Hiroshima: Wilfred Burchett's report 60 years ago

Daily Express 5 September 1945

30th DAY in Hiroshima: Those who escaped begin to die, victims of
THE ATOMIC PLAGUE
'I Write this as a Warning to the World'
DOCTORS FALL AS THEY WORK
Poison gas fear: All wear masks

Express Staff Reporter Peter Burchett was the first Allied Reporter to enter the atom-bomb city. He travelled 400 miles from Tokyo alone and unarmed, carrying rations for seven meals -- food is almost unobtainable in Japan -- a black umbrella, and a typewriter. Here is his story from –

HIROSHIMA, Tuesday

In Hiroshima, 30 days after the first atomic bomb destroyed the city and shook the world, people are still dying, mysteriously and horribly -- people who were uninjured in the cataclysm -- from an unknown something which I can only describe as the atomic plague.

Hiroshima does not look like a bombed city. It looks as if a monster steamroller had passed over it and squashed it out of existence. I write these facts as dispassionately as I can in the hope that they will act as a warning to the world.