The greatest thing in history.
“Episode Twenty Four: The Bomb”
In this episode: Narrator (1)
Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it always.
North Field on the Island of Tinian, in the Marianas - 1,500 miles south of Japan. Here on August the fifth, the world's first Uranium bomb was loaded into a B-29 Bomber, named Enola Gay - after its pilot's mother. The next day before dawn, the Enola Gay took off. It's target: Hiroshima.
Narrator On April the 12th 1945, Franklin Roosevelt, President of the United States, died suddenly. The nation mourned its lost leader. He had brought them from the depths of economic depression 12 years before, now he had led them to the eve of victory in a World War.
Kishi Matsukawa (describing her experiences of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima): When I regained consciousness everything was pitch dark all around me. I tried to stand up, but my leg was broken. I tried to speak and I found that six of my teeth had been broken. Then I realised that my face was burnt and my back was burnt. There was a slash right across from one shoulder down to the waist. I crawled to the riverbank and when I got there I saw hundreds of bodies come floating down the river. And it was then that I realised with a shock that all Hiroshima had been hit.
Kiyoshi Tanimoto (describing his memories of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima): I encounter a long and ceaseless line of escapees. All of them had no clothes whatsoever on their bodies. And the skin from their faces, arms and breast peeling off and hanging loose - and yet without any expression. In deep silence they are escaping. I thought it was a procession of ghosts.
These quotes come from Wikiquote's The World at War pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.