This rare photo of the Hiroshima mushroom cloud was taken on August 6, 1945. The Hiroshima bombing claimed approximately 120,000 lives and the subsequent leveling of Nagasaki annihilated 80,000. The US military strategists have long held that these two attacks saved over a million US troops by forcing the Japanese Empire to surrender to the Allies.
My Uncle Russ went to Hiroshima a month after the blast. He took a train from Tokyo.
“Everything was gone. There was nothing left. Sometimes you’d see someone wandering in the streets, but there was nothing there.”
Everyone had been turned into shadows.