I have to make correction and clarification to the figure I wrote on the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb casualties. 220,000 is the number of casualties within 5 years after the bombing. Probably 150,000 people died instantly on the day of the bombing (I have to check the statistic first!!). Anyway, numbers are nothing compared to the suffering. I watched on Discovery Channel last Monday (half way through though). It was an event that no human being should experience in their lifetime. It was a lesson for every human being. It was just too much to bear even after 61 years. Nuclear War is not a solution. It will only lead to destruction of human being. With the wars around the world, we are not far from that.

Story from Hiroshima (http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/index_e2.html):

Hey look, a Parachute!

The eerie air-raid warning wailed like a curse from the bottom of the soul. We struggled in and out of the shelter several times, but finally another night of terror faded into dawn. The dawn of August 6, 1945.The day arrived burning hot. We were living in Daiya-cho at the time, and it was my turn to represent our neighborhood as a volunteer demolishing buildings for fire lanes. My husband, who worked for the Chugoku Shimbun (our local daily newspaper), had rushed to work when the air-raid warning sounded. He was still not home. I was so tired I had to force myself to eat breakfast. My husband would probably get home first, so I set the table and put his lunch out before I left.We were to assemble at 7:30. The volunteer group was mostly women; one was in her sixties. We had been under an air-raid warning since early morning, but that had become a daily routine. We felt no particular fear. The warning was lifted on the way.Our job was clearing away debris left by demolition work in Tsurumi-cho. Due to start at 8:00, we crossed the Tsurumi Bridge in a line. About 30 meters after crossing the bridge, we heard the sharp buzzing sound of an airplane. We were used to the contradiction of enemy planes overhead just after an all-clear siren. We couldn't quite tell how high it was, but the silvery wings reflecting the fierce rays of the sun glinted blindingly. An airplane as pretty as a silver treasure slowly flying from east to west in the cloudless, pure blue sky, emitting a gentle drone. I watched it for awhile with my hand shading my eyes.Somewhere, a voice said, "Hey look, it's a parachute! A parachute is falling." I instinctively looked where the person pointed. That's when it happened. Just where I was looking, the sky exploded with an indescribable light. It was like fire burning my eyes. I could say it was like the strange bluish-purple sparks that burst above streetcars at night, only a hundred billion times brighter. But that wouldn't be right either.I don't know which came first, the light or the deafening roar that echoed in the pit of my stomach, but I was instantly thrown hard to the ground. At the same time, things were raining down on my head and shoulders. Everything was pitch black. I could see nothing. I remember thinking that the event I had been preparing for every day for so long had finally arrived.Just then, the three children that I had sent to the countryside appeared clearly before my eyes. With a sudden irresistible impulse I struggled forcefully to get up. I threw off pieces of wood and roof tile one after another, but they kept falling and piling up on me. I couldn't get free. "I can't die. What will the children do? My husband may be dead. I have to get out of here. . . ." I desperately clawed my way out.I noticed a foul smell in the air I was breathing. "Must have been an incendiary phosphor bomb." I absentmindedly wiped my face and nose with the towel still stuck in my waistband. That was when I first knew something was wrong with my face. When I wiped it, the skin peeled off. Oh! My hand! The skin on my right hand, from the second joint to the fingertips, was peeling off and hanging strangely. On my left hand too, the skin was peeling all the way from the wrist to the tips of all five fingers.From the depths of my soul I groaned, "Oh, no. I'm burned." I knew my face must be the same as my hands. When I was desperately fighting off the pieces of wood earlier, I had injured my burned face and hands. "I'm finished," I thought. I sat down right there. Then I noticed that no one was around. Where were all the volunteers in that line with me? Suddenly, driven by a terror that would not permit inaction, I started to run for my life. I say "run," but I had no idea where the road was. Everything was covered in wood and tiles so I had no idea which way to go.Such a bright morning until a moment ago, what in the world could have happened? Now we were under a thin cover of