It was a beautiful, yet deadly sight and it loomed over Japan – an ominous cloud of white and then red. The atomic bomb that dropped on Japan in 1945 killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of people and its effects are still being felt today.

Mount Maunganui resident Norma Hollis, 94, has seen the country in devastation, as well as rehabilitation.

In 1947, as a spritely 21-year-old, she got on a boat and travelled to Japan to become a J Force member after Japan surrendered at the end of the Second World War.

Norma and 32 other nurses were stationed at the New Zealand General Hospital in Kurei, a town that no longer exists, and offered medical treatment to injured Japanese citizens.

Norma says originally in the 1940s a New Zealand woman had to be over the age of 28 to be able to travel overseas, then it moved to 25 and then 21 in 1947.

'When it changed the third time I just got through – I was just 21 – and I travelled to Japan all excited and eager.”

However, as soon as she hopped off the train in Hiroshima she was no longer the wide-eyed cheerful Kiwi girl off on an adventure.

'Everything was black. There were burnt trees and vapourised imprints of bodies on the ground.

'Everything was dead. I couldn't believe I was there. We docked in Kurei and there were battle ships that had been bombed. Then we went by train to Ogori.”

She remembers seeing deformed babies, severe poverty, and brutality on the streets.

One day she went to an out-of-bounds town with her flatmate and feared meeting a similar fate.

'There was a group of young Japanese men and they came towards us and I thought ‘this is the end of us', but he had a poisoned hand and I had treated him, so he had just come to thank me.”

'I thought ‘thank God', because we weren't supposed to be there.”

Every year the Japanese government documents those who have suffered from the radiation. The bomb razed and burnt around 70 per cent of all buildings and caused an estimated 140,000 deaths by the end of 1945, along with increased rates of cancer and chronic disease among survivors.

Norma, like many of her colleagues, came back to New Zealand with radiation damage.

'I'm riddled with cancer. The doctors can't prove that I got it from the after-effects, but they also can't prove I didn't get it from being in Japan.”

Two weeks ago, Norma flew back to Japan in the hopes of finding clarity. Her husband, who also served in Japan, had no interest of going back because he wanted to remember it as it was.

Norma says after he had passed away she contemplated for a while about when to go and thought it was now or never. She asked all the veterans in New Zealand if they would like to come along too. Her friend June Yearbury, also 94, was the only one.

'I decided to go back because the dropping of the bomb was a shameful thing, but it changed the whole make-up of Japan,” says Norma. 'I had to have closure and forgive USA for dropping that bomb.”

'Throughout the wars Japanese men were cruel and brutal and then America dropped a bomb and they are a totally different nation now.”

She says when she arrived she was expecting Japan to be in 'a time warp of the 1980s,” but found the country far more advanced. She couldn't believe how much Japan had changed.

During their five-day trip, Norma and June visited Hiroshima, the city most ruined by the bomb. They were told not to eat any food above ground, but there wasn't any.

'There was just sticks as trees and all the concrete rubble had been cleared away, and about a metre of soil had been dug up because it was highly contaminated with radiation.”

There used to be nothing but dirt roads and little bamboo huts positioned along the road. Now it's a concrete metropolis, with buildings reaching the sky and endless streets.

'I remember the people being very poor, living in Japanese houses with only one room, but to go back now and see the diet that they're on and the incredible infrastructure, I can't believe it.

'I honestly can't believe I've been, I wake up in the middle of the night and think ‘well, I must have been'.

'They are so kind, courteous and they are very much in favour of peace.”