The New Yorker’s 1946 special report on the aftermath of the first atomic bomb attack is clear-eyed and dispassionate, and all the more powerful for that
A quiet hysteria buzzed through Hiroshima in the summer of 1945. The Americans had been firebombing Japan for weeks, and it was one of only two key cities they had not yet hit. B-29 Superfortresses were stationed north-east of Hiroshima and had been flying ominously overhead – locals called these planes B-san or Mr B. “The frequency of the warnings and the continued abstinence of Mr B with respect to Hiroshima had made its citizens jittery,” wrote the New Yorker’s John Hersey. “A rumour was going around that the Americans were saving something special for the city.”
And then it came. At 8.15am on 6 August, Little Boy was dropped over Hiroshima. More than 100,000 people died, instantly or in the atomic bomb’s aftermath. “Such clouds had risen that there was a sort of twilight around … The day grew darker and darker,” Hersey wrote. A different sort of darkness would linger in Hiroshima.
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