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Irish Examiner
3 days ago
- General
- Irish Examiner
‘Even children had to carry the bodies': Hiroshima survivors speak 80 years after 'the bomb'
'It was an unimaginably beautiful day,' said one of the Hibakusha, the dwindling number of Japanese women, and men, who survived 'the bomb'. A blue sky. A bustling city of 350,000 people. Trams packed with workers and schoolchildren. Restaurants busy with early breakfasters. Mothers at home with little ones, and babies. Nurses and doctors readying their hospitals for the day's work. Factories getting busy. An entire city is unaware that the glinting silver B29 flying overhead carries a bomb, weighing 10 tons and costing $2bn, which took 140,000 of America's most 'brilliant' minds to make and has been wittily named 'Little Boy' by the military elite. In spotless buff uniforms, they josh each other on the tarmac as their baby is loaded onto the even more wittily named 'Enola Gay', for the mother of the pilot. Little Boy is the world's first atomic bomb, and the Americans are about to drop it on Hiroshima. At 8.15am, city residents experienced a blinding light, 'as if a million magnesium lights went off together', then a loud boom. HISTORY HUB If you are interested in this article then no doubt you will enjoy exploring the various history collections and content in our history hub. Check it out HERE and happy reading Little Boy was detonated at 2,000 feet above the city. All living beings — women, schoolgirls, mums, dads, school boys, babies, grandparents — within a two-mile radius of the blast, were instantly vapourised. Over 70,000 human beings, 95% civilians, mostly women and children. Everything burnt, smashed, annihilated. Too late, the American co-pilot cries out: 'My God, what have we done?' That's the beginning. A granddaughter of one of the Hibakusha says: 'Everything was burned in the city that day. People, birds, dragonflies, grass, trees — everything.' Her grandmother, Teruko Ueno, at the Red Cross hospital, saw dozens of fellow student nurses burned alive in the fireball that engulfed the city, temperatures rising to 4,000C. 'It felt like the sun had fallen,' said another Hibakusha, Chieko Iriake. Mitsuko Koushi, a 13-year-old school girl working at the Postal Savings Bank, with flesh slashed and burns when the bomb blew in all the windows, ran with six friends to the bridge leading away from the city — spotless, gleaming teenagers transformed in seconds into dazed ragged tramps, hair burnt, clothes in tatters, bleeding profusely. 'Everyone looked like monsters,' said Mitsuko. Smoke rises above Hiroshima after the first atomic bomb was dropped on August 6, 1945. File photo: AP Their shocked misery captured by a young soldier as a mushroom cloud rose seven-and-a-half miles into the sky — the pretty bustling city below now churned into a waste ground, piled with twisted blackened corpses, the dying, people crying out, people with 'their skin hanging behind them like old clothes', human limbs snapping like twigs from the heat. To this day, Mitsuko prays for the young mother screaming in agony and disbelief at the blackened charred corpse of her baby in her hands. Nobody knew what had happened. The shock so terrible, 'nobody spoke. Everyone just looked at the ground'. It wasn't until 16 hours later that US president Harry Truman informed the world that the US had conducted 'the greatest scientific gamble in history' — Americanese for dropping a nuclear bomb on thousands of civilians. 'It was tremendous and awe inspiring,' said the Americans. They had done it for the world! For peace! Hiroshima was a military target! The Japanese had it coming! Not that the Japanese army was saintly, far from it. Brutality and dehumanisation of non-nationals was celebrated. But America incinerating civilians? Was that war, or war crime? On the ground fires and 1,000 miles per hour winds followed the blast — gobbling up people, houses, hospitals, factories, and shops. The force of the winds blew bodies apart, 60,000 buildings were flattened — 90% of Hiroshima's doctors, nurses, and medical staff were killed or injured. 'Everything was burned in the city that day. People, birds, dragonflies, grass, trees — everything.' File photo: AP Some 45 hospitals were destroyed or damaged. Medical aid for victims was poor to non-existent. On the bridge where Mitsuko was, a single soldier arrived with a can of rapeseed oil. When that ran out, sump oil from the nearby railway was substituted. Chieko Irieka remembers rubbing 'oil, found in the home economics classroom, onto classmates wounds. They died one after the next. Us older students were instructed by our teachers to dig a hole in the playground. I cremated [my classmates] with my own hands'. Kieko Oguro remembers her father cremating 700 bodies in front of their house, 'even children like me had to carry the bodies'. She was eight years old. The 'Hiroshima Plague' After the fires, the sky turned black and rain 'heavy as mud' fell. No one warned the rain would be lethal and radioactive. Wilfred Birchett, an intrepid Australian journalist, slipped his American handlers in Tokyo, and took a 22-hour train journey to Hiroshima 'unarmed, carrying rations for seven meals, a black umbrella and a Baby Hermes typewriter'. He was the first outsider. As The New York Times assured: 'No radioactivity in Hiroshima ruin.' He saw women die in impossibly overcrowded hospitals, with hair fallen out in a halo around their heads, and blood pouring from their mouths. 