The Mushroom in the Sky

In the 80th anniversary year, Jackie French explores the dropping of the bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, which ended World War 2.

1942

Japan has bombed Sydney Harbour. Sixteen-year-old Ossie lies about his age to protect his country, even though it means abandoning his only family, a one-eyed dog named Lucky.

Kind-hearted Mrs Plum is already looking after forty-six dogs for soldiers. She's becoming desperate because there are no wartime rations for dogs. Help arrives when thirteen-year-old Kat Murphy volunteers to take Lucky and persuades the girls at her school to also help.

As Kat grows to love Lucky, she realises he can still see his master. And Kat can see him, too, as Ossie is captured and taken as a prisoner of war to Japan, where he will see a strange mushroom cloud rise above Nagasaki. The result of a bomb that will change lives and forever leave the question: was it worth it?

Including true accounts of that extraordinary but often misunderstood time, this is a story of quiet heroism, endurance and an unimaginable occurrence that continues to resound to this day.