Voices From Hiroshima

Dropped from a plane, the bomb exploded 2,000 feet above the city. First came an intensely bright flash that one witness said looked like “a sheet of sun.” The ground temperature directly below the blast surged to 7,000 degrees Fahrenheit, wiping out everyone and everything there. An immense shock wave roared for miles in every direction, shredding buildings and trees into splinters. Then the sky went dark and a tar-like mix of ashes, radioactive materials, and water began to fall—what survivors call “the black rain.”

Three days later, a second atomic bomb was dropped on another Japanese city, Nagasaki. Again, devastation reigned. No one knows exactly how many people were killed instantly in the two attacks. By some estimates, at least 120,000 people perished.

Those two blasts were the first—and only—time nuclear weapons have been used in war. And the United States was the nation that dropped them.

Japan and the U.S. were both embroiled in World War II. Japan was one of the Axis powers, which included Germany and Italy. The U.S., which joined the fighting in 1941, sided with Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and other Allied powers.

Nearly every nation was involved in the conflict, and the millions of men who were fighting, and dying, came from every continent except Antarctica. Some 60 million people, most of them civilians, had been killed.

But by May 1945, an end to the war began to seem possible. Germany and Italy had surrendered. Only one major Axis power remained in the fight: Japan.

Meanwhile, scientists in the U.S. had developed a new weapon, called an atomic bomb. The device used a radioactive element to spark an immensely powerful nuclear explosion.

U.S. President Harry S. Truman had two main options for ending the war: send U.S. troops to invade Japan or use the atomic bomb. An invasion would kill many thousands of people on both sides; the atomic bomb, many thousands on only one side. Truman chose the bomb.

At the time, no one knew what the full impact of a nuclear weapon would be. It was far worse than anyone could have imagined.

In the weeks, months, and years following the blasts, tens of thousands of survivors died from burns and radiation poisoning, or gave birth to deformed children. The bombings also ruined Japan’s economy. Severe shortages of food and other goods lasted for years. And to this day, many survivors continue to develop radiation-related illnesses.

The survivors are known as hibakusha (hee-buh-koo-shuh). Many are now in their 90s. They don’t want their stories to die with them, so they have been speaking out in hopes that people will listen. They want the world to understand how lethal nuclear weapons are—and to ensure that such weapons are never used again. These efforts earned Nihon Hidankyo, a group of hibakusha, the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize.

Here are remembrances by six hibakusha—eyewitnesses to one of the most destructive events in history.