Claim: A photo of a girl from Hiroshima who was blinded by an atomic bomb.
On social media sites, an image of a girl who was blinded by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in the final days of World War II is frequently shared. This image is said to show "the eyes that saw a nuke."
Although the image is a real photograph, the title commonly applied to it may be misleading.
The image was taken in Japan in 1961 and 1963, 16 to 18 years after a nuclear bomb was dropped on the city of Hiroshima, by the Scandinavian photographer Christer Strömholm. The woman in the photograph is too young to have witnessed the nuclear explosion firsthand, and the caption on Strömholm's official website refers to her as "the blind girl," despite the fact that her age cannot be determined.
Fact: Some of the images in Strömholm's "Hiroshima suite" included children, most likely those of Hiroshima survivors. A congenital disorder in a child born to survivors who were exposed to radiation may have resulted in the pictured girl's blindness, rather than being directly caused by her exposure to the nuclear blast.
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