On the 31st of August 70 years ago 'The New Yorker' magazine published a 30.000 word essay on the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Today we talk about things going viral, this essay went into the stratosphere at the time because Hersey focused on the people and not the damage to the city. He wrote about six people and there experiences and went back many years later to find only 4 of them alive.

At the time there was censorship by the military of the facts that people died either a few weeks after the drop or died a slow death over many years due to the exposure to radiation from the blast.

This is another major essay that you should get your children to listen too as it brings the true horror of the bomb and its lingering death for many survivors.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-37131894

Link to the I-player here

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07pzj7p