The lost mayor of Hiroshima

The world’s first nuclear attack brought to an end a turbulent half-century in Japanese history — one that Senkichi Awaya witnessed firsthand. Iain MacGregor reveals how one man’s fate mirrored the rise and fall of a nation

- Iain MacGregor

Senkichi Awaya was sitting in his dining room at the mayor's residence in Hiroshima as the clocked ticked round to 8.15am on 6 August 1945. His teenage son Shinobu, and granddaughter Ayako, refugees from a devastated Tokyo, had joined him for breakfast. His wife, Sachiyo, had walked across the courtyard to the rear of the residence to retrieve some fruit from the store next to the shrine where the family prayed daily. It was then, as the first of only two atomic weapons ever to be used in wartime detonated, that a blinding flash of brilliant light filled the room. A fireball struck the city and the front of the Awayas' home, situated around a kilometre from Ground Zero, was swept away in a crescendo of violence and heat.

Senkichi, Shinobu and Ayako were among the 70,000 people who died instantly when 'Little Boy' - dropped from the B-29 bomber Enola Gay - exploded above Hiroshima. Over the days that followed, the death toll rose towards 120,000 as those who had been severely wounded died without medical care. In a city where 26 of the 29 hospitals had either been flattened or rendered useless, there was simply nowhere for the casualties to go and, because nine out of ten of all the city's doctors and nurses had died, nobody to treat them anyway.

The city of Hiroshima became a dystopian nightmare. Even those emergency workers who survived inevitably struggled to care for themselves, let alone offer support to others. Tens of thousands of survivors made their way out of the city and into the surrounding mountains seeking shelter. But it was days before officials began a concerted rescue operation. In the meantime, survivors started to collapse with mysterious symptoms of vomiting, diarrhoea and internal bleeding. The city's people were experiencing the horrors of radiation poisoning.