The photos are in black and white, but for once that is not a total misrepresentation of reality. When the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945, two Japanese cities were instantaneously leached of color and life. In the aftermath of the world’s only nuclear attacks, what mostly remained were shades of a terrible gray.

这些照片是黑白的，但这一次，现实差不多也是黑白的。1945年8月6日和9日，当美国向广岛和长崎投下原子弹时，两座日本城市瞬间被剥夺了色彩与生命。在这世上仅有的两次核攻击之后，留存下来的大多是一片可怕的灰色。

广岛的钟停在了原子弹爆炸那一刻。广岛，原子弹轰炸后几天。一张拍摄于广岛原子弹爆炸当天的照片显示，人们正在接受紧急救治，距离爆炸中心约1.6公里。

Hiroshima and Nagasaki charred. They disintegrated. People and sparrows and rats and cicadas and faithful pet dogs — all that was alive a nanosecond before the mushroom clouds erupted in blue sky — exploded and then evaporated. They were the fortunate ones.

广岛和长崎被烧焦、摧毁。在蘑菇云于蓝天中升腾的前一纳秒，所有的生命——人、麻雀、老鼠、蝉以及忠诚的宠物狗——都在爆炸中粉身碎骨，随后化为乌有。他们算是幸运的。

In Hiroshima, about 140,000 people perished by the end of the year. In Nagasaki, about 70,000 succumbed. Tens of thousands of the victims were children.

到那年年底，广岛约有14万人丧生，长崎约有7万人殒命。其中上万受害者是儿童。

原子弹投下四天后，广岛的孩子们。轰炸发生大约两个月后，一所小学被用作救济站。1945年10月，广岛陆军医院的一名男子。

There are no photos of the immediate aftermath of the bombing, at least not on a human scale. For the survivors, though, the images of those moments never faded. Human forms staggered with strips of flesh hanging from their bodies. Eyeballs dangled from sockets. Everywhere, people screamed for water to cool their burning throats. In Hiroshima, they threw themselves into the river, which writhed with their torment until death freed them.

没有关于轰炸后当场情况的照片，至少没有能看到人的局部。但对于幸存者而言，那一刻的画面永远不会褪色。人们拖着残缺的身躯蹒跚前行，皮肉像布条一样挂在身上；眼球从眼窝中垂落。四处都是人的尖叫声，他们渴求水来缓解灼烧的喉咙。在广岛，人们跳进河里，河水因他们的痛苦而翻腾，直到死亡将他们解脱。

Those who survived that first day found little relief. Flies laid eggs in burns, then the maggots hatched, a perverse sign that life was continuing. Family members used chopsticks to remove the infestations, but most victims died. The biggest danger was the radiation, which could not be seen in any hue. People who seemed fine days after the bombing suddenly collapsed and died.

那些在第一天活下来的人也并未得到多少慰藉。苍蝇在烧伤的伤口里产卵，随后蛆虫孵化，扭曲地提示着生命的延续。家属们用筷子清理蛆虫，但大多数受害者还是死去了。最大的危险是辐射，它在任何光线下都无法被察觉。那些在核爆后几天看似安然无恙的人会突然倒下死去。

广岛一栋建筑的废墟前瓦砾遍地。

一座受损的桥梁。

Survival often meant burns that formed excruciating keloids or internal organs that were eventually invaded by cancer. For many of those who made it through, decades of stigma followed. To be a hibakusha, as the survivors of the atomic bombing are known, was to live as a poster child of nuclear horror. Marriage prospects withered. Survivors worried about passing on disease to the next generation.

幸存往往意味着烧伤形成令人痛苦的瘢痕疙瘩，或是内脏最终被癌症侵蚀。对于许多幸存者来说，随之而来的是数十年的污名。作为“被爆者”(hibakusha)——即原子弹爆炸幸存者的统称——他们成了核恐怖的活招牌。婚姻的希望变得渺茫，幸存者们担心会把疾病遗传给下一代。

No one yet understood the full scope of what destroying and irradiating two cities meant, for the people or for the land. What did it mean to live poisoned by radiation? Or to eat from a plant growing in the toxic soil? Who would take care of the children who had lost their parents? Who would rebuild these lost cities?

