The Hiroshima Bombing Through a Child’s Eyes
A little girl recalls her experience surviving the atomic bomb.
The Hiroshima bombing occurred on August 6, 1945. The United States became the only country ever to use nuclear weapons against another nation.
The Death Toll of the Hiroshima Bombing
The atomic bomb killed 247,000 people. Nearly all were civilians, and many were women and children, as most of the men were away fighting the war.
Some victims of the Hiroshima bombing died in the initial blast, some died later because of injuries and burns received, and some died weeks or months afterward from radiation poisoning — a slow, painful death.
A Professor Collects Hiroshima Survivors’ Stories
In 1951, six years after the Hiroshima bombing, a Japanese professor named Arata Osada sought children and teenagers who experienced the bombing of Hiroshima firsthand and asked them to write out detailed accounts of what they remembered.
He then collected these accounts into a book and published it in Japan. In 1980, the book was translated into English and published in the United States under the title Children of Hiroshima.
