[Dr. Tatsuichiro Akizuki was working in a Nagasaki hospital some two miles from ground zero when the bomb hit. He later described what he witnessed in his book Nagasaki 1945 (1981). The following is an excerpt of his descriptions.]
Soon victims burned by the flash began stumbling onto the hospital grounds. Dr. Akizuki said, “Half-naked or stark naked, they walked with strange, slow steps, groaning from deep inside themselves as if they had traveled from the depths of hell. They looked whitish; their faces were like masks.” They reeled about holding their heads with their hands. Their clothes had been burned off them in the flash and they were all asking for water because their throats had been singed. Temperatures for a mile around the epicenter of the blast had instantly shot up to between 1,000°F and 6,000°F.
Within a few hours, victims of a different appearance began to arrive at the hospital. “The crowd of ghosts which had looked whitish in the morning were now burned black. Their hair was burnt; their skin, which was charred and blackened, blistered and peeled.” And the severity of the victims’ injuries kept increasing. Those closer to the blast that weren’t vaporized or instantly killed had their facial features burned off, their eyes melted in their sockets, and the patterns of their clothing were tattooed on their flesh.
Source:
Stephens, John Richard. “Alternative Views.” Weird History 101: Tales of Intrigue, Mayhem, and Outrageous Behavior. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2006. 61. Print.
Further Reading:
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