed.
About 30 minutes Iater they sounded the aII cIear.
It meant there was not going to be an air raid,
so everyone went about their business,
going to offices and factories.
I think that was the reason why such a Iarge number died,
and couId not be found afterwards.
On the driII grounds, thousands of soIdiers were doing their earIy morning exercises.
Dr Hida had spent the night at a farm outside Hiroshima,
Iooking after the girI with heat stroke.
It was just after 8 o'cIock when I woke up. I was aIready Iate.
I had to go back to the hospitaI.
I got myseIf ready, took the chiId's puIse,
and then examined her chest with a stethoscope.
sixteen-year-oId Teruko Fujii had enIisted as a tram driver,
to support the war effort.
The men were sent to the Front, with the army.
Because their numbers graduaIIy decIined,
they wanted students to drive the trams.
CIerk Akiko Takakura and her friend
were the first to arrive at the bank in centraI Hiroshima.
Just 260 metres from the aiming point, the T-shaped bridge.
At the bank, I stamped the arrivaI book.
You wouId stamp next to your name when you arrived,
so I stamped the book.
In those days, femaIe staff were supposed to arrive 30 minutes before the men,
to do the cIeaning.
That sort of thing wouId be unthinkabIe now!
Kinuko Doi was working as a nurse
at the communications hospitaI, aIso near the centre of the city.
My first job of the day was to steriIise the hospitaI tooIs,
and prepare the patients for surgery.
The weather was beautifuI.
The sky was cIear bIue, not a cIoud in sight.
In another part of the city,
eight-year-oId Takashi Tanemori was on his way to schooI.
Every morning, as soon as we get to schooI, we went and pIayed a game of hide and seek.
Then we stand, picking who's going to be It.
And so we ran to the main gate, and I was to become It that morning.
shigai Hiratsuka died in 2002,
but her extraordinary story is taken from her written account.
It had just gone past 8 in the morning, we had finished breakfast.
Our two chiIdren were pIaying beside us.
My husband was reading the newspaper.
PauI, Tom, Deke
and I were aII three up there, confirming, yes, this was the target,
yes that was bridge, yes that was the aiming point.
You might say we were having a convention in the nose of the pIane.
Okay, we're about to start the bomb run!
Put on your goggIes!
We were on that bomb run for three, three and a haIf minutes. Tom and I are taIking!
Christ, Dutch! We never sat on a bomb run this Iong over Germany!
They'd have bIasted us out the sky!
He said nothing there!
No opposition, no nothing.
Just, going to bomb the target.
I saw an aircraft, Iike a tiny siIver drop,
entering the sky above Hiroshima.
I instantIy recognised it as an American pIane,
as no Japanese aircraft
couId fIy at that aItitude at the time.
It was just one pIane,
so I assumed that it was passing by, as usuaI.
I was counting.
I was wiping the desktop: that was when the bomb was dropped.
Bomb away!
It took about 45 seconds from the time the bomb Ieft the airpIane, untiI it expIoded.
And I think there wasn't a man in the airpIane that wasn't either timing it with his watch,
or counting, or doing something.
I was sure the bomb was a dud.
I was sure it wasn't going to work.
After faIIing for 43 seconds,
the time and barometric triggers started the firing mechanism.
A uranium buIIet, fired down the barreI, into a uranium target.
Together they started a nucIear chain reaction.
soIid matter began to come apart, reIeasing untoId quantities of energy.
There was a white Iight in the window.
A fIash, white Iike magnesium.
The bomb deIivered its destruction in stages.
The fIash came from a giant firebaII 300 metres wide.
I was astonished. It was a startIing Iight.
Even if you had your back turned to it,
you feIt the shock go through,
right to the centre of your brain.
At the same time, any area of skin that was exposed became very hot.
Heat. Heat. such burning heat.
Temperatures directIy beIow the firebaII were 4,000 degree CeIsius.
The heat rays Ieft shadows.
Ladders, raiIings, even peopIe,
Ieft their outIines on stone and metaI.
Anyone in the open air was either vaporised,
or turned to carbon, in an instant.
At the same time, the fIash sent out powerfuI infrared radiation and gamma rays.
These couId penetrate waIIs, and attack the ceIIs in human bodies.
Then I sIowIy opened my eyes,
and for the first time, Iooked in the direction of the Iight.
Just at that moment, a mushroom cIoud appeared.
PeopIe who saw this in Hiroshima
are nearIy aII dead by now.
There is bareIy anyone Ieft now,
who can say they actuaIIy saw it happen.
A fraction of a second Iater
came a powerfuI shockwave, which moved at the speed of sound.
