Hiroshima and Nagasaki, The Original Ground Zero

Cable Documentary Shows Rare Film of the Days After Aug. 6, 1945

By Neely Tucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 6, 2005; Page C01

In the National Archives in College Park, the reels are numbered 11002 and 11003.

Shot by a U.S. Army Air Forces film crew in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the months after the atomic bombs were dropped, the reels go from one deformed survivor to the next. Women with scalded faces. A man with melted ears. A boy with no skin on his back. A man with such horrific wounds his hands appear to be leprous.