A couple walks through a Hiroshima cemetery for victims of the world's first atom bomb attack. Detonated by the United States on August 6, 1945, the A-bomb fulfilled its promise of hastening the end of World War II when Japan surrendered nine days later. Today Hiroshima is an ultra-modern city with few battle scars, except for those in the memories of the hibakusha—bomb survivors.

(Text adapted from and photograph shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Hiroshima: Up from Ground Zero," August 1995, National Geographic magazine)