On the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, 13-year-old Setsuko Nakamura was on the second floor of a wooden building in Hiroshima with her classmates when a blue flash of light engulfed her.

"I floated in space and lost my senses," she said, recalling the U.S. atomic bombing of the city that day. When she regained consciousness, she found herself trapped under rubble. All was silent except for the moans of her classmates.

A soldier found her. "Don't give up. See the light? Crawl towards it," she was told. Nakamura survived, although she lost several close relatives and friends in the attack.