Amid the death and destruction, some combination of luck or destiny or smarts saved them-and therefore saved the voices that can still tell the world what it looks like when human beings find new and terrible ways to destroy one another. For the survivors of those ruined cities, the coming of the bomb was a personal event before it was a global one. As TIME noted in the week following the bombings, the men aboard the Enola Gay could only summon two words: “My God!”īut, even as world leaders and ordinary citizens alike immediately began struggling to process the metaphorical aftershocks, one specific set of people had to face something else. New frontiers of science were opening, along with new and frightening moral questions.
World War II would end, and the Cold War soon begin. 6, 1945, and Nagasaki three days later-was that rare historical moment that requires little hindsight to gain its significance.
The decision by the United States to drop the world’s first atomic weapons on two Japanese cities-Hiroshima first, on Aug. When the nuclear age began, there was no mistaking it. Photographs by HARUKA SAKAGUCHI | Introduction By LILY ROTHMAN Survivors of the Atomic Blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki share their stories
