'A dazzling flash, brighter than the sun'… What it was like to survive the atomic bombing of Hiroshima
Survivors recall horror of the devastating atomic bomb blast 70 years ago
Seven decades ago, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. It almost instantly levelled most of the city and killed as many as 140,000 people.
Three days later, on August 9, another American bomber dropped a nuclear device on the city of Nagasaki, killing 40,000 to 80,000 people.
The devastation was followed by the second world war's swift conclusion.
It's seared into the collective global memory - no other time in history has a nuclear weapon been used in war.
The simple fact of the atomic bomb's awesome power went on to shape a half-century of cold war geopolitics.
The justification for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings remains the source of perennial historical study and debate.
As the world marks the events' 70th anniversary this week, the legacy of what was first unleashed above Hiroshima now looms over newer conversations about disarmament and the nuclear programmes of emerging powers. But what of the victims?
Swaths of Hiroshima disappeared in a blistering flash, yet there were survivors.
Yasuhiko Taketa was on his way to middle school, like many of the , or survivors of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki who live to this day.
At a train station, according to a speech he later delivered, he saw a "dazzling flash of light, brighter than even the sun", and then "an earsplitting roar" followed by a seismic explosion that shattered glass everywhere.
"My forehead felt hot, and I unconsciously touched it with my hand," narrates Taketa.
"When I looked at the sky over Hiroshima, I saw a tiny, glittering, white object, about the size of a grain of rice, tinged with yellow, and red, which soon grew into a monstrous fireball.
"It was travelling in my direction, and I felt as though it was going to envelop me."
Akiko Takakura, a 20-year-old at the time, was near the hypocentre, or "ground zero" of the bomb. This was how she described the apocalyptic moment:
"What I felt at that moment was that Hiroshima was entirely covered with only three colours. I remember red, black and brown, but nothing else.
"Many people on the street were killed almost instantly. The fingertips of those dead bodies caught fire and the fire gradually spread over their entire bodies from their fingers. A light grey liquid dripped down their hands, scorching their fingers."
Those who found shelter after the explosion entered a strange, hideous world, where everyone's hair was literally fried and human shadows were etched onto stone.
"I felt the city of Hiroshima had disappeared all of a sudden," said Akihiro Takahashi, a 14-year-old at the time in line for school, whose testimony was recorded by researchers in the late 1980s.
"Then I looked at myself and found my clothes had turned into rags due to the heat.
"I was probably burned at the back of the head, on my back, on both arms and both legs. My skin was peeling and hanging like this."
So many had, in an instant, lost those dearest to them. Eiko Taoka, then 21 years old, was carrying her one-year-old infant son in her arms aboard a streetcar. He didn't survive the day.
"I think fragments of glass had pierced his head," she recounts.
"But he looked at my face and smiled. His smile has remained glued in my memory."
