The Hiroshima Shadows

The Hiroshima Shadows

Hiroshima is a strange place. A lot of the city has stuck with me, but one part I’ll never forget is the Hiroshima shadows. 

When the world's first atomic bomb used in warfare, "Little Boy" was detonated over Hiroshima on the 6th of August 1945, the surface temperature of the bomb was around 6,000°c (10,830°F, or really fucking hot) causing a flash of unthinkably bright, blazing light that scorched everything it touched. Anything within 1,600 feet of the blast zone was instantly incinerated, and everything within a mile of the impact site was reduced to rubble.

As the light and heat spread out from the point of implosion, the people, and objects outside at the time shielded the structures behind them, absorbing the light and energy, while the surrounding light bleached the concrete or stone around them – producing a “shadow”. The shadow itself is still relatively the same colour it would have been before the nuclear blast, so sometimes they appear lighter than the surrounding material, like the window frame shadows above.

Some of the most haunting shadows are those of people, the most famous being the person seated on the bank steps holding a cane, an eerie imprint of someone’s last moments. The steps remained in place for about 20 years before moving to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum where they remain on display.

Although the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was smaller and less powerful than the “Fat Man” bomb later dropped on Nagasaki, the overall damage and number of victims was much higher due to Hiroshima being on flat ground – whereas the hypocentre of the Nagasaki bomb lay in a small valley. It’s impossible to get exact figures on the immediate death toll of the bomb, this is because the heat of that initial explosion left no bodies to find at the hypocentre – they were quite literally vapourised. A number of individuals were lost after using Hiroshima’s rivers to try and cool their burns, many being swept out with the waters. However, records show that 20,000 individuals from the Imperial Japanese Army were killed but estimates for the civilian death toll vary from 70,000 to 126,000.

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