The pictures by hibakusha, he observed, are “more moving than any book of photographs of the horror could be, because what is registered is what has been burned into the minds of the survivors.”
Like I said in the top comment, the memories are burned forever in the survivor's minds. They show us what it was like from their POV and memory.
These are the intimate images that have been drawn upon for this site. There is nothing like them.
I agree. Survivor drawings feel way more personal than photos. You can tell these are scarring memories burned into people’s minds, not just something they saw once.
Few Japanese wished to dwell on the madness and misery of the war, and the hibakusha—the survivors of the atomic bombs—were essentially stigmatized or ignored until the late 1950s and early 1960s.
This was upsetting. You’d expect survivors to get support, but instead they were pushed aside. It shows how trauma doesn’t just come from the event itself, but also from how society treats you afterward.
Many deaths, however, also took place between 1946 and 1950. Over the decades that followed, small numbers of survivors continued to die from bomb-related injuries or illnesses.
I think many of us don't realize it wasn’t just a one-day tragedy. The effects stretched on for years, which makes it even more disturbing to think about.
By the time Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed in August 1945, over sixty Japanese cities had been targeted with “conventional” napalm fire-bombing.
This really puts things into perspective. We always focus on the atomic bombs, but Japan had already been dealing with a lot of issues before that. It makes the situation feel even more overwhelming.