The events of a few days in August 1945 brought WWII to an end. They also destroyed the city of Nagasaki and killed 80,000 of its inhabitants, half of them instantly. Craig Collie is the first person to interview elderly survivors and descendants of the victims, and to stitch together their recollections with contemporary diaries and letters, and details from official documents. The result is a unique, unprecedented work of narrative reconstruction that follows ordinary Japanese in the hours after the blast to provide a gripping account of the decision-making, the denials and, above all, the devastation and the loss.