Summary
Highlights
For some, forgetting is a coping mechanism, but for others, remembering is a duty. Every August 6th at 8:15 AM, Hiroshima observes a moment of silence, welcoming people from around the world to celebrate peace. Survivors like Mr. Tsuboi dedicate their lives to sharing their stories, viewing their survival as a rebirth and a mission to teach the true value of peace. Through their testimonies and Matsushige's iconic photographs, the world is reminded of the 210,000 victims of the atomic bombs, ensuring that humanity never again experiences the hell of nuclear warfare.
On August 6, 1945, from the island of Tinian, the atomic bomb "Little Boy" is loaded onto a B-29 bomber. This top-secret weapon, costing billions and made by thousands, is destined for Hiroshima, Japan. Colonel Paul Tibbets and his elite team are unaware of their exact target, though Hiroshima, a vital logistical base with 40,000 soldiers, is a possibility. Photographer Yoshito Matsushige will be the only one to capture the immediate aftermath on film.
At 8:15 AM on August 6, 1945, "Little Boy" explodes 2,000 feet over Hiroshima, the hypocenter. A gamma-ray flash instantly kills all living beings in its path. A 6,000-degree Celsius fireball forms, carbonizing everyone and everything. A shockwave, almost 1,000 mph, devastates 60,000 buildings. A mushroom cloud rises seven and a half miles high. Survivors like Sunao Tsuboi and Mitsuko Kouchi are miraculously shielded, but 70,000 others are dead. Ninety percent of the city is flattened, and massive fires rage.
Yoshito Matsushige, a 32-year-old newspaper photographer, is less than two miles from ground zero during the blast. After his home is damaged, he retrieves his camera and heads towards the city center. Unable to penetrate the fiery destruction, he reroutes to Miyuki Bridge. Overwhelmed by the horrific scene, he struggles to take photos for 20 minutes, eventually capturing two images three hours after the blast. These are the first-ever photos depicting atomic bomb victims, showing their unimaginable suffering and sealing Matsushige's role in history.
Matsushige's photos, initially forbidden due to wartime censorship, were salvaged and restored in the 1970s. An in-depth investigation identifies some of the survivors in the photos, now in their 80s, and gathers testimonies from ten other eyewitnesses. Advanced 3-D reconstruction techniques reveal new details, bringing the harrowing scene on Miyuki Bridge to life and helping understand the events that unfolded within the mushroom cloud. The Miyuki Bridge, a mile and a half from the hypocenter, served as a crucial escape route from the fires, earning it the moniker, "the bridge between life and death."
Mitsuko Kouchi, a 13-year-old schoolgirl, appears in both of Matsushige's photos, wearing a scarf from her cousin. She was working at a postal savings bank near ground zero when the bomb hit, enduring flying glass injuries. Critically burned, she and five other girls made their way to Miyuki Bridge. Mitsuko recalls the silent, monstrous figures, many burned beyond recognition. She vividly remembers a woman screaming while cradling her charred, dead child, an image that haunted Mitsuko for 70 years.
Mr. Tsuboi, another identified survivor in the photos, was 20 years old and three-quarters of a mile from ground zero. Radiation severely burned his face and back. On Miyuki Bridge, he witnesses people applying rapeseed oil, then sump oil, to their horrific burns. He sees people succumbing to their injuries. Believing he would die, and fearing he wouldn't be identified, he scratched "Tsuboi is dying here" on the bridge with a stone, a testament to his lonely despair amidst the chaos.
Many of the victims on Miyuki Bridge appear to be children or teenagers in school uniforms. Due to the war, children as young as 12 or 13 were drafted into various duties. In Hiroshima, they were assigned to demolish buildings to create firebreaks, placing them within a mile of ground zero. Professor Keiko Otani's research confirms that 22% of Hiroshima's victims were adolescents, primarily 13-14 years old. Chiyoko Kuwabara, 13, was injured while working and fled to Miyuki Bridge, remembering the children's desperate desire to go home.
As fires approach Miyuki Bridge, it becomes a literal border between life and death. Military vehicles arrive, but 22-year-old cadet Goro Takeuchi is ordered to prioritize soldiers, deeming women, children, and the elderly as weak and unimportant. This policy leads to scenes of heart-wrenching desperation, as a little girl begging for help is rebuffed by a stern voice, and then rushes back into the blazing city, never to be seen again. This order, initially understood as logical for the war effort, ultimately revealed its inhumanity to the soldiers present.
Rie Kutsuki's family identified her Uncle Akira, a young boy with a shaven head, in Matsushige's photos. Akira, at school during the blast, was swept along to Miyuki Bridge but never returned home. His family found solace and pain in seeing him in the photograph. His story illustrates the countless individuals who vanished in the chaos, a stark reminder of the indiscriminate cruelty of war and the atomic bomb, where identifying individual fates became impossible amidst mass death.
Dr. Harada, an emergency medicine specialist, and Professor Hasai, a physicist, analyze the victims' burns in Matsushige's photos. The burns were uniquely deep and severe due to direct radiation exposure on lightly dressed summer bodies. The skin would blister, burst, and peel away, leaving exposed flesh and agonizing pain. Mitsuko Kouchi's father's skin peeled off his hand "like grilling fish." These horrific radiation burns led to distinctive keloid scarring, a symptom seen in almost all burn victims from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The scale of these burns was initially suppressed by the US government to avoid frightening the public about nuclear power.
Four days after the blast, a strange sickness emerges: vomiting, bleeding, flesh decomposition, and hair loss – the "Hiroshima plague," revealing the effects of radioactivity. Women suffer premature births, and military cadet Takeuchi delivers stillborn, white-skinned babies. Survivors, known as "hibakusha," face not only physical ailments like cancers and leukemia but also social ostracization. Feared and stigmatized, many hid their status to protect their families, adding another layer of suffering to their trauma.