Twelve-year old Sadae Kasaoka (birth name Hiraoka), a first-year student at a girls’ high school, was at home with her grandmother on Aug. 6, 1945, enjoying a beautiful morning and doing housework because she had not been mobilized for war work.

Decades later, Kasaoka recalls that she saw a brilliant flash of light about 8:15 a.m. that was “a beautiful color like the sunrise mingled with orange,” and then hearing a tremendous bomb. The first atomic bomb used in warfare had just detonated 1.900 feet above Hiroshima.

Kasaoka was slightly more than two miles from “ground zero,” at the time of the explosion. The windows shattered and her face was cut by shards of flying glass.

Sadae’s mother died in the explosion. Her father had been terribly burned; he died two days later. She became a hib

See Full Page