#hiroshima

#hiroshima

In 2009, the U.S. pianist was welcomed in Tokyo as a rising jazz star: he had just collaborated with Terence Blanchard and reached the final of the Cole Porter Scholarship in Indianapolis. After his tour of Japan, he was supposed to return to the United States, but he didn't. Because if there was one thing Koller was good at, it was improvising. The Tokyo atmosphere seemed so different from what I was used to that I decided to stay.

The very next day, in fact, the American newspaper ran an article speculating on the catastrophic consequences of an atomic bomb detonating in the heart of that very city.

Survivor Jack Dairiki, 95, spoke to KTVU about witnessing the bombing and its aftermath during the ceremony at the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco. His experience highlights the human cost of nuclear warfare.

Today marks 80 years since the first use of a nuclear weapon during wartime - the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan.

On the morning of 6 August 1945, in Hiroshima, Japan, a flash of light enveloped the sky so brightly that a 13-year-old boy, Oiwa Kohei, thought the Sun had fallen to Earth and landed in his mother's flower beds.

By the summer of 1945, Japan was the only remaining member of the military coalition with Germany and Italy, facing impending defeat as the Allies prepared for invasion.