Sixty-six years after the atomic bomb was dropped, survivor Keijiro Matsushima tells of a day of death and destruction.
Sixty-six years ago, Hiroshima was turned into a burning inferno as the Americans dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city.
Keijiro Matsushima was 16 years old when he witnessed the attack which claimed roughly 100,000 lives in one day.
He recalls how August 6, 1945, was a beautiful day, with a blue sky. Matsushima had returned to school only a week earlier, after he and his peers were mobilised to work for a year and a half in a factory producing military uniforms.
At 8.15 in the morning, his class had just started. He was listening to his teacher explaining a question on differential and integral calculus.
"I was looking out through the window and saw two American B-29 bombers. I just thought 'American planes again', assuming they were out for some routine work."
When he looked back at his books, the bomb exploded.
"There was a very strong flash and a heat wave. The whole world turned into something orange. I felt like I was thrown into an oven for a moment".
Later, he learned that temperatures on the ground near the hypocentre, 2km from his school, had reached at least 3,000 degrees centigrade.
No comments:
Post a Comment