Shockwave The Countdown to Hiroshima

At 9.15am on 6 August 1945 a bomb plummets towards a city. Few of the bustling commuters look up. There are no sirens, no warnings. When it explodes the temperature soars to millions of degrees. tens of thousands of people are annihilated The destruction is catastrophic, as if a small sun had suddenly blown itself to bits. In that instant, the name Hiroshima is stamped on the consciousness of a world which will never be the same again.

Stephen Walker's countdown to Hiroshima and its aftermath is a tense, real-life narrative of events as they unfolded in the last terrible weeks of World War 2. Unprecedented interviews with American and Japanese witnesses interweave in a tapestry of voices. They include the co-pilot who writes a minute-by-minute diary on board the Enola Gay. The atomic scientist who arms the bomb in mid-air, equipped with a screwdriver. The Japanese student desperately searching for his lover in the ruins of the city. The doctor forced to treat thousands of burnt bodies with only soy-bean oil and leaves.