re: thermal flash... in 1971, I was stationed on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, about 60 miles north of Nagasaki... I was introduced to a lady that was a student nurse in 1945, and on the day of the bomb, she said she was about 12 miles from Nagasaki... she had fine line scars on her arm and shoulder... the pattern of dark embroidery on the white cloth of her kimono had absorbed enough energy to burn her arm in that pattern