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.... Like the ancient Sodom and Gomorrah, its site has been sown with salt." After measuring levels of residual radiation throughout the city, technicians from the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey determined that much of Nagasaki would remain barren of plant and animal life for 75 years. They were wrong. Seasonal rains and powerful tides cleansed the land and harbor of fallout much faster than anyone predicted. Within two months of the holocaust, the first seedlings began to sprout from beneath the rubble. (12) hol•o•caust Great destruction resulting in the extensive loss of life, especially by fire. (11) One of these groups, on a field trip to Nagasaki from the distant city of Gifu, hailed me in a flurry of peace signs, then presented me with a handmade "peace message." Inside its paper covers, a girl named Sachiko had written, "Thousands of peoples lost their life when the bomb was thrown on Nagasaki. That's why Peace I'm hoping for. I don't want war to come again." The bomb continues to resonate most forcefully, of course, for those who felt its wrath firsthand--as Katsuji Yoshida did. A dapper, silver-haired man with a wiry build and sparkling eyes, Yoshida was 13 years old when the bomb exploded half a mile from where he stood. VISIBLE SCARS In left profile, he appears astonishingly unmarked by the blast. From the other side, however, the story of the apocalypse is writ large on Yoshida's countenance: The entire right half of his face is a matrix of purplish scar tissue and grotesquely disfigured flesh. "For no particular reason," Yoshida recalls, speaking through an interpreter, "I looked up after I finished drinking and noticed two parachutes floating down through an opening in the clouds to my right. Then there was a blinding flash, the sky filled with fire, and I was hurled across the road into a rice paddy. "In that instant, time seemed to slow down, like in a dream. I remember very clearly the sensation of flying through the air, my body curling against the intense heat, the impact of slamming into the ground. When I regained consciousness, I looked down at my arms and saw that the skin had peeled off in sheets. It hung from my fingertips like a torn shirt. The exposed flesh was bright red with blood, but strangely there was no pain, not at first. "In shock, I told myself it was just a minor burn, that a little tincture of ammonia would cure everything. Then I noticed all the people staggering down from the surrounding hillsides, groaning and screaming, small children crying for the...