What the Boy Saw: A Fire In the Sky

What the Boy Saw

When Yoshitaka Kawamoto came to, the classroom was very dark, and he was lying under the debris of the crushed school building. In those days most Japanese buildings were made of wood; when the Bomb dropped, all but one or two of the structures that stood near the hypo-center of the explosion were flattened like paper hats. Kawamoto's school, the Hiroshima Prefectural First Middle School, stood only 800 meters, a mere half-mile, from the hypocenter. Two-thirds of his classmates were killed instantly where they sat at their desks. Some who survived were weeping and calling for their mothers. Others began singing...

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