'The Hiroshima Plague', or radiation sickness, had taken hold. The building on the right was preserved as the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. File photo: Keystone/Getty Images Hundreds died. Women miscarried still born babies, white as candles. People who were well one minute, were dead the next. Burchett's reports for the Daily Express: 'Hiroshima does not look like a bombed city. It looks as if a monster steamroller had passed over it and squashed it out of existence.' It shocked the world. Maybe nuclear war wasn't such a brilliant idea after all? The Americans, still busy patting themselves on the back, saying 'our bomb did the job!', bustled in with their dollars and their scientists. Every record, photo, and lab test carried out by Japanese doctors since August 6 was confiscated. America would take over. There was no such thing as radiation sickness. There was no such thing as the 'Hiroshima Plague'. Stuff and nonsense. These were 'surface burns', nothing more. By 1945's end, 140,000 people were dead — Almost half of Hiroshima's population. The atom bomb's lethal kiss didn't stop there. Generations of women, mothers and grandmothers exposed in Hiroshima — or Nagasaki, where the Americans dropped a second bomb titled 'Fat Boy', because the Japanese weren't surrendering fast enough, three days after Hiroshima — suffered from leukemia, cancerous cataracts, cancerous tumours, kidney failure, and skin cancers. Not to mention nightmares. A Japanese man pushes his loaded bicycle down a path that had been cleared of rubble after the atomic bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. File photo: AP Shamefully, the Hibakushas weren't treated brilliantly. Even by their own. 'People ostracised us. They said we women gave birth to monsters. And the men were sterile.' Many hid their history for fear of social isolation. The government, a bit like our own miserable lot, granted them a pension and free medical care. In 1982, the Hibakushas were invited to the UN to meet the scientists who'd devised the monstrosity that had obliterated their reality. One recalled being asked if she 'held a grudge against America', against the people who'd created the bomb? Somewhat wryly, she told the questioner at first she felt 'a tremendous grudge', but now she is simply determined to keep telling her story. She wants no one else in the world to have to go through what she and the people of Hiroshima did. 'Many Hibakusha died without being able to talk about these things, or their bitterness over the bombing. They couldn't speak, so I speak,' says Emiko Okada. All say the same: They must keep living to tell the horror of what happened. To see that it never happens again. To anyone, ever.
ABC News
3 days ago
- General
- ABC News
Tsutomu Yamaguchi: The man who survived both atomic bombs
There are not many people who have survived a nuclear attack. There is only one person who officially survived two. On this day, 80 years ago, young engineer Tsutomu Yamaguchi was telling his boss about the horrors he had seen in the Japanese city of Hiroshima when the room went blindingly white. "I thought the mushroom cloud had followed me from Hiroshima," he told UK Newspaper, The Independent. Yamaguchi was an engineer with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries when the United States dropped atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yamaguchi, then 29, was in Hiroshima for a business trip when the bomb known as 'Little Boy' was deployed, killing tens of thousands in a flash, and leaving scores with burns so severe their skin draped off their bodies. The young engineer was around 3 kilometres from ground zero and suffered temporary blindness and deafness in one eardrum. After staying in a bomb shelter the first night with other survivors, he quickly made his way back to his hometown of Nagasaki. Then on August 9, 1945, he went to work and told his colleagues about the horrors he saw. "When they realised that I had returned from Hiroshima, everyone gathered around me and said, 'I'm glad you're alive,' and 'great that you have survived,'" he recounted to Japanese broadcaster NHK. But his boss did not believe him. "He replied, 'you're badly injured, aren't you? Your head must be damaged too. I can't believe what you're saying. How could a single bomb destroy such a vast area like Hiroshima?'" Just at that moment, the United States dropped its second atomic bomb, known as 'Fat Man', killing some 40,000 people instantly. "I immediately recognised it as an atomic bomb," he told NHK. "I hid under a desk right away." The city of Nagasaki will pause today to remember the atomic blast that inflicted so much horror on the unsuspecting city. Within months, 74,000 people were dead after radiation sickness took hold. The bombing of Nagasaki is often overshadowed by the deadlier and earlier attack on Hiroshima, which killed some 140,000 people by year's end. Part of the tragedy of Nagasaki is it was not the original intended target. Two B-29 bombers were sent to destroy the industrial city of Kokura, which was a major hub for ammunition manufacturing. But the city was hidden under cloud cover, so