One of the strongest memories I have of a trip to Hiroshima that I made a few years ago is of the shadow on the steps of the Sumitomo Bank. Someone had been sitting on those steps, probably waiting for the bank to open, when at 8.15 a.m. on Aug. 6, 1945, a bomb went off.

The bank was 250 meters from the epicenter of the atomic explosion and the person was instantly incinerated, leaving behind only a shadow. The steps of the bank are now in the Peace Memorial Museum, as the shadow was gradually fading in the sun and the rain.

Sixty years on from that day, is the shadow that the bomb cast on the survivors fading too?