darkness, just like dusk. The dull haze, as if my eyes were covered with mist, made me wonder if I were losing my mind. Looking around unsteadily, I saw something that looked like people running on the bridge."That's Tsurumi Bridge. If I don't get over it right away, I'll lose my chance to escape," I thought. Jumping over trees and rocks like a crazy person, I ran toward Tsurumi Bridge. When I arrived, I saw a horrifying spectacle. Countless bodies squirming and writhing in the flow of people and water under the bridge. Their faces were gray and so swollen I couldn't tell male from female. Hair stood straight up. Arms waved in the air. Voices groaned wordlessly. They were jumping into the river one after another. The strong ray had burned my work pants to rags, and my whole body was in agony, so I was preparing to jump in with them when I remembered that I couldn't swim. I returned to the bridge and crossed it. I shouted encouragement to a girl student who was wandering about aimlessly like a sleepwalker. "Hurry, hurry." When I turned around I saw that the whole city from what I thought was Takeya-cho to Hatchobori was a solid sheet of flames. Calling out the names of my three children in turn, I encouraged myself over and over, saying, "Mother will not die. Mother will be all right." Looking back, I simply cannot remember where or how I ran. But the many pitiful sights I saw on the way are etched in my brain.At one point I saw a person who must have been a mother drenched in bright red blood from her face to her shoulders. Repeatedly calling, "Baby boy, my baby boy!" she was trying with all her strength to rush into a burning house. A man was desperately struggling to hold her back. Like a mad woman she screamed, "Let me go! Let me go, our son will die!" A ghastly scene from the depths of hell.I vaguely sensed that I had followed a streetcar street, so I probably had found my way to the Eastern Drill Grounds by way of Matoba Street. When I crossed Kohjin Bridge (I had no idea what bridge it was at the time), its sturdy railing of concrete and iron was gone, probably blown off. The bridge was extremely unstable. Below the bridge, corpses were floating by like dead dogs and cats, their shreds of clothing dangling like rags. In the shoals near the bank I saw a woman floating face up, her chest gouged out and gushing blood. Could such terrifying sights be of this world? Suddenly, I lost strength and had to sit right in the middle of the drill ground.Even considering the several wrong streets I went down between Tsurumi Bridge and the Eastern Drill Grounds, less than two hours must have passed. The darkness had faded a bit, but the sun remained behind a thick cloud which covered the city with gloom. I gradually became aware that my burns were painful-not the sort of unbearable pain that most burns cause, but a dull pain that seemed to come from some distant place, not my own body. A yellow secretion oozed from both of my hands where the skin was peeled off. It would grow into drops the size of small peas, then drip off. I'm sure my face was equally grotesque. All around me, junior high girls and boys from another volunteer corps writhing on the ground. They seemed crazed, crying, "Mother, mother." As my eyes took in the cruel sight of their burns and gaping wounds, so horrible I couldn't bare to look at them, an enormous rage welled up from deep within, but I didn't know where to direct it. Even these innocent children.... Crying for their mothers, first one, then another breathed his or her last. All I could do was look at them.I gathered all the strength in my flickering body and soul and fell in line with people heading toward the mountains. Probably about 3 pm, having been utterly lethargic for some time, I sat down. As I gazed around with what was left of my eyesight, I could tell that the station and all of Atago-cho had become a sea of fire. I felt lucky to have escaped.Gradually, my face grew stiff. Gently touching my cheeks with both hands, I measured with my eyes the distance between my hands as I took them away and saw that my face had swollen to about twice its normal size. My vision was more and more restricted. "Oh, no, soon I won't be able to see. Could I have come this far only to die here?" I got up and walked around the foot of the mountain until I came out at Hesaka Village. Stretcher after stretcher came by carrying the injured. Carts and trucks drove by full of injured people and corpses that looked more like monsters. On both sides of the road, many people wobbled this way and that, as if sleepwalking. I realized that while I could still see a little I needed to find a safe place where I would not be hit by a truck and could quietly trust myself to fate. Peering here and there through barely open eyes, I saw my own sister