A Survivor of the Nagasaki Bombing in 1945

A smiling face in such dismal surroundings, no one yet truly understood what had been done.

The miracle survivors of the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings have become known as the Hibakusha, meaning “explosion affected people” in Japanese. One survivor who was a little girl at the time, explained her experience, “I saw a bright blast, and I saw yellow and silver and orange and all sorts of colors that I can’t explain. Those colors came and attacked us, and the ceiling beams of the wooden school along with the glass from the window pane all shattered and blew away all at once.”

The bombs killed over 100,000 people, and the Hibukashi continue to tell the story of the horrors they saw and are proponents of peace, as they are afraid that with time people will forget of the horrors of nuclear warfare.

This photo was taken by Yōsuke Yamahata.

Yamahata was born in Singapore; his father, Shōgyoku Yamahata had a job there related to photography. He went to Tokyo in 1925 and eventually started at Hosei University (Tokyo) but dropped out in 1936 to work in G. T. Sun, a photographic company run by his father. (He would become its president in 1947.) From 1940, Yamahata worked as a military photographer in China and elsewhere in Asia outside Japan; he returned to Japan in 1942.

On August 10, 1945, a day after the Nagasaki bombing, Yamahata began to photograph the devastation, still working as a military photographer. Over a period of about twelve hours he took around a hundred exposures; by late afternoon, he had taken his final photographs near a first aid station north of the city. In a single day, he had completed the only extensive photographic record of the immediate aftermath of the atomic bombing of either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. These photographs appeared swiftly, for example in the August 21 issue of Mainichi Shinbun.

Yamahata became violently ill in 1965, on his forty-eighth birthday and the twentieth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. He was diagnosed with terminal cancer of the duodenum, probably caused by the residual effects of radiation received in Nagasaki in 1945. He is buried at Tama Cemetery, Tokyo.

70 Years After the Atomic Bombs: Pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Then and Now

On August 6, 1945, the US dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, killing about 140,000 by the end of the year, out of the 350,000 who lived in the city. Three days later, a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Below are 15 vintage pictures of the aftermath of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings and pictures of the same locations today.

On 6 August, 1945, a US plane dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the first nuclear weapon has been used in war. Japan surrendered on Aug. 15, ending World War II. The Atomic Bomb Dome, now a UN World Heritage Site, has become the iconic image of Hiroshima. In this 1 July, 2015 photo, a visitor photographs the Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima, western Japan. (AP)

Two people walk on a cleared path through the destruction resulting from the 6 August detonation of the first atomic bomb in Hiroshima, western Japan. (AP)

A new city rose from the ashes, however, and it is now a buzzing modern metropolis. (AP Photo)

In this 8 August, 1945 file photo, soldiers and civilians walk through the grim remains of Hiroshima, two days after the atomic bomb explosion of 6 August, 1945. The building on left with columned facade was the Hiroshima Bank. To its right, with arched front entrance, was the Sumitomo Bank. (AP)

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Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Haunting Black and White Photos From the Ruins in 1945

On August 6, 1945, during World War II (1939-45), an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion wiped out 90 percent of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure.

Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Japan’s Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s unconditional surrender in World War II in a radio address on August 15, citing the devastating power of “a new and most cruel bomb.”

Urakami Cathedral (Roman Catholic), Nagasaki, September, 1945.

Nagasaki, September, 1945.

Hiroshima streetcar, September, 1945.

A photo album, pieces of pottery, a pair of scissors — shards of life strewn on the ground in Nagasaki, 1945.

Hiroshima, 1945.

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