To elucidate the effects on lying flat on the ground in attenuating a weapons blast, Miyoko Matsubara, one of the Hiroshima maidens, when recounting the bombing in an interview in 1999, said that she was outdoors and "less than 1 mile" from the hypocenter of the Little Boy bomb. Upon observing the nuclear weapons silent flash she quickly lay flat on the ground, while those who were standing directly next to her, and her other fellow students, had simply disappeared from her sight when the blast wave arrived and blew them away.