August 6, 1945. The Japanese city of Hiroshima was decimated by the first atomic bomb to be used in war. An estimated 60,000 to 70,000 people were killed or missing as a result of the bomb. Within a two-mile radius of the point of impact, only 12 people survived that hellish blast. Within a one-mile radius, only two survived. One of them was Mr. Yoji Saito, who was 13 years old at the time. Here he tells his incredible story...

My family was very well known in Hiroshima. I come from 17 generations of Hiroshima samurai. In modern-day Japan, ancestors of the samurai are often in the educated professional class. My grandfather was a famous doctor and owned a hospital where my father also practiced. We lived in a large house in the hospital compound.

On that fateful day, I remember being awakened early in the morning by the wail of air-raid sirens. It seemed that an attack was expected, but by 7:30 all was quiet-too quiet. As I walked to school, a strange and frightening stillness hung over the city. I arrived at the school building just before 8:00, and lined up as usual with the other 250 students to do our morning exercise routine in the schoolyard. Then suddenly an incredibly bright flash of light struck us all.

I don't really know what happened to me next, or for how long I was unconscious. All I know is that some time later I woke up to a living nightmare of horror and death. Stunned and bewildered, I found myself 200 meters from the place in the schoolyard where I had been when the bomb exploded. The bodies of many of my classmates were strewn around me. Not all of them were dead. But dead or alive, I couldn't recognize any of them anymore. Their faces had melted, and they all looked the same! Some had been dismembered, or had the skin burned off their entire bodies.

One boy was crying uncontrollably. I couldn't recognize him, so I asked his name. To my dismay, it was my best friend, Suari! Pitifully he pled for water, but couldn't see, so I managed to lead him through the rubble to a river a few hundred meters away. Once we were there, however, I couldn't find the surface of the water. It was completely covered with the bodies of people and animals and wood and debris that had been blown into it by the tremendous blast. Suari died there at the river.

I then tried to find the way to my house. Only one word can fitly describe the horrors that were all around me-Hell! It was really Hell! Fires raged everywhere, and even though it was the middle of the day, the sky was dark and hazy and filled with smoke and an eerie glow from the burning city. Everything was melted and black. The very few buildings still standing were gutted and almost unrecognizable. The pitiful moans and cries and sobbing of dazed and dying people filled the air. Normally it took me 20 minutes to walk from school to my house. On that day it took 12 hours. Sometimes hands reached up out of the debris beneath my feet, and grabbed at my ankles. I stopped and tried to help those I could. Not everybody died immediately in the blast; some groped and staggered through the streets for two or three days, scarcely recognizable as human beings-the living dead.

As I later found out, the schoolyard where I had been standing was only 700 meters from ground zero, where the bomb exploded.

About 8:00 that night, I found the pile of rubble that used to be my house. I rejoiced to see that my mother was still alive. She too was overwhelmed to see that I had survived. We fell weeping into each other's arms.

"Why, Yoji," she exclaimed a moment later, "you're naked! Where are your clothes?" It was only then that it dawned on me the incredible thing that had taken place: The fiery blast of the bomb had blown every last stitch of clothing off of my body, and burned every single hair off of my head, yet I did not have a single burn! This was truly miraculous because, as I later found out, the schoolyard where I had been standing was only 700 meters (less than half a mile) from ground zero, where the bomb exploded.

Later on, some soldiers on a truck came and took my mother and me to a bomb shelter, where we tried to sleep that night. By the next morning, most of the fires had stopped burning. For the next few days I wandered throughout the blackened ruins of Hiroshima, searching in vain for my father. I can only assume that he was buried under the rubble of the hospital, because we never heard from him again.

In those days, nobody knew anything about radioactive fallout and radiation sickness, so even though God had miraculously spared me from the initial blast, I soon became very sick from exposure to fallout, as well as eating and drinking contaminated food and water. I came down with a very high fever, and could no longer eat. I became delirious and had terrible dreams and hallucinations in which I relived the horrors I had witnessed. I expected to die any day. It was then that I began to pray to God-if there was a God-that He would take away those horrible nightmares and visions and save my life. The nightmares ceased and God miraculously began to heal my body in answer to my prayers.

For the next five years, I remained very weak and sick from radiation sickness. During this time I did not grow at all. My voice remained the same, and I did not mature as normal boys did. My mother worried that I might end up a dwarf in a circus. But still I prayed daily that God would restore my health completely, and sure enough, when I was 19, I grew 15 centimeters (6 inches) in one year and my body matured completely.

For many years, I told no one about my experience because others considered those of us who had been affected by high doses of radiation the living dead, as though it was only a matter of time before we would die. It was also thought that those who had been exposed to radiation would have abnormal and deformed children. I felt, therefore, that I should tell any girl I was considering to marry about my background and experience, and several girls refused to marry me because of this. Eventually one girl agreed to be my wife, and thanks to God, we had three normal, healthy, beautiful children.-Another set of miracles!

It wasn't until many years after my Hiroshima bomb experience that someone told me about Jesus and His plan of salvation, and I asked Jesus to come into my heart. Before that I could never understand why God had miraculously spared me. But now I believe the Lord wants me to tell my story in order to warn the world of the nightmare of nuclear war-a war that unleashes the very horrors of hell on earth and is absolutely insane, suicidal, and without honor, where millions of innocent men, women, and children can be wiped out in one burning flash.

I would also like my story to encourage all who hear it that God can do miracles. If God wants you to live, then nothing can kill you-not even an atomic bomb!