Days after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an Army leader briefed a group of top government officials at the Department of War in Washington.
The officer, Major General Leslie Groves, carried with him a bundle of photos that may have shocked even those war-hardened men.
In fine resolution, the black-and-white pictures depicted the two mushroom clouds that defined the course of modern history, and showed what was left of the Japanese cities after the mega-blasts of August 6 and 9, 1945.
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“If you were a cabinet secretary, or one of the few who received this briefing, think of the sense of … awe and dread,” Michael Krepon, co-founder of Washington think tank the Stimson Center, said this week as he showed AFP the historic images.
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