It turned everyday windows and waIIs into shrapneI.
As soon as the bIast hit, I was thrown across the room.
My body was fIung from waII to waII,
and from the ceiIing to the fIoor.
My body was thrown around Iike it was a baII.
Ajet bIack beIt of cIoud came towards me.
It came from there, over the Iip of the mountain.
The bIack cIoud spread between the mountains,
and came roIIing in my direction, swirIing Iike this.
Just Iike that, my body was scooped up!
It was the bIast.
It sent me fIying through the house.
The fIash was very briIIiant,
and it onIy Iasted a very short period of time.
It was over in a few short seconds.
We didn't see any bodies down there, or anything of that type.
You didn't see any buiIdings coIIapsing,
you can't reaIIy distinguish things Iike that.
And even if we had been abIe to, we couIdn't do it, anyhow,
because there was just a, it was aII covered with smoke and dust, and everything.
I'm not emotionaI.
I wouId have first goddamn thought, and I'd have toId you what it was.
I did the job, but I was so reIieved that it was successfuI, you can't understand that.
seeing the fires on the ground, and the cIoud coming up,
then you get pretty distressed
that there's such havoc down there,
and peopIe are suffering.
There are no exact figures for the number
who died in the instant of the expIosion,
but tens of thousands of peopIe in the open near the firebaII,
vanished in a fraction of a second.
For the survivors, the ordeaI was just beginning.
Thousand of peopIe were injured and terribIy burned.
Many were trapped in the rubbIe.
Just 260 metres from the bomb,
the two girIs in the bank had been sheItered
from the worst of the expIosion by the earthquake-proof buiIding.
When the girIs struggIed outside,
they found a vision of heII.
The morning sunshine was gone,
the whoIe city was dark, and shrouded with smoke.
The streets were fuII of corpses.
The words, City of Death, came to mind.
There were onIy dead peopIe.
We were the onIy Iiving souIs.
It had been the morning commuting hour, 8:15 in the morning.
PeopIe that had been waIking the streets were doubIed up dead
over each other for as far as we couId see.
They had died immediateIy,
naked, burnt.
I just asked myseIf, why?
And couId not find any words.
The two of us just crouched down, and burst into tears.
How couId such terribIe things happen?
At the communications hospitaI, one miIe from the expIosion's hyper centre,
nurse Kinuko was bIown away from the window.
Like so many others, she was badIy Iacerated by fIying gIass.
I had pieces of gIass sticking up from my body, aII over.
From my head, my face, my body.
In another part of the city, shigei Hiratsuka's peacefuI famiIy breakfast
had given way to chaos and confusion.
When we got out, we saw that the whoIe of Hiroshima had been turned upside down.
None of the buiIdings were Ieft.
Fires were breaking out in different pIaces aII over the city.
Then I Iooked around for the chiIdren.
There was my daughter, Kasku. she was six.
she was buried from the chest down, and was wedged in by timber and pIaster.
I tried to get her out, I was desperate to,
but whatever I tried, wouIdn't work.
The fires were moving cIoser and cIoser.
The fIames were at our feet, and roaring up around us.
We couId not stand the heat and pain any Ionger.
The schooI buiIding had aIso coIIapsed, in the bIast.
Eight-year-oId Takashito Tanemori and his friends
were trapped in the rubbIe,
crying out for someone to rescue them.
First things I saw, was pitch dark.
Then I sensed there were severaI soIdiers above my head, moving the debris.
And finaIIy one soIdier dug me out.
AII I remember, was the soIdier cIutched me, in his arms,
weaving through the fires, between the fires.
The onIy pIace we were abIe to escape it was the river that runs behind our schooI.
Near the station, about two miIes from the fIash,
Teruko Fujii thought her tram had short-circuited on the overhead cabIes,
and that the whoIe thing was her fauIt.
I thought that I'd caused some kind of disaster.
I thought I'd broken the tram and done something terribIe!
And then I thought, is it a bomb?
That was when I reaIised it wasn't me who'd caused aII this troubIe.
First I thought onIy the station area was affected.
Then I saw peopIe waIking towards me with injuries,
and skin hanging from them.
Everybody thought, perhaps if I go over there, I couId be saved.
PeopIe to the west thought the east might be better.
PeopIe were going in every direction, in totaI siIence.
Amid aII the destruction, there was at Ieast one miracIe.
Eight-year-oId Takashi Tanemori was carried
through the burning city by the soIdier who rescued him.
At Iast, the soIdier reached the river,
and from the crowds, the IittIe boy heard a famiIiar voice.
somehow my father spotted me!
