Now aged 83, Junko Morimoto remembers:

I was meant to go to school that day but I had a stomach bug. My family said I should stay home because the teachers would only make me do war work anyway.

It was just before 8:15am, and my sister and I were in my bedroom talking. My father had gone out to get a haircut and he still wasn’t back. My mother had trouble with her lungs, so she’d gone away to an island to convalesce.

My brother was part of the student mobilisation and worked at Japan Steel, manufacturing weapons. He was just home from his shift and sitting by the window, playing his guitar. It was summer and warm, so he wasn’t wearing a shirt. My eldest sister was also back from work and having a late breakfast of rice, chopsticks in hand.

That’s when we heard the loud aircraft noise.

At that time, we were very aware of the noises different aircraft made. I stood up and said it could be a B-29.

We heard the noise fade. Suddenly there was a moment of blinding light with intense heat.

I couldn’t see anything. There was a strange reverberation, a noise that’s impossible to describe, followed by a bang.

Then the house, the ceiling, everything collapsed. We were buried and in complete darkness.

That’s when I thought “I’m going to die”. I repeated to myself, “I’m going to die, I’m going to die”.

The third time I said it, I must have lost consciousness.

When I came to again, I was covered by debris. All I could see was a broken ceiling and through it, the grey sky. I assumed a bomb had fallen directly on our house.

In my mind, I heard tens of thousands of people in Hiroshima screaming. I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s what I remember.

My sister and I were clinging to each other. We tried to crawl out.

To make sure we were all right, we siblings were calling to each other: “Junko-chan!” “Tei-chan!” “Aki-chan!” “Where are you? We’re here.”

I found my eldest sister in what was left of the dining room. She was covered in blood.

I wondered why there was all that blood over her. She was hurt, and one of her teeth was missing.

The shock had sent one of the chopsticks she was holding through her cheek, poking out the tooth.

Our brother was in another room. The window behind him had shattered. When the window broke with a bang, his back was pierced by splinters of shattered glass.

We were all in a panic. To get out into the yard, we were treading on the shattered glass barefooted. I heard my brother cry my name “Junko!” “Sister!” “Are you all right?”

That’s when we saw everything had been flattened. There was nothing left.

Across the street was a neighbour’s farm, where they grew vegetables. There had been a big cherry tree—that was now smashed. The farm had completely disappeared.

We could see Hiroshima on the horizon, which seemed to be on fire. Everywhere to the horizon were fires.

We were all worried about father. Then we saw him wheeling his bike through all the debris under the railway. His face was strange – a deep glowing red.

We realised later he’d been burnt. His face, hands, any part of him that was exposed was burnt, and so were the black parts of his clothes.

Father said we had to get away from the house. Even though we had no shoes, we had to flee.

We needed to get to the river.

Because there was no clear path left, we followed the railway line.

We walked on the wooden sleepers. They were smouldering. There was smoke coming from under our bare feet but we kept thinking we had to get to the river. We’d be all right if we got to the river.

I myself wasn’t burnt, but my hair was so stiff with dust and all the other things in the air that it stuck out. I had all this blood on me, but I wasn’t bleeding. It was my sister’s – although she’d been in the kitchen at the time, her blood spurted out so hard it reached me in the bedroom.

I don’t know how far we walked along the main rail line, maybe 500 metres, until we came to the river. What we saw there was unbelievably horrible. Like a scene from hell.

Crowds of people were slowly making their way from the city to the river, all badly burned. There was a soldier there, I don’t know how old. Part of his uniform had been burned away. His back was all burned and when he took his cap off, his hair was still there, but all the rest of his face was burned.

As the injured people filed by, the soldier smeared oil on their burns. It must have been painful, and some of them cried out, but most of them were stunned and as silent as ghosts.

Some were naked, their clothes burnt off them. They walked along with their arms raised and something hanging off them that looked like nylon stockings. It was their burnt flesh peeling away. They were disintegrating.

The skin on some people was dark red, obviously burned and painful. No-one spoke. It was dreadful. Somehow we kept walking.

Many of the victims were desperate for water. When they saw the river, they knelt down and drank even though people told them: “If you drink from that, you will die.” And they did; every one.

The river was wide there. It flowed through the middle of Hiroshima and so much was floating in it.

I saw corpses floating in the river.

I saw a dead horse.

The worst was to come.

There was a huge file of people heading away from the city to the north, along the river. We went with them.

One was a mother, carrying a baby on her back. But the baby was obviously dead. Its head was lolling— its mouth open.

As we walked, I saw a little girl of three or so screaming for her mother, who was just lying there. She was crying as loud as she could “Mummy!” But the woman was bleeding heavily and probably dead. I knew this was a tragic sight, but my mind was blank. I didn’t stop to help her.

My family too was silent, because they didn’t know what to think. Everyone was too stunned and uncomprehending of what had happened.

We just kept slowly walking.

I don’t know how long we walked. The sky was always dark after the bomb fell, and we never knew, what time it was. Eventually we came to the countryside where there was nothing but rice paddies. The tops of the plants had been burnt and blasted flat.

Then there was a loud booming noise.

We thought it might be another plane with another bomb, so we all threw ourselves face down.

But it started raining and we realised the noise we’d heard was probably thunder.

The thunder was extraordinarily noisy, the rain heavy.

It stained my white gym top black.

We had no idea at the time what this could be.

We didn’t know about the radiation.