Lead: It was eight seconds past 8:16 AM, the teachers room of the Hongkowa Elementary School, exploded into a blinding bluish light.

Tag: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: At first Katsuko Horibe heard nothing. Glass peppered her scalp and forehead but she felt nothing. She flung herself under a desk and plugged her ears against the horrible noise. Suddenly it was over. Silent and as dark as night. Just 600 feet southeast of Miss Horibe's hiding place, the world's second atomic bomb had just exploded. The City was Hiroshima, Japan.

The handful of survivors, who like Miss Horibe were very close to the center of the explosion, owed their lives to the fact that they were protected in buildings made with reinforced concrete and surrounded by brick walls.

Running out of the school into clouds of thick swirling dust, Miss Horibe spotted several children lying or sitting on the playground. They were bleeding and blackened by burns with patches of skin dangling from their bodies. "To the river," she shouted, "It's the only way out." The children seemed to understand and dragged themselves slowly across the ground. They were crying and shouting how much they hurt. She lost contact with them shortly after they reached the water and never saw them again.

The river itself seemed to be own fire, floating wood, lifeless bodies, those who survived were huddling skin to skin along the river front, trapped. "Mother, mother," someone shouted, "This is Hell on Earth," said another.

Most of the rest of the day Katsuko Horibe submerged herself in the river and took bites from an apple that had by some miracle floated past.

130,000 people, more than a third of the population of Hiroshima died that day. Miss Horibe was one of the very fortunate. It was August 6th, 1945.

At the University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts.

Resources

Genion, William, editor. The Affects of the Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States Strategic Bombing Survey. Santa Fe, New Mexico: Genion Publishing, 1973.

Groves, Leslie R. Now It Can be Told. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1962.

Wyden, Peter. Day One: Before Hiroshima and After. New York: Simon and Schuster Publishing Company, 1984.

Copyright 1995 by Educational Broadcast, Inc.