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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

From Robert Grater

The Spokesman-Review

Of Spokane, from Nagasaki, Japan,

Oct. 3, 1945

Honest, darling, it’s a shame they weren’t fibbing a bit when they said the atomic-bomb knocked everything flat. It really is flat and I don’t mean maybe. One really cannot realize just how much power that bomb has until you actually see the damage it did. The sand is even melted together like one took wax and heated it. The bricks from the houses and factories are just pulverized like one took a big sledgehammer and broke them in a million pieces.

Here where we are staying is about five miles from the center of where the atomic-bomb hit and all the windows are broken and all of the plaster on the walls and ceiling have all fallen off.

… It was so hot it cremated the people.

(Robert Grater died in Spokane in 1999.)