当时，没有人完全明白摧毁并辐射这两座城市对居民和土地意味着什么。生活在辐射污染中意味着什么？食用生长在有毒土壤里的植物又意味着什么？谁来照顾那些失去父母的孩子？谁来重建这些化为乌有的城市？

战争结束后，广岛郊外，一群无家可归的人正在取暖，大多是儿童。

广岛毁灭的航拍图。图中中央的T字形桥梁被认为是美军轰炸机的目标。

To look at photographs of Nagasaki and Hiroshima after the bombings, especially ones from the sky, is an exercise in subtraction — and abstraction. Almost nothing is there.

观看核爆后的广岛和长崎照片，尤其是航拍照片，就像是在经历一场减法与抽象化的过程——几乎什么都没有了。

More than the absence or the faint outline of humanity, what is seared in the collective consciousness is the terror that a mushroom cloud can bring. Without context, the fluffy white clouds of an atomic bomb, billowing like floating sheep, might look harmless. But we now know that they signify annihilation, not from nature but from humankind.

比起人类存在的缺失或模糊轮廓，深深烙印在集体意识中的是蘑菇云带来的恐怖。若脱离背景，原子弹爆炸的蓬松白色云团好像漂浮的绵羊，看似无害。但我们现在知道，它们象征的是毁灭——这毁灭来自人类而非自然。

1945年8月9日，日本长崎上空的蘑菇云。

在长崎治疗一名儿童。

The bombing of Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m. on Aug. 6 was described by the Americans as a necessary evil to end Japan’s wartime aggression and bring to a close World War II, the world’s bloodiest-ever conflict. The detonation also announced to the Soviet Union that American science had prevailed in the nuclear race. But it’s harder, some say, to make the case for the second bombing of Nagasaki three days later. A city with one of the largest Christian populations in Japan, Nagasaki had long drawn foreigners to its port. Now, the city, like Hiroshima, is known to the world primarily for having been chosen by the Americans for a nuclear attack.

8月6日上午8点15分对广岛的轰炸，被美国人描述为结束日本战时侵略、终结“二战”这场史上最血腥冲突的必要之恶。这次核爆也向苏联宣告，美国的科学在核竞赛中占据了上风。但有人认为，三天后对长崎的第二次轰炸就更难以服人了。长崎是日本基督徒人口最多的城市之一，其港口长期吸引着外国人的到来。如今，和广岛一样，这座城市为世界所知，主要是因为它被美国人选为核攻击的目标。

Eighty years ago, Hiroshima and Nagasaki burned from the bomb. They burned from the fires that were sparked by the bomb. And they burned from the mass cremations that kept the fires going until all the bones were purified.

80年前，广岛和长崎被原子弹的火焰吞噬，先是因原子弹引发的大火而燃烧，继而因大规模火葬而持续燃烧，直到所有的尸骨都化为灰烬。

On Aug. 15, Japan surrendered. The Japanese empire’s bloody march through Asia was over. But the impact on civilians lingered, both in the countries the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces had invaded and at home, where a nuclear Armageddon had come twice.

8月15日，日本投降。日本帝国在亚洲的血腥扩张画上了句号。但对平民的影响却挥之不去——无论是在被日本帝国军队入侵的国家，还是在本土经历了两次核末日的日本。

长崎轰炸后大教堂的废墟。

1945年9月，长崎的一场火葬。

What remained of Nagasaki and Hiroshima were not simply vast graveyards of rubble but the strength of the survivors, who began to rebuild their lives and then their cities.

长崎和广岛剩下的不仅是遍布瓦砾的巨大墓地，还有幸存者的力量，他们开始重建自己的生活，而后重建城市。

Fumiyo Kono, 56, wrote a best-selling manga series about the war, which prompted a hit movie, television show and stage musical. While she was born well after, even thinking about that day when Hiroshima was bombed, she said, made her physically sick. On trips to a museum memorializing the victims, she could not bear it. She did not know what to do.

56岁的河野史代创作了一部关于这场战争的人气漫画系列，由此催生了热门电影、电视剧和音乐剧。尽管出生于广岛轰炸多年之后，她说哪怕只是想到广岛被轰炸的那一天，都会让她身体不适。在参观纪念受害者的博物馆时，她感到难以承受，不知该如何是好。

“Maybe one day, the answer will come from your heart,” she said, of how to process the devastation of her hometown.

“或许有一天，答案会从你的心底浮现，”谈及如何面对家乡所遭受的破坏时，她说。

All she could do was draw: a mushroom cloud, a family and a story that unspools from there.

她所能做的，就是画下去：一朵蘑菇云、一个家庭，以及由此展开的故事。

长崎原子弹爆炸后。

长崎的战后景象。