On 6 August 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing 80,000 people in a single day, and tens of thousands more in the subsequent months. “If there is a hell,” survivor Ōiwa Kōhei recalled thinking of the aftermath, “it must be just like this.” Kōhei, 13-years-old at the time, was plagued for months by radiation poisoning, and forever by the psychological trauma. The hibakusha — the Japanese term for atomic-bomb survivors — “will not be with us for much longer, so it is essential that their irreplaceable living testimony should continue to be diligently and accurately recorded while it is still available”, writes historian Mordecai Sheftall. Their testimony must be preserved not for historical record, but so that current and future generations will take the lessons of their experiences to heart, says Sheftall.

Excerpt from Mordecai Sheftall, The Sun had fallen to Earth’ — a survivor’s recollection of the Hiroshima bombing, Nature, August 5, 2025