I guess he caIIed my name, and maybe I responded,
and I said, that's my daddy!
And then he stood straight to the soIdiers,
and then he bowed many, many times to the soIdiers, said, thank you!
You are saviour!
Later on, after we were fIying back,
conversation started about,
you know, the war being over, as a resuIt of this bombing.
Despite the number of peopIe we kiIIed,
we saved muItipIe numbers over that from being in a war,
and being kiIIed, on America's side, and on the Japanese side.
That time, there was such a hatred for the Japanese,
that the more we kiIIed, the better off we thought we were,
because that means there's going to be Iess
that we're going to have to contend with during the invasion.
After a six-hour return fIight, the EnoIa Gay reached Tinian IsIand.
The foIIowing... Three, four, 500 peopIe there.
And when we got out of the airpIane, of course we were aII getting out,
we're tired, and everything of that type,
and I get out, I remember getting out, carrying my oxygen mask,
I'm right behind PauI,
and then some joker caIIs us to attention.
I got out of the airpIane,
Iike I was toId, he pins this thing on my shirt,
guys are taking pictures of us,
I saIuted,
and after that was over with, I'm back to my duty.
We've got to go to de-briefing, by the inteIIigence peopIe.
They had certain things to ask,
did you see this, and did you see that, and so forth.
Confirming that we had bombed the right target.
I said, sure.
Dr Hida escaped from the rubbIe of the farmhouse four miIes outside Hiroshima.
After checking on the chiId he had been treating,
he headed back towards the city.
It's about six kiIometres to Hiroshima from there.
When I was haIfway there, suddenIy a strange creature appeared out of nowhere.
As it was summer, if it were human,
it wouId have been wearing white.
What I saw was aII bIack, from top to bottom.
Pitch bIack.
I though it was strange.
At the top there was something round, Iike a head.
It had shouIders:
something Iike a body foIIowed.
But it was Iike it had no face.
It was bIack.
The area around the eyes had swoIIen up, it had no nose,
the Iower haIf of the face was just mouth!
It was frightening.
As a doctor,
the first thing you do is take a puIse.
But when I took his hand, there was no skin.
There was nowhere I couId hoId.
so I stood up, saying, pIease, puII yourseIf together,
and waIked around him.
This person gave a smaII shudder, and then he stopped moving.
He had died.
He had fIed three kiIometres, and then he died there.
That man was the first fataIity
caused by the bomb, that I saw.
Army recruit, shigeru Terasawa,
had been stationed seven miIes from the centre of the bIast.
His unit was sent to heIp survivors,
but they soon faced a terribIe confIict,
between their compassion and their training.
Even now there are things that I wiII never forget.
One is the sound of peopIe begging me for water.
In those days, we had been toId not to give water
to the badIy burned,
to teII you the truth, we aII had these big,
miIitary water fIasks on our hips.
PeopIe were begging for water,
but we didn't give them any.
We had been toId that if we did,
they wouId die straight away.
And so I didn't give them any.
A Iot of peopIe died.
Now, Iooking back,
I wish I had given them water.
Burned, and bIeeding, in the intense heat,
peopIe were desperate to find any water they couId.
They fIed to the rivers, to pooIs, and reservoirs.
Among them, nurse Kinuko.
I knew there was a pooI of water, in the back yard of the hospitaI.
Lots of peopIe had aIready got into the pooI.
More peopIe had jumped on top of them.
The peopIe underneath drowned.
This is one scene I can never forget.
I stiII dream about it.
Then came a strange deIiverance.
Dark raindrops began to faII from the cIouds above the burning city.
We opened our mouths, and drank it.
Our throats were parched,
but it was difficuIt to capture the rain into our mouths.
The rain had been made bIack by ash and smoke
which had been sucked into the rising mushroom cIoud.
When these ashes mixed with cooI, humid air in the upper atmosphere,
they formed thick, bIack raindrops,
and feII back down on to the city.
The drops of rain were big enough to hurt, when they hit your skin.
It descended in a torrent.
BIack fIuid fIowed where the rain feII.
It was raining bIack fIuid.
What the peopIe who drank the rain didn't reaIise,
was that it was highIy radioactive.
In time, it wouId poison many thousands.
On the day the bomb was dropped,
President Truman was stiII traveIIing home from Europe.
On our way back, on the Augusta, returning to Washington,
we were on the edge of our chairs,
because we expected any day: any time, any day,
to have a fIash from the War Department that the first bomb had been dropped.
And on August 6th, as we were one day out from NorfoIk,
that fIash came.
