The shame and horror of nuclear weapons

Seventy years have passed since America dropped an atom bomb on Hiroshima. And President Obama has failed to deliver on his promise to reform our nuclear world.

A view of Hiroshima after "Little Boy" was dropped.
(Image credit: Corbis)

Seventy years ago today, at 8:15 in the morning, a bomb named "Little Boy" exploded 2,000 feet over the heads of two little girls, Kiyoko Tsutsui and her best friend Kazuko Aohara, while they were changing their shoes.

The girls were behind a concrete wall at Hiroshima's Honkawa Elementary School, where they were sixth-graders. When Little Boy transformed from a 10-foot-long bomb into a 1,200-foot-wide fireball hotter than the sun, the world inside the girls' school building went bright white. The girls survived, and were evacuated that night.

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