HIROSHIMA--A survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima whose photo as a young girl made her the global “face” of the horrors of nuclear warfare has died at 86.

Word of Emiko Yoshida’s death on Aug. 29 came from her second oldest daughter Keiko.

In early August 1945, just days after the city was leveled by atomic bombing, Asahi Shimbun photographer Hajime Miyatake snapped a photo of a young father pushing a cart carrying a young woman and a heavily bandaged girl.

That girl was Yoshida, then 6 years old. On learning about the photo more than three decades later, she decided to relate her experiences as a hibakusha.

The historic image shows Yoshida’s father, Sentaro Aizaki, pushing the cart while her mother, Hatsuyo, sits at the back.

At the behest of the Imperial Japanese Army regional command, Miyatake went to Hiroshima to take photos of the bomb damage. He took 119 photos.

During the Occupation that followed Japan’s surrender, U.S. authorities enforced a strict press code that restricted reporting on the atomic bombing.

Miyatake was ordered to burn the photos, but he secretly stored them at home.

Once the press code was lifted, the photo of Yoshida, as well as others taken by Miyatake, was published in the magazine Asahi Graph in August 1952. The shocking nature of the image garnered worldwide attention and appeared in other publications in Japan and overseas.

But Yoshida didn’t learn of the photo’s existence until 1979.

In an interview in 2006, Yoshida said a neighbor told the family the young woman in the photo resembled Yoshida’s mother.

“I had lived with the intention of not reflecting on the past, but (the photo) seemed to be telling my soul to always remember that day,” Yoshida said in the interview.

Yoshida was outside, about 2 kilometers from ground zero, when the bomb detonated over the city.

She suffered severe burns to her face and her left arm. Her mother’s limbs were charred black, and her skin peeled and hung loose like rags.

Her father, who was not injured in the bombing, found a cart to transport the child and his wife to a first-aid center for treatment.

Yoshida recalled a young man wearing glasses and dressed in khaki running past. The man turned, crouched a few meters ahead of them, and trained his camera on the family.

Yoshida remembers her mother crying out: “No pictures!” 

Miyatake later recalled the exact same exchange, clarifying the encounter between the photographer and the family of three.

After the war, Yoshida lived with her parents in the Hiroshima suburbs, moving close to 10 times.

She wore long sleeves even in summer to conceal the scars on her arm.

Her mother fretted that she would not be able to marry because of her background as a hibakusha carrying visible scars.

Yoshida’s father died prematurely in a car accident. Her mother passed on in 2006 after becoming bed-ridden due to a stroke.

After her mother’s death, Yoshida regretted not having talked with her about the aftermath of the atomic bombing as well as the photo.

“I held the feeling of wanting to pass on to my children and grandchildren what happened that day, including what my mother would have wanted to say,” Yoshida said in 2006.

In 2007, the broadcasting club at Hijiyama Girls’ Senior High School in Hiroshima produced a documentary in which Yoshida was interviewed. The sessions lasted for a total of around a dozen hours. She recalled having her face bandaged in the sweltering summer heat. But she also said that when she visited her mother’s grave, she talked about how the photo had become a help to her.

In April 2007, Yoshida met with Miyatake’s wife. She told her that while her family at first had not wanted the photo to be taken, she was now grateful because it served as the catalyst to encourage her to talk about her experience.

Yoshida’s daughter, Keiko, said: “Whenever Aug. 6 approached, she would tell me and my older sister about what happened that day. I hope people will continue to view the photo from the time when my mother and grandparents began their long struggle to recover from the atomic bombing.”

One of the members of the Hijiyama Girls’ Senior High School club who interviewed Yoshida was Saika Motomura, now 35 and a mother.

“As a member of the generation that is close to being the last to hear directly from hibakusha, I want to pass on their experiences to children,” Motomura said.

The photo of Yoshida as a young girl is among the trove of visual documents from 1945 jointly submitted by The Asahi Shimbun, The Chugoku Shimbun and three other media organizations, along with the Hiroshima city government, for inclusion in UNESCO’s Memory of the World register.