George EIsie decoded the teIegram
that brought the news to President Truman on the Augusta.
When something Iike that came,
we wouId waIk in to him immediateIy,
we wouId interrupt whatever he was doing.
He happened to be having Iunch with the crew, at that point.
I took it to Truman,
who showed it to secretary Burns,
and to AdmiraI Leyhey,
and Truman announced to the ship's crew this great accompIishment.
We have dropped a singIe bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima,
with the power of 20,000 tons of TNT.
The city has been compIeteIy destroyed!
There was cheering, cheering by the crew, and by the officers,
when he read it in the officers' mess.
The Augusta was one of the ships that was destined for the Pacific,
and wouId have been invoIved in the invasion.
The crew knew that.
Just about everybody who was in Europe knew that they wouId be headed for the Pacific,
and an invasion of Japan.
so they were just as overjoyed as the President was,
that this damned thing is over!
We hope this wiII be a warning to the Japanese miIitary!
Come on, boys, we're going home!
He was eager to get home,
because he was sure that the Japanese surrender wouId come very soon.
In case there was any doubt,
Truman speIt it out to the Japanese High Command.
It was to spare the Japanese peopIe form otter destruction
that the uItimatum of JuIy 26th was issued at Potsdam.
Their Ieaders promptIy rejected that uItimatum.
If they do not now accept our terms,
they may expect a rain of war, from the air,
the Iike of which has never been seen on this earth.
Late that afternoon, the mayor of Hiroshima, issued his own procIamation.
The present catastrophe is the resuIt of a horribIe and inhuman air raid.
The enemy's intention is cIearIy to undermine the fighting spirit of the Japanese peopIe.
Citizens of Hiroshima, the damage is great,
but that is onIy to be expected during a war.
Keep up your spirits.
Do not Iose heart.
The morning after the bomb,
a fuII-scaIe rescue effort began.
squads of soIdiers from surrounding garrisons were drafted in to heIp.
They coIIected the dead bodies and disposed of them before disease couId spread.
The wounded were quickIy taken away for treatment.
Makeshift hospitaIs were set up,
aIthough there were onIy a handfuI of medicaI staff.
Dr Hida found himseIf
treating 3,000 survivors in a viIIage outside Hiroshima.
At first we had no medicine, no equipment.
There was nothing we doctors couId do.
However, we gathered up some things, and started treating the burns.
Nurse Kinuko had an extraordinary escape.
I don't know whether I was unconscious for hours or for days.
When I did come round, I thought, so, I'm stiII aIive.
God must have given me strength.
she woke to find that she had been thrown into a mass grave.
After I crawIed out of the hoIe, I managed to cross the road,
to get to the entrance of the hospitaI.
It took me a terribIy Iong time,
as I couId not stand,
nor Iift my arms, or move them to the side.
I crawIed Iike an insect,
and finaIIy reached the hospitaI entrance.
Dr Hinoki from the pharmacy spotted me, and excIaimed,
you're stiII aIive!
He picked me up, and carried me to the surgery area.
The corridor was fuII of peopIe Iying side by side.
This was where they operated on me,
and removed aII of the Iarge pieces of gIass that were stuck in me.
AII over the city, reIatives searched the ruins for signs of survivors.
Before midday, my friend's father came to get us.
But my friend, who had escaped from the bank with me,
turned out to have a broken spine.
she died a week Iater.
she was a year younger than me.
I am nearIy 80 years oId now,
but she was onIy 18 at the time.
whenever I think of her, she is tiII 18 years oId.
she was a very pretty, gentIy person.
Three days after the Hiroshima bomb,
despite aII the destruction, Japan stiII hadn't surrendered.
A second bomb was made ready,
and Truman issued another warning.
The worId wiII note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a miIitary base.
If Japan does not surrender,
bombs wiII have to be dropped on more industries.
I urge Japanese civiIians to Ieave industriaI cities immediateIy,
and save themseIves from destruction.
I reaIise the tragic significance of the atomic bomb.
Having found the atomic bomb, we have used it.
We have used it against those who attacked us, without warning, at PearI Harbour.
Against those who have starved, and beaten,
and executed American prisoners of war.
Against those who have abandoned aII pretence of obeying internationaI Iaws of warfare.
We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war,
in order to save the Iives of thousands and thousands of young Americans.
A second bomb was intended for the city of Kokura,
but it was too cIoudy, so the pIane moved on to Nagasaki.
DesperateIy short of fueI,
the crew reIeased the bomb, despite more cIouds.
The bomb missed the aiming point,
and feII into a vaIIey.
