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Horror of Hiroshima nuclear bombing haunts survivors after 70 years

A woman visits the Peace Memorial Park to pray for victims of the US atomic bombing in Hiroshima, Japan, August 5, 2015. (© AFP)

Seven decades after the US military’s deadly atomic bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, survivors still recall horrors and suffer from the after-effects of the tragedy.

During the final stage of the World War II, the US dropped the world's first deployed atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively, leaving over 200,000 people dead almost immediately.

The horrible impacts of the bombings made Japan surrender on August 15, 1945, bringing an end to World War II. The blasts also ushered in the Cold War era, a period of heightened tension between the West and the former Soviet Union.

The atomic bombing killed around 140,000 people in Hiroshima, including those who died of radiation exposure or succumbed to their wounds.

The mushroom cloud produced by the nuclear explosion rose to over 60,000 feet in about 10 minutes.

The handout picture taken on August 6, 1945 by US Army and released from Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum shows a mushroom cloud from the US atomic bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima. (© AFP)

 

“It was a white, silvery flash,” Sunao Tsuboi, 90, said of the moment when a B-29 bomber belonging to the US air force dropped a uranium bomb with a destructive force equivalent to 16 kilotons of TNT on Hiroshoma.

“I don’t know why I survived and lived this long,” said Tsuboi. “The more I think about it... the more painful it becomes to recall.”

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Three days after the bombing of Hiroshima, the US military dropped a plutonium bomb on the port city of Nagasaki, killing some 74,000 people.

In the months and years to come, the world’s first nuclear attacks also left thousands of survivors to slow and agonizing deaths from burns and radiation sickness.

Chiyoko Kuwabara, a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing, told Russia’s RT news channel that she still remembers the tragic incident.

“There were corpses all over the place and when a mother would walk looking for her kids she sometimes would hear cries calling ‘mom…mom…’ But even if they look at their children’s faces they couldn’t recognize them. It was the children who recognize their mothers,” Kuwabara said.

In an interview with Australia’s ABC News, Keiko Ogura, another Hiroshima survivor, also called on people to come to the affected Japanese cities to see the aftermath of the US atomic bombing.

“Some people in the world still do not understand the cruelty of nuclear weapons, and that they are absolute evil. This surprises me. I want them to come to Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” she said.

US seeking to erase history

On Wednesday, Russian State Duma chairman Sergey Naryshkin slammed the United States for attempting to erase the memory of the atom bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The handout picture taken on November, 1945 by US Army and released from Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum shows Hiroshima Peace Memorial, commonly called the Atomic Bomb Dome, three months after the US atomic bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima. (© AFP)

 

“It’s a shame that nowadays, American authorities also abuse both the trust built on the part of Russia after the end of the Cold War, and the compassion they received from all mankind after the 9/11 terror attacks.”

The Russian official added that the human history would be incomplete and untrue without the nasty pages created by the brutal atomic raids.

“I am sorry to say that in the world of today, there are powerful forces eager to erase from history both the details of the bombings and their horrible consequences, and the notion of the fact who committed these crimes,” he added.

Meanwhile, residents of Hiroshima have begun holding ceremonies to mark the 70th anniversary of the US atomic attack on their city.

People and activists paid a visit Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park to pray for victims of the atomic bombing on Wednesday.


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