"A Glare Brighter Than the Sun"

Klaus Luhmer had been sent to Japan in 1937 by his Jesuit order. He lived in Tokyo, but had joined 14 fellow missionaries in seeking refuge in Hiroshima after the Japanese capital had been bombed by Allied forces in Nov. 1944.

On the morning of Aug. 6, Luhmer was reading the breviary in the garden of the monastery he was staying at.

"At 8:14 a.m., I heard the sound of a B29 bomber that had just passed over the center of the city," he said. "And then suddenly, this glaring hemisphere appeared that was brighter than the sun."

Luhmer had no idea what he was seeing and thought that a demolition bomb might have detonated behind the next hill. He ran for cover.

"I was standing outside when I saw the glow," he said. "I went to the basement and as I reached the bottom of the stairs, a wave of hot air brushed rolled over me. The blast wave followed. The house was shaking and trembling, three thirds of the shingles fell from the roof like rain and all windows burst. The entire building was surrounded by smithereens."

Black rain from a cloudless sky

Luhmer couldn't figure out what had happened and climbed atop a nearby hill. From there, he had a good view of the city center, which was about four kilometers (2.5 miles) away. The entire city had gone up in flames. Shortly after, black rain began falling from the sky even though there had been no clouds all morning.

"I returned to our house and saw that the first victims were arriving," he said. "They were girls working in factories, who wore short skirts because of the summer. Their arms were burned wherever they had not been wearing clothes."

Luhmer added that one of his fellow missionaries took in the people and set up an operation table to treat them.

"People were lying in the chapel, in the library, in the hallways, everywhere," he said.

Cremating the dead

Together with a few other missionaries, Luhmer made for the city to rescue people from the rubble and treat injured. The group also saved other missionaries that were in the city center during the blast. They didn't stop for three days and finally had to start cremating bodies.

"The city rationed materials to cremate people," he said. "You got five bales of straw and 15 bales of wood for one adult and that worked, but you had to do it yourself."

Just like today?

The bomb didn't change much for Luhmer, however. He had always opposed the war and the only difference between the nuclear bomb and others is the extent of the devastation in his opinion. The face of war is still visible today -- even without the atomic bomb, the 89-year-old Jesuit said.

"There's a war going on -- people just tend to forget that. A war," he said. "You can see these things daily on the streets of Iraq right now."