Months after the American B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945, killing roughly 70,000 men, women and children.
Outright and dooming tens of thousands more to either a torturous recovery or a slow death by radiation poisoning, burns or other injuries and afflictions.
Alfred Eisenstaedt made this powerful portrait of a Japanese mother and her child amid the ruins of the city. (Alfred Eisenstaedt—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images) #thisweekinLIFE