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"There were the shadowy forms of people, some of whom looked like walking ghosts. Others moved as though in pain, like scarecrows, their arms held out from their bodies with forearms and hands dangling," Hachiya wrote. "These people puzzled me until I suddenly realized that they had been burned and were holding their arms out to prevent the painful friction of raw surfaces rubbing together."

"I felt the city of Hiroshima had disappeared all of a sudden," said Akihiro Takahashi, a 14-year-old at the time in line for school, whose testimony was recorded by researchers in the late 1980s. "Then I looked at myself and found my clothes had turned into rags due to the heat. I was probably burned at the back of the head, on my back, on both arms and both legs. My skin was peeling and hanging like this."

But what of the victims? Swaths of Hiroshima disappeared in a blistering flash, yet there were survivors. Here are some of the eyewitness testimonies of what took place on that terrible day in August 1945. (They have been gleaned from a number of oral history projects, all of which are easily accessible online.)

The justification for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings remains the source of perennial historical study and debate

It's seared into the collective global memory -- no other time in history has a nuclear weapon been used in war. The simple fact of the atomic bomb's awesome power went on to shape a half-century of Cold War geopolitics.

It almost instantly leveled most of the city and killed as many as 140,000 people. Three days later, on Aug. 9, another American bomber dropped a nuclear device on the city of Nagasaki, killing 40,000 to 80,000 people.

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Those who answered “yes” were considered “loyal” and became eligible for indefinite leave outside the West Coast military areas. Those who answered “no” were sent to a segregation center at Tule Lake, Calif.

At Manzanar two people were killed and 10 were wounded by military police during the “Manzanar Riot” in December 1942.

Professionals were paid $19 per month, skilled workers received $16, and nonskilled workers got $12.

Most internees worked in the camp. They dug irrigation canals and ditches, tended acres of fruits and vegetables, and raised chickens, hogs, and cattle. They made clothes and furniture for themselves and camouflage netting and experimental rubber for the military. They served as mess hall workers, doctors, nurses, police officers, firefighters, and teachers.

There was little or no privacy in the barracks—and not much outside. The 200 to 400 people living in each block, consisting of 14 barracks each divided into four rooms, shared men’s and women’s toilets and showers, a laundry room, and a mess hall. Any combination of eight individuals was allotted a 20-by-25-foot room. An oil stove, a single hanging light bulb, cots, blankets, and mattresses filled with straw were the only furnishings provided.

The 500-acre housing section was surrounded by barbed wire and eight guard towers with searchlights and patrolled by military police. Outside the fence, military police housing, a reservoir, a sewage treatment plant, and agricultural fields occupied the remaining 5,500 acres. By September 1942 more than 10,000 Japanese Americans were crowded into 504 barracks organized into 36 blocks.

About two-thirds of all Japanese Americans interned at Manzanar were American citizens by birth.

Ten war relocation centers were built in remote deserts, plains, and swamps of seven states

They did not know where they were going or for how long. Each family was assigned an identification number and loaded into cars, buses, trucks, and trains, taking only what they could carry. Japanese Americans were transported under military guard to 17 temporary assembly centers located at racetracks, fairgrounds, and similar facilities in Washington, Oregon, California, and Arizona. Then they were moved to one of 10 hastily built relocation centers. By November, 1942, the relocation was complete.

Without due process, the government gave everyone of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast only days to decide what to do with their houses, farms, businesses, and other possessions. Most families sold their belongings at a significant loss. Some rented their properties to neighbors. Others left possessions with friends or religious groups. Some abandoned their property.

The attack intensified racial prejudices and led to fear of potential sabotage and espionage by Japanese Americans among some in the government, military, news media, and public.

Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941, led the United States into World War II and radically changed the lives of 120,000 men, women, and children of Japanese ancestry living in the United States.

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The marches continued until May 7, 1945, the day the German armed forces surrendered unconditionally to the Allies.

Some able-bodied Jewish deportees were temporarily spared to perform forced labor in ghettos, forced labor camps for Jews, or concentration camps in Nazi-occupied Poland and the Soviet Union. Most of these workers died from starvation and disease or were killed when they became too weak to work.

Mass shootings of Jews in eastern Europe continued throughout the war. Of the approximately 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust, at least 1.5 million and possibly more than 2 million died in mass shootings or gas vans in Soviet territory.

German authorities persecuted homosexuals and other Germans whose behavior did not conform to prescribed social norms (such as beggars, alcoholics, and prostitutes), incarcerating tens of thousands of them in prisons and concentration camps. German police officials similarly persecuted tens of thousands of Germans viewed as political opponents (including Communists, Socialists, Freemasons, and trade unionists) and religious dissidents (such as Jehovah's Witnesses). Many of these individuals died as a result of maltreatment and murder.

By the end of the war, the Germans and their Axis partners murdered between 250,000 and 500,000 Roma. View This Term in the Glossary And between 1939 and 1945, they murdered at least 250,000 mentally or physically disabled patients, mainly German and living in institutions, in the so-called Euthanasia Program.

The Germans shot tens of thousands of non-Jewish members of the Polish intelligentsia, murdered the inhabitants of hundreds of villages in “pacification” raids in Poland and the Soviet Union, and deported millions of Polish and Soviet civilians to perform forced labor under conditions that caused many to die.

the Germans and their allies and collaborators killed nearly two out of every three European Jews as part of the "Final Solution."

During the Nazi era, German authorities also targeted other groups because of their perceived racial and biological inferiority: Roma (Gypsies), people with disabilities, some of the Slavic peoples (Poles, Russians, and others), Soviet prisoners of war, and Black people. Other groups were persecuted on political, ideological, and behavioral grounds, among them Communists, Socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and homosexuals.

the Germans and their allies and collaborators killed nearly two out of every three European Jews as part of the "Final Solution."

