Time heals all wounds, so the saying goes, but too much time forgets there ever was a wound to begin with.

With “Nagasaki: The Last Witnesses” (Dutton, 2025) author and Shizuoka University professor M.G. Sheftall wants to keep the memory of that wound alive so that we don’t have to endure it all over again.

“At 1102 local time,” Sheftall writes, “Fat Man exploded at an altitude of five hundred meters over a tennis court in Matsuyama-cho, two hundred meters east of the racetrack [pilot Kermit] Beahan had used as his aiming point. For approximately eight seconds after detonation, everything (and everyone) out to about a kilometer and a half from the bomb’s fireball was bathed in thermal radiation to a temperature of some four thousand degrees Celsius, which was hot enough to melt the surface of ceramic roof tiles.”

Eight seconds. Take a moment and watch the clock tick by. We’re in August, and it’s around 35 degrees Celsius. Go ahead and add 4,000 degrees to your air conditioner. Eight. Seconds.

And here’s something even more unfathomable. Some of you will momentarily survive those “thermal radiation” burns up and down your body........

© Japan Today