5 Matching Annotations
  1. Jan 2026
    1. Some pictures by survivors are striking by virtue of their singular grotesqueness. An injured man gazes at his own eyeball in the palm of his hand. A skeleton sits in an intact, still upright barbershop chair. A woman's hand rises out of the rubble, the fingers burning like candles. The charred corpse of a child lies on the ground (this a survivor's memory from three days after the Hiroshima bomb) with its arms reaching toward heaven.

      The way this paragraph was worded was intentionally written to illustrate the survivors' memories and how vivid they were. These short yet striking descriptions of what was seen highlight how unnatural these experiences were.

    2. This was a curse of an unimagined sort, for no one knew what it was at first, and no one could ever be sure what it portended. Did survivors carry this man-made seed of death in their bodies? Would they pass it on to their children? With such uncertainties came stigmatization of the hibakusha by other Japanese, and for the survivors themselves what has been called scars of the heart, cancer of the soul, a "permanent encounter with death."

      This section emphasized how people who had close contact with radiation caused by the bomb described it as a 'curse'. The survivors came to this conclusion after the uncertainties of radiation exposure, but with the certainty that it would lead them to death. Because of this, they were forced to hide and live with their trauma. This makes it all sadder, as survivors had to live with constant pain and judgment from others.

    1. Parachute dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima; the bomb exploded over 500 meters above ground, maximizing burn and blast effects.

      This drawing is somewhat uncanny, because everything looks so peaceful and normal right before the explosion. It shows that, for many people, this day was supposed to be like any other day; however, the atomic bomb changed everything, turning what would have been an ordinary passing day into their worst nightmare.

    1. Usually, however, the answer is clear. Mothers attempt to nurse dead babies, or carry a dead child on their back. Infants try to nurse at the breast of a dead or injured mother.

      The wording used was heartbreaking, but it reflects the sad reality that many mothers and their children faced after the bomb. On one hand, mothers tried to nurse their children, unable to fully process the catastrophe that had occurred or the possibility that their baby might be gone. On the other hand, infants were too young to comprehend what was happening, relying only on instinct and the comfort of the person they recognized.

    1. Corpses became bloated and discolored—literally monstrous.

      The wording used in this sentence indicates the trauma people had experienced because of the bomb. Calling the corpse 'monstrous' looking suggests not only physical damage caused by the bomb, but also the psychological shock that the survivor had experienced after witnessing something so unnatural and overwhelming.