First-Hand Account of Nagasai After "The Bomb"

It is amazing to now learn that days after the Atomic Bomb fell on Nagasaki, there was an American reporter on the site to record the effects of the bomb. The Allied Generals were furious, and the report was censored and never put into print. But now it has been released by a Japanese news agency.

What is most amazing to me is how much in contrast this report is to the apocalyptic images that Hollywood and Japanese film has presented over the last 50 years. When we hear "Atomic Bomb", we think of images from The Day After, Akira, and other films which make it seem that the area around any bomb is made suddenly lifeless and forever an ash desert. Not so here, where like any normal bomb raid, many targets were missed entirely, and life goes on in the shadow of this death. Not to say that we should be encouraged by this to start up a new nuclear arms race. But it reminds us that a nuke is not the end of the world.