Hiroshima
Gérard Rancinan
60th anniversary of the Hiroshima atomic bomb And then there was light … … so cruel, so murderous, so lethal.
8.15a.m., Monday, August 6, 1945. “Little Boy” starts to fall from the radiant summer sky. The atom bomb explodes 580 meters above Hiroshima. Then, the unimaginable happens: the “Devil’s Smile”, a blinding flash of unparalleled intensity, an immense inferno, a 10,000° centigrade ball of fire 380 metres in diameter, a gargantuan 1,500 km/h wind, a 1000 km/h shockwave, a city wiped from the face of the earth, and 200,000 people destroyed in 9 seconds.
Preview
Hiroshima reduced to ashes, cinders, screams, agony, corpses, the remains of men and howling ghosts, arms raised, irradiated with pain. And then, it began, a black rain – dense and oily – which fell until the evening, showering radioactive material onto the last survivors, who, racked with thirst, their skins flayed, drank in this death from the sky. We found them, “the irradiated ones”. They are the last “hibakusha”.
Excerpt from the report on Hiroshima by Virginie Luc & Caroline Gaudriault. Published in Paris Match, Stern, Time Magazine, Sunday Times Magazine, OGGI, Hola & others.
