Nakamura was 21-years old and was hanging laundry outside around 11am when the bomb fell on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. She says she was 5 kilometres (3.1 miles) from the epicentre –– a little beyond what experts call the area of “total destruction.”

The Tri-Cities history is linked to the atomic bomb, after B Reactor at the Hanford nuclear reservation, shown circa 1944-45, began operating as the world’s first production-scale reactor. It produced plutonium used in the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.

On the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, The Associated Press is republishing the extraordinary photos of one survivor of the attack.