Iwas 13 years old on Aug. 9, 1945, when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. We lived less than two miles from ground zero, but by some miracle, I survived. The glass door that collapsed on top of me didn’t shatter.

Other members of my family were not so fortunate. When my mother and I went to look for them, we found the bomb had taken the lives of five of our relatives: two of my aunts, my grandfather and my cousin all died from severe burns. My uncle, we discovered a bit later, died of radiation sickness after going to look for help.

By the end of 1945, the number of people who had been killed in Nagasaki was estimated at around 70,000. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima just days before killed 140,000. Altogether, an estimated 400,000 people were exposed to the tw

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