The air-raid sirens screamed throughout the island as the big bomber flew away to the south high in the sky. Then, a giant pillar of smoke rose rapidly into the sky. Surprised, I turned around and in the next instant, I heard a boom seemed powerful enough to shove the Earth off its axis. "A flash of silver light like tens of thousands of cameras going off at once lit up the whole area. Ninoshima Elementary School was on the west side, opposite the quarantine station. The northern edge of the island was closest to the hypocenter-8.3 kilometers away. I was taking a late breakfast as the officer on duty, but I was looking into the sky, so I got a good look at the enemy plane."Īs soon as we saw the flash, the whole area grew darkĪugust 6, 1945, Ninoshima Elementary School, Aza Yajita, Ninoshima-cho Lewis during the final stages of World War II, it became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb in warfare. On 6 August 1945, piloted by Tibbets and Robert A. Soon, a mushroom cloud billowed up into the sky above Hiroshima. The Enola Gay ( / nol /) is a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, named after Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets. A few seconds later, there was an enormous roar like the explosion of a gigantic bomb. The enemy plane dropping the A-bomb seen from NinoshimaĪugust 6, 1945, Officers quarters, Marine Medical Headquarters, Aza Higashi-otani, Ninoshima-cho 6 km from the hypocenter, Kanawajima Island Ninoshima residents began learning about the injured victims about two hours after the explosion.Among the Ninoshima residents, 108 were in Hiroshima for school or work at the time of the bombing, and died in a month's time.Īugust 6, 1945, about 15 minutes after explosionĪpprox. Below that amazing mushroom cloud, the city of Hiroshima had been obliterated and vast numbers of injured victims were in desperate need of help. An enormous cloud was generated by the sudden atmospheric changes caused by the explosion and rose to the stratosphere. such images as these: The melted face, chest, and belly of a bronze Buddha exposed to the 7,000-degree flash of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. On August 6, 1945, the US B29 bomber Enola Gay entered the skies over Hiroshima and dropped an atomic bomb from an altitude of 9,600 meters.