the pilots diverted to their secondary target: Nagasaki. About 165 people are thought to have survived both atomic blasts, known as nijyuu hibakusha. But Yamaguchi is the only person to be officially recognised by the local governments of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For decades, he kept his unique story under wraps and worked a blue-collar job. Many atomic bomb survivors, known as hibakusha, feel compelled to speak out, hoping their experiences will spur the world to abandon nuclear weapons. But the family of Yamaguchi feared he looked too healthy, which would undermine the message of survivors. "My entire family opposed it," his daughter Toshiko Yamasaki explained at a peace conference in 2011. "If my father, who had survived two atomic bombings, engaged in peace activities, people might think, 'even after being exposed to radiation twice, he's still healthy, so the atomic bomb isn't scary.'" But Yamaguchi did suffer a lifetime of health problems, as is often the case for hibakusha due to radiation exposure. "My father had cataracts, was deaf in one ear, suffered from leukopenia, lost his hair for 15 years after the war, and had after-effects from burns," Toshiko explained. His family endured sickness, too. His wife and son died of cancer. It was only in his final decade that Yamaguchi started to speak more openly, hoping his ordeal would help in the fight against nuclear weapons. "I have walked and crawled through the bottom of hell," he told the ABC in 2009. "I should be dead. But it was my fate to keep on living." Irish journalist David McNeill was one of the last journalists to interview him before his death. "What struck me was how modest he was," he explained. "Like many hibakusha, he really didn't want to discuss his extraordinary life. He had to be pressed into it because he thought he was better off than many of the people who surrounded him, who were getting sick and dying from cancer." Yamaguchi died in 2010, aged 93. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were one of the final and most devastating acts of World War II. After the first nuclear attack, Japan would still not surrender, instead deciding to send a fact-finding team to the city after communications went dark. The second attack on Nagasaki was part of the American strategy to make Japan believe it had unlimited supplies of such bombs. Many historians argue the Soviet Union declaring war on Japan was more influential in securing Japan's surrender, as it suddenly exposed its entire unprotected north. Making a single uranium bomb that exploded over Hiroshima was incredibly challenging and chewed up much of the budget and resourcing of the multi-year Manhattan Project. Japan knew how challenging it would be. But the United States had also developed a plutonium bomb — far easier and cheaper than a uranium bomb. This is what detonated over Nagasaki. And the commander of the Manhattan Project boasted the United States could then create two or three atomic bombs a month to assist in the planned land invasion of Japan, scheduled for November 1945. "They had the capacity to make two or three bombs a month by that point," Professor Mordecai Sheftall from Shizuoka explains. "Because the plutonium production facilities in Hanford, Washington State, were going at full tilt." Japan finally surrendered on August 15, but only after the emperor intervened and broke a deadlock in his war council. The army still wanted to fight on. There are few hibakusha left old enough to remember the blasts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But the survivors are still determined to keep telling their stories. After all, those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. "As a double atomic bomb survivor, I experienced the bomb twice," Yamaguchi told The Independent in 2010. "I sincerely hope that there will not be a third."
ABC News
4 days ago
- Politics
- ABC News
80 years since Hiroshima the nuclear threat is on the rise
Japan has marked 80 years since the Americans dropped 'Little Boy' on the city of Hiroshima which killed 80,000 and changed global power dynamics forever. Nuclear expert Ankit Panda says we have entered a new threat level, and policies of nuclear deterrence are no longer enough to deal with the increasing prospect of nuclear escalation. GUEST: Ankit Panda, Stanton Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of The New Nuclear Age: At the Precipice of Armageddon, published by Polity. Ankit Panda, Stanton Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of The New Nuclear Age: At the Precipice of Armageddon, published by Polity. PRODUCER: Catherine Zengerer *This program first appeared on 12 March 2025
News18
5 days ago
- General
- News18
‘The Mushroom Cloud...': The Only Man Who Survived Both Hiroshima And Nagasaki Atomic Bombs
