James Hilgendorf narrates:

“It was like everything changed in a matter of seconds. Where Hiroshima stood after about 10 seconds, there was nothing. 60,000 buildings. Were totally leveled. They have the one building that’s still standing there, the dome, but everything else was gone. Enormous shock waves, heat waves rolled through after that, incinerating people, their internal organs boiled off in a second.

Today, Hiroshima is a thriving, bustling city of over a million people on Japan’s southwest coast.

As life moves on, it seems inconceivable to even imagine the horror of that moment. 8:15 AM August 6th, 1945, when the light of 10,000 suns broke above the rivers, perhaps as now a father and son sat on the water’s edge looking up at the morning sky.

In the first billionth of a second, the temperature at the core of the blast reached millions of degrees centigrade. A searing flash of light and heat expanded across the sky instantly, vaporizing, burning, and charring beyond recognition. Thousands of human beings. Within a one-kilometer radius of the epicenter of the blast, the heat was intense enough to boil off internal organs in a fraction of a second,

One man resting on some steps disappeared immediately, leaving only a faint shadow scorched into the stone. All this took place in the first two or three seconds. They’re followed almost simultaneously, an enormous shockwave traveling at the speed of sound, smashing everything in sight, raging, wind whipped, firestorms broke out all over the city, black, deadly, radioactive rain fell from the sky.

In a seeming moment, Hiroshima had ceased to exist. The center of the city was leveled, and more than 60,000 buildings were destroyed. The human suffering was unimaginable. Perhaps 80,000 men, women, and children died that first day, 140,000 by the end of the year. Many suffered from horrible burns and radiation.

Three days after Hiroshima, a second atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, indiscriminately killing 70,000 more men, women, and children. Micko Yamaha is one of the hibakusha or survivors of Hiroshima. She endured 27 operations to correct the terrible burns on her face caused by the bomb.”

Woman survivor Miko Yamaha

“I never expected it. Looking up at the sky, the beautiful slice of light, and at the same time, my face was swelling, and I thought, I’m going to die. But if I died, I couldn’t see my mother again, and I started walking toward ground zero.

I said goodbye to my mother, and then the wind blew me away. I found myself buried under rocks from my stomach to my head, and I heard people crying, crying for help. But no help came. I heard my mother calling my name. It was my mother who found me amidst the brutality of war.

When she pulled me out, I saw hell all around me. This one bomb changed our whole life. It was like being in hell while still alive.

Now Hiroshima is beautiful. Children cannot believe the bomb was dropped here.

The city is beautiful, but we still have victims, and I want to tell people the truth of what happened.

Now, I teach people the truth so that we may never have war again. I want to continue this until I die. I want people to know the word peace and how valuable life is. It’s always the children who get hurt in war. I don’t want children to be the victims of war anymore, so until I die, I will do my best.”

Filmmaker James Hilgendorf embraced Buddhism and became a leader in one of the major Buddhist movements in the US.

I am grateful for his writings, his commitment to peace worldwide, and his love for humanity.

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