At 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, the course of World War II and the history of Japan changed when the US military dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

Now, on the 81^st anniversary of the bombing, an extraordinary eyewitness account written in English is being published for the first time, written by Kiyoshi Tanimoto a Methodist minister who survived.

Tanimoto, then 36, had studied theology at Emory University in Atlanta and described “a sharp flash of light” and a “strong blast of wind” accompanied by a “tremendous explosion” in the long-lost memoir “Hiroshima, 8:15: The Lost Memoir,” out Thursday.

In the memoir, Tanimoto describes how he was on the outskirts of the city helping to move his church’s piano. Back at home, his wife and eight-month-old infant daughter were partially buried under rubble from the bomb. His daughter’s crying roused his wife, Chisa Tanimoto, who began to dig furiously through debris to save them both.

Now 81, Kondo has spent most of her life as a peace activist, warning about the perils of nuclear weapons.

The 400-page manuscript had been sent to Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter John Hersey, who was the first American to chronicle the devastation of the bomb on residents of Hiroshima. However, it was only recently discovered by his grandson, Cannon Hersey, and Japanese filmmaker Taku Nishimae, when they were going through his files.

It’s unclear whether John Hersey, who had interviewed Tanimoto in 1946, ever read the pastor’s manuscript.

“People seemed to be buried in the ground,” Tanimoto writes in the book, saying he stepped over the dead and dying as he rushed to find his family.

“Nothing whatsoever could be done, with the strength of only one person, to help the people beneath those houses. Yet there were people buried here and there – everywhere.”

Miraculously Tanimoto, who describes undergoing severe bouts of diarrhea and fever, emerged from the ruins of his city largely unscathed. More than 140,000 residents were not so lucky, dying of severe burns, injuries and what Tanimoto called “the atomic disease” — radiation sickness.

In the chaos after the blast, Tanimoto described survivors whose skin had fallen off and whose bodies were covered in suppurated burns. In many cases, maggots crawled into the wounds and had to be removed with pincers. A severe shortage of doctors and nurses meant that while one patient was being treated “other patients would die,” he wrote.

Tanimoto, who went on to have two more daughters and two sons, became known as a “rescuing angel” for his tireless work in helping his fellow residents. It was a description he rejected, largely because he never considered himself a hero. He also never resented the Americans for dropping the bomb.

“The most significant factor for not resenting America for its use of the atomic bomb was the gigantic destructive power of the bomb itself,” he wrote. “Its great power caused the people of Hiroshima who suffered due to that power to embrace stamping out all wars from the surface of this earth.”

Tanimoto’s book is now being developed into a feature film, directed by Phil Joanou and starring “Shogun” actor Takehiro Hira as Tanimoto, scheduled for a 2028 Cannes Film Festival release.