Hiroshima – het horloge wat alles zag

When time stood still

“I clasped my hand around the metal mass and lifted my father’s pocket watch from the debris. I recognised our house key chained to it. I turned the watch face up. The glass had been blown off, as had the watch hands. The metal was rusted and burned. The unimaginable intense heat that reached several thousand degrees Fahrenheit from the blast had fused the shadows of the hands into the face of the timepiece, slightly displaced, leaving distinct marks where the hands had been at the moment of the explosion. It was enough to clearly see the exact moment the watch stopped.”