(Nature) – Eighty years after the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan, it is crucial that witness accounts are saved. Here is what one man told me.

By the summer of 1945, after peace was declared in Europe, Japan was the only power of the military coalition with Germany and Italy still at war. In Japan’s blockaded Home Islands, dwindling food supplies were prioritized for soldiers. Meanwhile, emperor Hirohito encouraged the country’s slowly starving civilians to gird for imminent invasion by Allied forces and to be prepared to give up their lives in the upcoming decisive battle that would determine Japan’s fate. (Read More)