This chapter introduces the characters and details the witnesses' accounts of the morning before and their perception of the explosion of the atomic bomb. The explosion occurred at exactly 8:15 am, local time. Miss Toshiko is at her desk and talking to a fellow employee at the Tin factory when the room filled with " a blinding light".[1] and the flash was so powerful that it pushed over a bookshelf crushing Miss Toshiko's leg while she went unconscious.