Sixty-nine years ago, an atomic bomb wiped out the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
The August 6, 1945 bombing and the second bomb dropped on Nagasaki three days later ultimately brought about Japan's surrender and ended World War II.
Soon after that surrender, Australian army Sergeant Frank Savage headed a team of communications specialists sent to occupied Japan to set up radio communications.
Today, Mr Savage still has stark memories of the scene of absolute obliteration when his 88th High Speed Wireless Section arrived in Hiroshima in January 1946.
"Everything was completely burnt," he told AAP.
"The only things standing were buildings made of stone or concrete. All the glass was melted."
Photographs the then 22-year-old took in Hiroshima show a main street surrounded by kilometres of flattened rubble, dotted with a few standing buildings.
Mr Savage saw just two people in Hiroshima, one of whom was a teacher who spoke English.
That teacher, who lived in the hills outside the city centre, told the Australian his story.
"(He) told me that it was a mild, sunny morning and kids were going to school, businesses opening and trams running and people going to work when he noticed a lone aircraft flying towards the city," Mr Savage writes in his record of the encounter.
"Suddenly he saw a parachute open, carrying a drum-like container underneath.
"There was a blinding flash of light, followed by a tremendous heatwave."
Sixty thousand people died in the initial blast.
Another 60,000 died immediately when the second bomb fell on Nagasaki on August 9, with the total death toll for the two bombs put at more than 200,000.
Mr Savage's communications force had been tasked with establishing communications back to Australia ahead of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force based in Japan after the surrender.
That meeting was not Mr Savage's only remarkable encounter.
The Australians set up camp in the port city of Kure, a short distance from Hiroshima, where Japanese citizens were trying to reestablish life after the war.
"I spoke to a kamikaze pilot who was supposed to go up in a plane and kill himself," Mr Savage said.
"The war finished and he got out of it - he was behind the bar, serving drinks."
After his posting Mr Savage returned to Australia and went into the toy business, starting his own company and becoming president of the Australian Toy Association before retiring in the 1980s.
Now aged 90 and living in regional Victoria, Mr Savage says the devastation of the atomic bomb is a dire warning that nuclear weapons must never be used again.
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