Hellfire


Essentially, we remember grand and even cataclysmic events through one or a few emblematic fragments—a particular image or two that, in Hersey's phrase, burn into the mind and remain branded there. "This is the scene I can never forget," survivors say in explaining the particular subject of their artwork. The intensity of this carries over to most viewers of the picture in ways rarely replicated in the cooler, more detached medium of photography.

For these survivors, these amateur artists, the part contains the whole. For those of us who come to these pictures as outsiders, these many parts comprise an intricate mosaic of the human experience of nuclear devastation. The pictures remind us of the individuals who made up the huge number of casualties and fatalities that occurred at and around Ground Zero 1945.

We can perhaps best approach this mosaic by imagining August 6, 1945, from a distance, with a single American B-29 bomber, accompanied by two escort planes, releasing a parachute over Hiroshima.

space space Parachute dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima; the bomb exploded over 500 meters above ground, maximizing burn and blast effects.

HARADA Haruo
10 years old in August 1945
[09_01]
space
Parachute dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima

The morning scene is serene. The parachute cradles "Little Boy," the first nuclear bomb, timed to explode between 500 to 600 meters above ground. Then comes the "mushroom cloud" as seen from the outskirts of the city.   This is what impressed the crew of the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the bomb, as it turned away. It is the image with which most American narratives of the use of the bomb end.

space space The “mushroom-shaped” cloud from the bomb’s explosion, seen from the outskirts of Hiroshima.

HORIKOSHI Susumu
6 years old in August 1945
[03_02]
The “mushroom-shaped” cloud from the bomb’s explosion

When the bomb was tested in New Mexico in July 1945, an awed American observer described the explosion as "brighter than a thousand suns." In Japanese, the well-known phrase for the extraordinary light of the nuclear explosion, and the thunderous blast that followed, is pica-don–literally (and prosaically) "flash-bang."

space spacePika-don,” the blinding flash and massive explosion of the bomb.

YAMADA  Sumako
20 years old in August 1945
[09_02]
space
"Pika-don," the blinding flash and massive explosion of the bomb.

The temperature at the center of the explosion was between 3,000 and 4,000 degrees Centigrade (5,400 to 7,200 degrees Fahrenheit); unshielded people suffered flash burns within a radius of 4.5 kilometers (2.8 miles); all wooden structures within 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) were obliterated, and firestorms immediately began to sweep through these ruins.

space KOJIRI Tsutomu
4 years old in August 1945 [06_33]
space
Downtown Hiroshima in ruins

Downtown Hiroshima in ruins, as seen two weeks later.

Corpses lay everywhere. In many depictions by hibakusha, the dead are naked and bright red or coal black.

Bomb victims at Kokuzenji temple. HAMADA Yoshi
26 years
old in
August
1945
[15_34]
space
Bomb victims at Kokuzenji temple.

 
Certain phrases run like a thread through the words of survivors. "It was like hell (jigoku)" or "this is what hell must be like" is said over and over. Traditional Buddhist painting actually provided vivid depictions of hell as a place (much like Dante's Inferno) of raging fires, grotesque figures, unspeakable tortures and pain.

Hiroshima in flames on the afternoon of August 6 NAKANO Kenichi
47 years
old in
August
1945
[02_33]
space
Hiroshima in flames on the afternoon of August 6. The writing on the painting speaks of encountering “living Hell in this world.”

For many survivors, the attempt to escape the firestorms that spread from the epicenters of the explosionsor the memory of someone who failed to escape these hellfires—became the image burned on the mind.

Downtown Hiroshima in ruins
The artist and an injured girl attempting to escape “a sea of flames.”



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