Hiroshima, 8:15 - Kiyoshi Tanimoto

A newly discovered firsthand account of the Hiroshima bombing and its aftermath from one of the survivors—a lost classic that brings unprecedented immediacy to our understanding of this world-changing event. The whole city was covered with dark clouds, and conflagrations were breaking out in various directions. Could all of this have happened at once? It was then that black drops of rain, as big as blackberries, began to fall – rain caused by the atomic bomb. I wondered what had happened to my home and church. With a pale face, I ran down the Koi highway…When the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima at 8.15am on 6 August 1945, Methodist minister Kiyoshi Tanimoto was just beginning his day by helping a neighbour on the outskirts of the city. Unbeknownst to him at that moment, the events that await him over the following days and weeks are full of horror, but through his courageous determination to save his family, church and city from total devastation, Tanimoto would become internationally recognised as a hero of Hiroshima. In 1946, he featured in American journalist John Hersey’s seminal book Hiroshima which catapulted Tanimoto into global fame – but it is only now that we have discovered the manuscript that he wrote in his own words. With a powerful introduction from Tanimoto's daughter, Koko Kondo, a renowned peace activist in her own right, Hiroshima, 8:15 is a remarkable eyewitness account of this devastating moment of history. Written in the immediate aftermath o
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