Kiyoshi Kikkawa, a 33-year-old man, was exposed to the atomic bomb in front of his home, about 1.5 km from the hypocenter, on August 6, 1945.

    The entire back of Kiyoshi Kikkawa, who still has keloidal burns from the heat of the Hiroshima atomic bomb, is photographed at Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital on April 30, 1947.Kiyoshi Kikkawa, a 33-year-old man, was exposed to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima City on August 6, 1945, in front of his home about 1.5 km away from the hypocenter. He was hospitalized at the Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital in February 1946 and underwent about 16 surgeries, including skin grafts, before being discharged in April 1951 while receiving public assistance. A photograph taken on April 30, 1947 was featured in Life magazine and other publications as "ATOMIC BOMB VICTIM NO. 1 KIKKAWA" (Atomic Bomb No. 1).

  The shoulder, arm, and back burned by the heat rays of the Hiroshima atomic bomb have raised flesh scars and keloids, and the surgical scars are fresh. Masaru Kuroishi (who died in 1990 at the age of 77), an X-ray technician at the Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital, took the photographs as a medical record before and after treatment under the direction of doctors. He began taking photographs of the pathological conditions of A-bombed patients at the Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital (now the Hiroshima Red Cross and Atomic Bomb Survivors Hospital) in October 1945, about two months after the atomic bombing by the U.S. military on August 6, 1945.

　Masaru Kuroishi's photography was also under the direction of Deputy Director Fumio Shigeto and his colleagues. He and his colleague Seiji Saito, a pathology technician, recorded the effects of the atomic bombing on the human body. Some patients at the hospital were so injured that they could not even be identified by gender. Fumio Shigeto, the director of the hospital, told me to take various photographs, but my conscience got the better of me and I couldn't do it." Despite his conflicted feelings, he took nearly 50 photographs as a medical record.

  In addition to the direct deaths of tens of thousands of people, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki resulted in a series of horrific consequences that have long characterized the entire region. Within a year of the atomic bombings, many people died from radiation and burns, and in the years that followed, many Japanese died of cancer and birth defects due to the radiation released by the very bombs.