Tsutomu Yamaguchi survived both Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings in 1945 and was officially recognised as the sole double survivor of the blasts On August 6, 1945, near the end of the Second World War, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb ever used in warfare on Hiroshima, Japan. The blast instantly killed nearly 80,000 people. Three days later, on August 9, a second atomic bomb struck Nagasaki, causing around 40,000 deaths. Remarkably, one man survived both attacks: Tsutomu Yamaguchi. Officially recognised as the only survivor of both bombings, Tsutomu Yamaguchi passed away in 2010 at the age of 93. Who Was Tsutomu Yamaguchi? At the time of the Hiroshima bombing, Tsutomu Yamaguchi was 29 years old and working as an engineer for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. He was on a three-month business trip in Hiroshima, with August 6 marking his last day in the city. Over the summer, he and his colleagues had been working on plans for a new oil tanker. Eager to return to his wife, Hisako, and young son, Katsutoshi, Tsutomu Yamaguchi was preparing to leave the city. How Did He Survive Hiroshima? On the morning of August 6, Tsutomu Yamaguchi saw an American B-29 bomber release a small object attached to a parachute, the atomic bomb known as 'Little Boy'. Moments later, a bright magnesium flash lit the sky. Tsutomu Yamaguchi jumped into a ditch for cover but was lifted into the air and thrown into a nearby potato field by the blast. When he regained consciousness, the once bright morning had turned dark, his face and hands badly burnt, and his eardrums ruptured. Ash fell heavily as a mushroom cloud hovered over the devastated city. He made his way to the Mitsubishi shipyard ruins, where he found two colleagues, Akira Iwanaga and Kuniyoshi Sato, who had also survived. That night, they sheltered in an air raid bunker, and the next day, hearing the railway station was operational, they left Hiroshima. How Did He Survive Nagasaki? Despite severe injuries, Tsutomu Yamaguchi returned home and was treated at a local hospital on August 8. His wounds were so severe that his family initially did not recognise him; his mother even mistook him for a ghost due to his bandaged appearance and fever. Remarkably, on August 9, he got out of bed and went to work at Mitsubishi's Nagasaki office. During a meeting, as he recounted the Hiroshima bombing, the sky suddenly lit with a bright white glow. Tsutomu Yamaguchi fell to the ground just before the shockwave shattered the office windows, scattering glass and debris. Later, he told The Independent, 'I felt the mushroom cloud was following me from Hiroshima." Official Recognition And Legacy In 2009, a year before his death, Tsutomu Yamaguchi stated, 'My double radiation exposure is now an official government record. It can educate the younger generation about the horrific history of atomic bombings after my death." Tsutomu Yamaguchi passed away in 2010 from stomach cancer at 93. While it is believed around 165 people experienced both bombings, Tsutomu Yamaguchi remains the only person officially recognised by the Japanese government as a ' Niju Hibakusha ', that is, a person affected by both bombs. Japan is the only country to have suffered atomic bomb attacks. According to The Washington Post, roughly 140,000 people died in Hiroshima and 70,000 in Nagasaki. Get breaking news, in-depth analysis, and expert perspectives on everything from geopolitics to diplomacy and global trends. Stay informed with the latest world news only on News18. Download the News18 App to stay updated! tags : atomic bomb General Knowledge hiroshima hiroshima and nagasaki hiroshima atomic bomb japan Nagasaki Nagasaki bombing Nuclear bombs Second World War view comments Location : Japan First Published: August 07, 2025, 11:28 IST News world 'The Mushroom Cloud...': The Only Man Who Survived Both Hiroshima And Nagasaki Atomic Bombs Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Irish Independent
5 days ago
- General
- Irish Independent
‘Little children like me had to carry the bodies' – Hiroshima survivors urge world not to forget, 80 years on
She remembers the moment the bomb fell: Hiroshima flattened in an instant, as if a giant had stomped the city into the ground. 'Buildings were crushed, and fires broke out everywhere. That night, Hiroshima burned. The entire city kept burning through the night.' Ms Ogura's family had moved a year earlier to the far side of a small hill just outside the city centre – a decision, made by her father to avoid air raids, that ultimately saved their lives. The hill stood between their home and the bomb's hypocentre, shielding them from the full force of the blast. Scenes of horror surrounded Ms Ogura in the days after the bombing. Survivors had leapt into Hiroshima's seven rivers to escape the fires, but many drowned or died from their injuries. She remembers the waterways choked with bodies – some drifting downstream, others washing back with the tide, missing limbs and swarmed by flies. Mass cremations became part of daily life. In front of her home alone, her father cremated around 700 people. 