Visually impaired girl’s photo incorrectly shared as the one who saw the Nuclear blast in Hiroshima

An image purportedly showing "the eyes that saw a nuke," a picture of a girl who was blinded by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in the closing days of World War II, is frequently shared on social media sites:

Although the image is a real photograph, the title commonly applied to it may be misleading.

The photograph comes from a set of pictures taken by Scandinavian photographer Christer Strömholm in Japan in 1961 and 1963, 16 to 18 years after a nuclear bomb was detonated over the city of Hiroshima. 

While it is not possible to verify the age of the woman shown in the photograph, she appears too young to have witnessed the nuclear blast first-hand, and the caption for the picture on Strömholm's official website identifies her simply as "the blind girl":

The photographs from Strömholm's "Hiroshima suite" included some pictures of children, presumably the children of Hiroshima survivors. It might be the case that the pictured girl's blindness was not directly caused by her exposure to the nuclear blast itself, but by something that took place much later in the aftermath of that blast, including a congenital disorder in a child born to survivors who were exposed to radiation.

The photo of a visually impaired girl is being shared on social media with a claim that she witnessed the Nuclear blast in Hiroshima in 1945. Let’s fact-check this claim through this article.

The Hiroshima Nuclear bomb blast happened in 1945; if this girl were even one year old at that time, by 1963, she would be 19 years. But the girl in the picture does not look like a 19 year old. Although the photo was taken in Hiroshima, the viral post misquotes it as the picture of a child who had seen the nuclear bomb blast.

The same picture was earlier debunked by Snopes. Snopes stated that “It might be the case that the pictured girl’s blindness was not directly caused by her exposure to the nuclear blast itself, but by something that took place much later in the aftermath of that blast, including a congenital disorder in a child born to survivors who were exposed to radiation.”

To summarise, this post shares a visually impaired girl’s photo with an incorrect caption that she saw the Nuclear blast in Hiroshima in 1945.

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