One can only imagine what was going through the mind of the person who took this photo. Taken a mere two to five minutes after its detonation, it's a ground-level perspective of the atomic explosion that decimated Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The original print of the photograph recently surfaced in the archives at Honkawa Elementary School in Hiroshima city.
Reporting for the Atlantic, Rebecca Rosen writes:
The picture is a rare glimpse of the bomb's immediate aftermath, showing the distinct two-tiered cloud as it was seen from Kaitaichi, part of present-day Kaita, six miles east of Hiroshima's center. Reprints of the image did appear in a 1988 Japanese-language publication, but the whereabouts of the original were unknown. There are only a couple of other photos in existence (two, possibly three) that capture the cloud from the vantage point of the ground; and, according to the Japanese paper Asahi Shimbun, there is only one other photograph that provides as clear a picture of the separated tiers of the cloud, and that is a photo taken from the Enola Gay as it zipped away.
Read the entire article here.
Image Atlantic/Honkawa Elementary School.