The ashes of 55,000 victims buried in a small mound. The tricycle helmet. The story of a 15-year-old girl walking to her job making war planes at a factory in August of 1945. All three are memories floating around in Debbie Persell’s head after a summer trip to Hiroshima to study the long-term effects of radiation exposure from an atomic bomb. “By the time you go through all of that, you are just numb,” she says. “The horror of it is overwhelming.”

Along with Beth Fiske, also a student in the College of Nursing’s Homeland Security Nursing Program at the University of Tennessee, Persell traveled more than 7,000 miles to research and learn about the devastating effects of radiation. The program was coordinated by the U.S. Department of Energy, the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF), and the Hiroshima International Council for Health Care of the Radiation-exposed. While learning how to care for people in the future, Fiske and Persell also learned some tremendous lessons from the past.

“Number one, I was just overwhelmed with the devastation that occurred,” Persell says. “That mankind did this to each other.”

More than 52 years ago, on August 6, 1945, “Little Boy,” the first atomic bomb ever used in warfare, was dropped on Hiroshima. The bomb, however, never actually touched down. “The target was a bridge,” Persell says. “But it actually exploded in mid-air. Then, everything within a two-kilometer radius was just totally devastated, obliterated, gone.”

One building remains at the hypocenter (just like Ground Zero in New York City) as a reminder of the destruction from that day. It’s a structure of concrete and steel that was directly below the bomb, but managed to somewhat withstand the explosion. There are several memorials–for children, other countries, and others that perished–in the area. Several items inside a museum, including a tricycle helmet, and mannequins with their burned skin falling off, serve as painful memories of the past.

“Just the numbers of people that died that day,” says Persell, trailing off.

It is the people who survived that serve as the greatest link to the past. After a couple weeks of research, the project turned less scientific and more human. “Being able to meet A-bomb survivors and hearing their stories was incredible,” Fiske says.

One particular survivor’s account of that day stuck out for both Fiske and Persell. The story of Ms. Hazami, a 77-year-old woman who was 15 at the time of the bombing, remains fresh. The teenager was walking to work at the factory where she made war planes, when her life changed forever. “The opportunity to visit with her was the single highlight [of the trip],” Fiske says.

There was also the group of 97-year-old women who played autoharps and sang for Persell and Fiske at their assisted living facility. “They smiled the whole time,” Persell says.

And finally, Persell recounts the story of Oshie Kinutani, who was the director of the nursing school at the Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital that day. She helped save more than 400 students and received a Florence Nightingale Award. “The nurses at that hospital cared for survivors day after day, week after week,” Persell says.

Great care and compassion has been given to the city, too. “It has rebounded,” Persell says. “It’s vibrant and full of energy. If you contrast that day to now, it’s two different worlds.”

The journey to both worlds is something neither student will ever forget. “It was just fascinating,” Persell says. “It’s a trip I’ll remember forever.”

Editor’s note: To read the first installment of the story about these two nursing students in Hiroshima, click here.