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Hiroshima Frame GrabOn August 6, 1945, the day the atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima, 13-year old Michiko Yamaoka walked as usual to her job as a wartime telephone operator. She remembers the sky that morning as being a very strong yellow and blue. Not far away, 12 year-old Yoshitaka Kawamoto, had just arrived at school when one of his classmates pointed out the window to a B-29 bomber in the sky. Seconds later, he saw a flash.

Jack Beser, a U.S. Army radar expert aboard the B-29 which dropped both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, monitored the radar frequencies that would be used to trigger the new weapon. And in Washington, D.C., Gordon Arneson, recording secretary for President Truman's super-secret Interim Committee the group charged with advising the President on atom bomb targets, timing, and press attention for the attacks felt a sense of relief when the explosions over Hiroshima and Nagasaki finally occurred.

Forty years later, these four people came to Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park, along with 60,000 others, in remembrance of the historic attack that brought the war to a rapid conclusion, and ushered in the nuclear age. They share their stories and comments about the fateful day in the hour-long documentary Remembering the Bomb.

Remembering the Bomb aired on PBS in 1986


"...understated and spectacularly moving ... this documentary succeeds because of its subtlety. It leaves you with a most powerful message without trying to force-feed you. Grade A."
- People magazine