squatting and resting. "Sister, sister, help me....." Without thinking I ran toward her. My sister at first looked at me doubtfully. Finally she recognized me. "Futaba-chan, you look......" She couldn't say any more, and just held me."Sister, I can't see any more. Please take me to my children."In a faltering, quivering voice she said, "Don't worry. I won't let you die. I'm taking you home." Then, looking again at my burns, she said, "You poor thing!" Tears falling, she helped me rest on some soft grass. I have never felt more keenly the wondrous blessing of family. If I had not met my sister just then, I don't think I would have survived. She had light injuries on her head and one foot, but was basically fine.Lying next to my sister, perhaps I let down my guard. In any case, I was soon completely blind. I could no longer stand either. The sun had set. Wearing only burned and tattered work pants, I was getting cold. My sister went off and somehow came back with a small vegetable cart. She put me on it and said we were going to the relief station at Yaga Elementary School, over four kilometers away. I think I began to realize that along with my eyesight my strength was waning."I don't want to die. I don't want to die without seeing my children again." I desperately wanted to live. I can't express the hardship my sister must have endured during our two days at that relief station. I was mostly unconscious. I'm told that for two nights I was screaming, "Hurry and take me to my children." The doctor said I was hopeless, and since I was going to die anyway it might as well be with my children. So at my strong request, I was carried on a stretcher and put on a Geibi Line train for home. I arrived at Kamisugi-mura, the home of my relatives, on August 8. The local doctor came immediately to see me but said, "This is very bad," and declared me beyond hope. That evening, my children, who had been sent to stay with other relatives eight kilometers away, arrived at last. When I heard their voices scream, "Mommy!" I felt rescued from the depths of hell."I'm okay. These burns are nothing much." And I cried as the children I had missed so much came and clung to me. From that night, my fourteen-year-old oldest daughter Noriko dressed my face and hands with bandages and never left the side of her immobile mother. On the 11th, four days after returning to the countryside, I was quietly preparing myself to give up and die when my husband arrived, having tracked me down. The children cried tears of joy as they surrounded their father. At that time my suffering was so bad I found brief solace thinking, "Ah, good. Now if they lose their mother they'll still have their father." And I was happy. Then, in the morning of the 13th, three days after finding us, my husband, who had no serious injuries at all, began vomiting blood. Then he was gone, leaving behind a wife unsure she would see another day and his three beloved children. Our little boy sat near my pillow crying, "Mommy." I almost bled with grief, and even now as I recall that time, the tears flow."My poor children. I can't die now. I can't leave them orphans." With all my heart I prayed to the spirit of my husband, asking for help. Over and over, I was told I had no hope, but miraculously, I lived.My eyes opened surprisingly quickly. By about the 20th day, I was able to see my children's faces, but even as summer turned to fall, the burns on my face and hands remained raw and oozing. The flesh looked like ripe, mashed tomatoes. I was unable to form any skin. I finally got up out of my bed in early October. I stood on my own feet and walked again in December. After the new year came I was finally able to take the bandages off, but I was not the person I used to be.The earlobe on my left ear was shrunk to half its normal size. My left cheek, from my mouth to my neck, was bunched and disfigured by keloids the size of my palm. A keloid about 5 centimeters long ran from the second joint on my right hand to my little finger. The fingers of my left hand were webbed and welded together near the root. I was barely recognizable, deformed. I held my three children and wondered how we would get by. The soaring postwar prices and other hardships of that time bore down on us.In April 1947, just before losing our last source of livelihood, we were saved by the Chugoku Shimbun where my husband had worked. I will never forget my joy when they hired me.

Taken from "Bombing Eye-witness Accounts," the first collection of eye-witness accounts published in 1950 by Hiroshima City
The writer, Futaba Kitayama, was 33 at the time of the bombing and was on a street between demolished buildings in Tsurumi-cho, 1,700 meters from the hypocenter.

p/s: I am trying to post some of the photos from the Hiroshima bombing but unable to do so.