HIROSHIMA: Portraits of Survivors

LIFE: After Hiroshima: On the anniversary of the July 16, 1945 Trinity test in New Mexico that gave birth to the Atomic Age, LIFE.com presents photographs — most of them never published in LIFE — taken in Hiroshima after the Second World War ended. Here, in the landscape of a ruined city, and on the scarred skin and misshapen limbs of Japanese who survived the world’s first nuclear attack, photographer Carl Mydans discovered the legacy — part nightmare, part surprising, wishful dream — of those world-changing explosions.

Hiroshima children patiently wait their turn for a examination in a temporary clinic.

Here’s more of photographer Carl Mydan’s 1947 photo series [ LIFE ~ "Hiroshima: Portraits of Survivors" ]