Hiroshima: a priest's story

"I was with some 15 students on the river bank when the bomb dropped. I was 14 years old and a little over a mile from the hypocenter. At 7:30 that morning the air-raid warning had been lifted, and some of us students were taking a swim before reporting for our 8:30 work assignment at the nearby school. I was up on the bank. I heard a B-29 coming and those of us who were gathered there spotted it in the sky.…I fell face down on the ground. The bomb exploded and I was surrounded by yellow light. It was as though ping-pong balls of light were falling all around me. Tremendous heat burned fiercely into my back as well as into the back of my head, arms and legs. My clothing caught fire.

"The students who kept looking at the sky when the bomb exploded suffered burns all over the front of their bodies. They all died within two weeks of the bombing.

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