It was early in the day, but already hot. As she wiped sweat from her brow, Chieko Kiriake searched for some shade. As she did so, there was a blinding light - it was like nothing the 15-year-old had ever experienced. It was 08:15 on 6 August 1945.
“It felt like the sun had fallen - and I grew dizzy,” she recalls.
The United States had just dropped an atomic bomb on Chieko's home city of Hiroshima - the first time a nuclear weapon had ever been used in warfare. While Germany had surrendered in Europe, allied forces fighting in World War Two were still at war with Japan.
Chieko was a student, but like many older pupils, had been sent out to work in the factories during the war. She staggered to her school, carrying an injured friend on her back. Many of the students had been badly burnt. She rubbed old oil, found in the home economics classroom, onto their wounds.
“That was the only treatment we could give them. They died one after the next,” says Chieko.
TVNL Comment: How quickly we forget.
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