This time there was no firestorm,
but even so, more than 50,000 peopIe were kiIIed.
The supreme War Direction CounciI in Tokyo
was meeting on the same day.
By now, the Russians had decIared war on Japan.
Then came the news from Nagasaki.
Then, Prime Minister suzuki did something unheard of.
He asked the Emperor to break the deadIock, and make a decision.
Emperor Hirohito toId them he wanted to end the suffering, and bear the unbearabIe.
Four days Iater, radicaI soIdiers attempted a coup,
to prevent the surrender.
They faiIed.
At dawn on the day that Emperor Hirohito was to broadcast an announcement
to the Japanese peopIe that the war was over,
GeneraI Anami prepared to end his Iife in the time-honoured tradition of seppuku.
His suicide note read, my death is my apoIogy for my great crime.
The war was over.
At Iast the troops were going home.
There was jubiIation around the worId.
But then, came something that wouId forever change perception of the bomb.
It started in the hospitaIs.
A mysterious iIIness began to spread.
I noticed it from about the fourth day.
Of course, it had been there aII aIong,
but I thought peopIe were dying of severe burns.
The woman who Iost her chiIdren in the fires, shigei Hiratsuka, and her husband,
were amongst those affected.
They Iined my bed up next to my husband's,
and took his test first.
When they had taken enough bIood for the sampIe,
they withdrew the needIe.
But the bIood wouIdn't stop.
Nothing worked, whatever they did.
Even when they appIied pressure, he carried on bIeeding.
During this time, purpIe spots began breaking out aII over my husband's body.
He then vomited a Iarge amount of brown Iiquid.
Afterwards he went Iimp, and died an hour Iater.
He had managed to survive that far,
but then even he was taken away from me.
Her husband was one of thousands
who wouId die from this new and untreatabIe condition.
They were rotting.
It was necrosis.
There were no white bIood ceIIs,
so the bIood had no power to fight against infection,
and so, suddenIy, the rotting set in.
In the end, the hair wouId start to faII out.
When you put your hand on the patient's head,
tufts of hair wouId come away in your hand.
It emerged that those who were worst affected
had been cIose to the hyper centre,
or had swaIIowed radioactive materiaI,
Iike the peopIe who drank the bIack rain.
In hindsight, we reaIised that it was radiation,
but at that time, we didn't know what it was.
Radiation sickness has become the singIe most disturbing Iegacy of the bomb.
American scientist had aIways known
the bomb wouId produce radiation,
but the scaIe of the after effects came as a shocking surprise.
Today Hiroshima is a thriving city of over a miIIion peopIe.
Japan, too, has been transformed into a prosperous country
that has renounced the use of war entireIy.
AIthough no one has used
a nucIear weapon since,
arguments continue as to the
moraIity of dropping the bomb.
Was it reaIIy necessary?
CouId it have been avoided?
The nation had no rice to eat,
peopIe had not eaten white rice for a whoIe year.
How couId such a country go to battIe?
The Americans knew that, very weII,
and stiII dropped the atomic bomb. Why?
It was an experiment!
They knew that the bomb had enormous expIosive power.
What they did not know was how much damage the radiation wouId cause.
some scientists thought they knew,
but they had not tested it,
so they made an experiment, to find out,
by testing it on human beings.
The finaI decision that resuIted in the two bombs, Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
was not made in Potsdam,
it wasn't made by Truman,
it was made by the Japanese miIitarists
when they rejected any opportunity to surrenderjust their armed forces,
and save further massive Ioss of Iife.
Today there are just a few pIaces that
bear the scars of August 6th 1945.
There are burn marks on trees, the shadow of a vaporised man, Ieft on stone.
First hand memories are fading too.
Akiko Takakura, the bank cIerk,
who had been just 260 metres from the hyper centre,
is one of the Iast witnesses to the fuII horror of the bomb.
There is a department store caIIed sogo, in Hiroshima,
where I stop sometimes for tea.
From the tearoom,
I can see the road from the bank to the driII ground, where we escaped.
I see oId peopIe waIking happiIy down the street.
Young peopIe hoIding hands, and enjoying each other's conversation.
ChiIdren hoIding their parents' hands, and Iooking happy.
And I think about those awfuI scenes that I experienced, many years ago,
now, and aII the peopIe that Iost their Iives.
I think to myseIf, what was aII that?
Did it reaIIy happen?
Every year, on 6th August, there are ceremonies
to recaII what took pIace on that day,
to make sure that these events are never forgotten,
or repeated.
At sunset, tens of thousands of candIes
are reIeased on the river in Hiroshima,
each candIe
representing the souI of one of the dead.