The 75th Anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki

Transcript

It is 75 years since the US dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan leading to the end of the second world war.

A bell rang out to commemorate the moment the bomb struck Nagasaki 75 years ago. The Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and the major of Nagasaki spoke at the anniversary event. It's estimated more than 70, 74,000 more people died in Nagasaki on this day, 9th of August and 170,000 more when the first atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima three days earlier. The bombs led to Japan's surrender in World War II but the radiation from the bombs caused the deaths of thousands in the months and years that followed.

Well, those who survived are called hibakusha in Japanese. Terumi Tanaka is one of them. He was a 13 year old school pupil when the bomb was dropped on his home town and recalls the moment of the explosion:

All of a sudden I heard a big sound. I didn't know what the sound was. As soon as I thought I heard the big sound my surroundings turned a bright white. People say it was a flash, but to me everything turned bright white. I didn't hear a sound so I was surprised. I felt this was something terrible so I ran downstairs and ducked. I covered my ears and closed my eyes and the moment I ducked down I lost consciousness.

In the burnt ruins there were shapes that resembled human beings or bodies that had crumbled into bones everywhere. Rescuers hadn't arrived after three days,so those who couldn't move due to serious injuries or severe burns and hadn't received help were hunched or lying on the ground...

That is Terumi Tanaka who was 13 at the time the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki 75 years ago. Now to football...