In August 1945, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The attacks destroyed urban environments, killed large numbers of civilians, and introduced nuclear radiation into human history as a lived reality. They transformed warfare, ethics, science, and global fear.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki generated hibakusha poetry, witness testimony, and anti-nuclear writing across the world. Japanese poets such as Sankichi Toge turned ash, shadow, river, skin, and silence into a devastating poetic vocabulary of environmental and bodily trauma.