Photographs of Nagasaki, taken by King of Prussia veteran Milton Dienes in 1945, are to be archived in the Library of Congress, writes Michaela Winberg for Philly.com.

Milton was dispatched as an Army Air Corps photographer to the Japanese city only 100 days after the atomic bomb destroyed the area, killing at least 40,000 and leaving thousands more with lasting effects of the devastating radiation exposure.

Not knowing the dangers of exposure to radiation, Dienes took pictures of the haunting and mostly deserted landscape while walking the streets without protective gear. Concrete buildings that surrounded empty streets looked like they had been melted together in the intense heat of the bomb.

The historic images, developed in the army lab in Guam, are unpublished and have mostly only been seen within the military, but are now headed for the Library of Congress archives.

“I have all these photographs and the stories that go along with them,” said Dienes. “I’ve had some stuff published, but I didn’t expect anything like that.”

Read more about and see several of Dienes’ historic photographs at Philly.com by clicking here.