Hiroshima Pictures

After the dropping of the bomb.

Sixty years later a project was undertaken which had survivors do drawings of what happened on the ground that day.

Almost everything with 300 feet or so of ground zero was incinerated immediately. Concrete buildings vaporized. People were carbonized, and shadows of where people had been were left.

For over a mile, almost a mile and a half, all wooden buildings were destroyed by the blast.

This picture, and probably many of the others, were taken three weeks after the bomb was dropped.

At least 80,000 died within hours after the bomb was dropped. 60,000 more died within the next six months from radiation sickness.

One of only three actual photos from the ground that day.

A typical drawing, this one of a mother and child who were burned to death.

Another drawing of a typical scene, where people jumped into rivers to try and cool themselves and protect themselves from the flames. The vast majority of people died, some of them boiled alive when the water temperature rose. There were more than 7,000 school pupils working in the city that day on making firebreaks and doing other similar war-related chores; they were all killed.

This was filmed 20 days after the bomb was dropped by a group from the US military.

A drawing one man did of school children trapped underneath the rubble of the school. He was unable to save this girl as she was trapped and he had to eventually flee the advancing flames himself, something which happened numerous times to various people.

This drawing is one of various drawings that showed mass cremations. Bodies were piled and cremated, without identification. Such cremations were still going on a month after the bomb was dropped.

The rivers were also full of bodies. Some of them were recovered, some were swept out to sea.

Main Index
Japan main page
Japanese-American Internment Camps index page
Japan and World War II index page