The Bells of Nagasaki

A first-hand account of the catastrophic atomic bombing

By: Takashi Nagai, William Johnston (Translator), Richard Lloyd Parry (Introduction by)

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eBook | 31 July 2025

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'A book that everyone should read' The Times

A harrowing, heart-rending first-hand account of the bombing of Nagasaki - and the acts of human kindness left in its wake.

On 9th August 1945, the Japanese city of Nagasaki is hit by an atomic bomb. Forty thousand people are killed instantly. Doctor Takashi Nagai is not one of them.

Pulling himself, broken and bloodied, from the wreckage that was once the city's university hospital, Takashi bundles together a tattered group of survivors. Doctors, nurses, students, each with their own losses, their own fears for the future: they work tirelessly at the impossible task of aiding the countless wounded and easing the deaths of those they cannot save. They remain determined to heal their fallen city, to find solace and hope among the rubble, even as a strange and growing sickness begins to claim them.

Eyewitness to one of the most fatal events in human history, this is Takashi's record, written from his sickbed - a chilling historical document, and undeniable evidence of the capacity for human kindness.

Published now in the UK to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION FROM RICHARD LLOYD PARRY