A few years back I read a book titled "First Into Nagasaki". It was written by the son of an American reporter who managed to get into Nagasaki before the US army did. The reporter's columns were suppressed by MacArthur, but the reporter had saved carbon copies. After his death, the son published the columns as the book, along with a description of the Japanese death ships that took the survivers of the Bataan Death March back to Japan. The reporter's assessment was that Nagasaki was mostly destroyed by fires rather than the blast from the bomb. He recounted how there were American POW's working at the Mitsubishi factory. At the air raid alarm they went to slit trenches outside the plant. Those who kept their heads down in the trenches lived despite being nearly under the blast. My recollection of the story was that the bomb was dropped about noon, when Japanese women were cooking lunch on charcoal hibachis. The blast knocked over the hibachis, setting fire to most of the homes. Because of obstructions in the streets due to downed power lines etc. from the blast, the fire trucks couldn't make it to where they needed to go, and the whole city burned. I forget what he said about the radiation sickness, but I recall he described it. The gist of the articles was that it was a very powerful bomb, but more survivable than the military made it out to be. I'm not a student of the nuclear bombing's so take it for what it's worth. What we thought we all knew from "common knowledge" sounds a little different from what this reporter described. It was an interesting description by an eye witness. The descriptions of the death ships was very dull by comparison.
RWL