'Even little children like me had to help lift and carry bodies on straw mats,' she recalled in a video published by the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. Nearly eight decades later, those memories remain vivid, etched with scenes of unbearable pain and incalculable loss. For Ms Ogura, they are more than personal recollections. They are warnings. Warnings, she says, that the world must never allow itself to forget. Hiroshima Day, observed each year on August 6, commemorates one of the most devastating moments in human history, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima by the US in 1945, during the final days of World War II. That morning, a US B-29 bomber named Enola Gay dropped a uranium-based atomic bomb, nicknamed Little Boy, that detonated about 600 metres above the city. ADVERTISEMENT Learn more The explosion unleashed a ferocious blast, scorching heat and lethal radiation, instantly killing 70,000 to 80,000 people. In the days and months that followed, tens of thousands more died from injuries and radiation sickness. The city was flattened, and survivors – known as hibakusha – endured long-term health effects and psychological trauma. The Nobel Peace Prize had renewed their determination to campaign for nuclear disarmament Three days later, the US dropped a second bomb, Fat Man, over Nagasaki. These bombings marked the first and only use of nuclear weapons in war and led to Japan's surrender on August 15, 1945, bringing World War II to an end. The atomic bombings killed more than 210,000 people. Hiroshima and Nagasaki stand as lasting reminders not only of the immense human tragedy that unfolded, but of the profound danger nuclear weapons pose to humanity in today's fractured world. In the years since 1945, survivors, activists and global leaders have repeatedly invoked the devastation as a stark plea for disarmament and a cautionary lesson for generations to come. Last year, survivors of the bombings said that receiving the Nobel Peace Prize had renewed their determination to campaign for nuclear disarmament. 'I felt like I needed to work even harder on what I had done so far,' said Terumi Tanaka, who survived the atomic attack on Nagasaki. Mr Tanaka (93) spoke at a press conference in Tokyo last year following his return from Oslo, where he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of Nihon Hidankyo, the organisation of Japanese atomic bomb survivors. 'I believe it is important to focus on the next 10 years and strengthen the movement moving forward,' he added. 'I would like to lead a big movement of testimonials.' On Monday, Mr Tanaka said: 'I believe a nuclear war could happen in the near future. Most young people today may not know how many nuclear weapons exist. There are 12,000 nuclear warheads. 'One warhead is 2,000 times more powerful than the bombs 80 years ago.' Last year, Michiko Kodama, who survived the Hiroshima bombing, said: 'We hibakusha who saw the hell... within a decade won't be around to tell the reality of the atomic bombing. I want to keep telling our stories as long as we live.' My father heard many people calling for help. There were heaps of bodies too Ms Kodama was seven years old in August 1945. Another survivor, Fumi Takeshita (80), said: 'I saw an extremely strong light coming in from the window. It was white, or shall I say yellow? So strong that I couldn't keep my eyes open. 'It was the day after the bomb dropped. My father walked through the hypocentre, the Urakami area, and heard many people calling for help. There were heaps of bodies too. 'Buildings were crashed to the ground and there was nothing left, apparently. I heard that from my grandmother. She said, 'Fumi-chan, remember the light you saw the other day? Because of that, there is nothing left in Urakami, and many people died'.' While Ms Takeshita painfully recalls the devastation in the aftermath of the atomic bombing, other survivors have also borne the weight of their memories for decades. Despite battling numerous health issues, Kunihiko Iida (83) has dedicated his retirement to sharing his story in the hope of advancing the cause of nuclear disarmament. Mr Iida volunteers as a guide at Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park, determined to raise awareness among foreign visitors, who he believes often lack a full understanding of the bombings. He tried to scream 'Mommy, help!' on that day in August, 1945, but no sound came out, he recalled. He was eventually rescued by his grandfather. Within a month, his mother (25) and four-year-old sister died after suffering nosebleeds, skin problems, and extreme fatigue – symptoms of radiation exposure. Mr Iida experienced similar effects throughout elementary school, but slowly recovered. It wasn't until he was nearly 60 that he returned to the peace park at the bombing site. His elderly aunt asked him to go with her, and he finally agreed. It was his first visit since that terrible day. 'The only path to peace is nuclear weapons' abolishment. There is no other way,' Mr Iida said. As the survivors grow older, their warnings also feel more urgent. As of March 31 this year, Japan's ministry of health, labour and welfare reported that there were only 99,130 people officially recognised as hibakusha. Their calls for a nuclear-free world have yet to be realised. Instead, rising global tensions have brought back fears of a nuclear war. As the world holds events and talks of nuclear disarmament and a future free of atomic weapons, the question still looms: Have the powers that be deliberately made nuclear disarmament a distant dream in today's world? Is the dream of a nuclear-free world further out of reach? And in the process, are we beginning to forget the horrors that hibakusha like Ms Ogura endured? On Monday, Norwegian Nobel Committee chair Jorgen Frydnes said: 'I don't think fear [of nuclear weapons] is the solution to our problems. 'The hibakusha clearly show that it is possible, even though in a situation of pain, sorrow and grief, to choose peace, and that's the message we want the world to listen to.'
