Doves fly over the A-bomb Dome at the Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, western Japan on Friday.

On August 6, 1945, at exactly 8:15 am an American B-29 bomber had streaked across the skies of Hiroshima and dropped its deadly cargo.

Seconds after the world's first atomic bomb unleashed 15 kilotons of brute power. Most within a radius of one mile were dead.

Buildings were razed to the ground, while the survivors wished they were dead.

Thousands of people expected to attend the 59th memorial service for A-bomb victims.

The structure in the picture survived the blast that levelled the rest of the city and hastened Japan's surrender in World War II.

Photo: AFP/Getty Images/Yoshikazu Tsuno