Shadow Light Shining Don (August 1945)

Shadow Light Shining Don (August 1945)
On August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima - the flash and sound of the explosion, known as "Vicadon," obliterated the city in an instant, leaving people with lasting scars on their bodies and minds. Hibakusha were blown away immediately after the flash and wandered among the rubble in flames, complaining of symptoms of radiation damage, including hair falling out after several days. The words, "In the body that survived, the mind died," speak to the true cruelty of war.
In postwar Japan, the onomatopoeic sound "Bikadon" became a story among children, the most simple way to convey the light and sound of the atomic bomb. The "bicadon" as told by hibakusha was a record of the A-bomb experience in physical language, accompanied by a rawer sense of reality than scientific explanations. According to records kept at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, hair loss and white blood cell loss due to radiation exposure were noticeable within a few weeks.
These testimonies appeared again in the magazine in 1974, at a time when Japanese society was trying to rediscover "untold memories of the war" 30 years after the war. This record, which portrays the atomic bombing not as a "national tragedy" but as "an explosion that continues inside the human body," conveys a pain that has not ended in time beyond the war.