The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its allies and collaborators

The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that the Jews, deemed "inferior," were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community

A key part of ending drone warfare is addressing the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), the post-9/11 congressional act that has been used to justify drone strikes.

the use of deadly violence outside of declared war. Congress should also move to repeal the AUMF in its entirety, as it has undermined international human rights laws and pushed the U.S. farther down the path to endless war.

Despite its incalculable costs, there is no independent oversight or accountability for drone warfare. President Trump – and the two previous administrations – have claimed executive power to order drone killings without providing explanation to the public, courts, and even most members of Congress. This includes killings of U.S. citizens, such as Kamal Darwish, Abdulrahman Awlaki, and Jude Kennan Mohammed.

But the government’s secrecy around its use of lethal drones has concealed the real human toll of these attacks. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, drone attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen have killed between 8,500 and 12,000 people, including as many as 1,700 civilians – 400 of whom were children.

Since the start of the U.S. “war on terror” in 2001, drone warfare has grown as U.S. military operations have expanded beyond Afghanistan and Iraq. A significant portion of U.S. military actions outside of Afghanistan and Iraq – including Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya – are carried out with drones.

The United States’ use of lethal drones has killed thousands of people – including hundreds of children – and displaced countless others.

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“You can’t act today as if the defendant was a fully grown man back then who knew just what he was doing

. He went on to express his regret at belonging to an organization that caused the death of vast numbers of people, as well as causing pain for the victims and their relatives. "I am ashamed to have stood by and watched those injustices happen and to have done nothing to prevent them,

“You know what happened to all the people. You enabled their murder. Tell us! Tell us!” Orosz went on to say that she wants Hanning to tell the court what happened at Aushcwitz so that there could be no doubt about what occurred

Until 2011, prosecutions for involvement in the Holocaust only happened if there was evidence that the individual was directly responsible for murder or torture. The Hanning case is different. It has concentrated on the Hungary Operation, when 425,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz in Nazi-occupied Poland in the spring of 1944. Roughly 300,000 of them were gassed to death immediately on arrival.

Many Holocaust survivors and historians traveled long distances to give testimony to the court, while Hanning avoided their gaze. Hanning joined the SS when he was 18 and became a junior squadron leader. The prosecution argued that Hanning’s presence at Auschwitz made him part of the Nazi death machine

One survivor, Leon Schwarzbaum from Berlin, said he would have liked Hanning to use the trial as an opportunity to speak more about what happened at the camp. He told Hanning directly to speak out before he died.“Mr. Hanning, we are virtually the same age and soon we will face our final judge. I would like to ask you to tell the historical truth here, just as I am,” he said.

“It is not true that you had no choice; you could have asked to be transferred to the war front,” she told him.

“You were in Auschwitz for 2 1/2 years, performed an important function,” said the judge, Anke Grudda. “You were part of a criminal organization and took part in criminal activity in Auschwitz.” Grudda said Hanning could have chosen a different path

After a four-month trial, a former Auschwitz death camp guard has been convicted of aiding in the murder of 170,000 people. The former guard is now 94 years old and the trial is likely the last of its kind.

His lawyer had said he should be acquitted because there was “no proof” he was involved in any killings or torture and he had not worked in Birkenau, the part of the camp where the gassings were done.

You can’t act today as if the defendant was a fully grown man back then who knew just what he was doing

He went on to express his regret at belonging to an organization that caused the death of vast numbers of people, as well as causing pain for the victims and their relatives. "I am ashamed to have stood by and watched those injustices happen and to have done nothing to prevent them," he said. 

One survivor, Leon Schwarzbaum from Berlin, said he would have liked Hanning to use the trial as an opportunity to speak more about what happened at the camp.

“It is not true that you had no choice; you could have asked to be transferred to the war front,” she told him.

You know what happened to all the people. You enabled their murder. Tell us! Tell us

Until 2011, prosecutions for involvement in the Holocaust only happened if there was evidence that the individual was directly responsible for murder or torture. The Hanning case is different. It has concentrated on the Hungary Operation, when 425,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz in Nazi-occupied Poland in the spring of 1944. Roughly 300,000 of them were gassed to death immediately on arrival.

“You were in Auschwitz for 2 1/2 years, performed an important function,” said the judge, Anke Grudda. “You were part of a criminal organization and took part in criminal activity in Auschwitz.” Grudda said Hanning could have chosen a different path

After a four-month trial, a former Auschwitz death camp guard has been convicted of aiding in the murder of 170,000 people. The former guard is now 94 years old and the trial is likely the last of its kind

As Iraq retreated, they detonated explosives at many of Kuwait's oil wells. The disaster to the environment grew as Iraq dumped oil into the Persian Gulf. The costs were enormous, and many were killed or injured. Although estimates range in the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, only 148 Americans were killed in the battle. This was primarily because of the technological advances of the United States.

Overall, Operation Desert Storm, the largest American military operation since Vietnam, was completed with smashing success. Most Americans felt confident in their military and technological edge once more. President Bush promptly declared that the "new world order had begun."

The stealth fighter, designed to avoid radar detection was put into use for the first time.

The next night Desert Shield became Desert Storm. The U.S. bombed Iraq's military targets for the next several weeks.

Kuwait, meanwhile, was a major supplier of oil to the United States.

The first major foreign crisis for the United States after the end of the Cold War happened in August 1990. Saddam Hussein, the ruler of Iraq, ordered his army across the border into tiny Kuwait. 

The first major foreign crisis for the United States after the end of the Cold War happened in August 1990. Saddam Hussein, the ruler of Iraq, ordered his army across the border into tiny Kuwait.