Nagasaki;
Even at night a lot of living victims were still carried on stretchers into the classrooms of Inasa Primary School. At the same time there were dying victims, who were groaning and breathed their last breath calling for water. As if they had been animals, those who died were carried out on stretchers which had just carried living victims in.
The indescribably bad smell of burned flesh, sweat, urine and feces mixed up.
In front of me, two Koreans of strong physique were talking in their mother tongue with tears in their eyes, and they died one by one. (I saw plenty of deaths.)
In the daytime, after nursing my father who was bombed, my mother and I went out to the passage. There was a mountain of dead bodies! My mother and I could hardly watch them. We closed our eyes and pinched our passage and on the ground as if they had been charred logs. They were so crowded that I could hardly put my feet on the ground. While I was walking hanging on my mother's arm to avoid the dead bodies, I stumbled over one of them. I said to my mother, "Mom, I stepped on it!" "Doesn't matter! Already dead", she said reproachfully, and we hurried to the gate.
At that time everyone may have been living, thinking only of himself. We could see the dead coolly; everybody had no emotion at all. Even tears didn't flow. Like beasts, only the groaning sounded in the classroom.
Young as I was (just 4 years), I had no memory but the days of the atomic bombing. I don't remember other days of that year. Only those days remain in my brain like a tumor. I don't know why.
Remembering this, my heart aches.
2.0 km, Female, Age 8
It was when I was in the second grade of elementary school.
It is awful for me to recall that day. At an instant, the accident changed my life from front to back and everything I saw was a living hell. The people didn't look like human beings. They were crying with pain, fear and so on. I was not old enough so I don't clearly remember what I was doing. Hand in hand with my elder, I was madly running away toward the mountain side. Every scene on the way was just like hell.
My mother was at our destroyed house crying loudly for help for my father who was pushed down under the house. Fortunately, a soldier helped him from the fire. I heard about this later.
That night Mother carried Father on a stretcher to the mountain side. Father couldn't move or speak at all. He had a scrapped face. He was just like a living dead. Though I was a child, I wondered how he had been taken care of. I felt sorry for him, completely covered with rags, and I thought he was dirty. Everybody was wearing rags like beggars. Everything was so mad and hellish, so mad that we could see off those poor dying people without a word.
1.5 km, Female, Age 16
I was in the factory when bombed 1.4 km from the blast center and I found myself under the destroyed building. In the dark I reached out my hands and touched someone's leg. Perhaps the person was sitting next to me. I forgot her name, but she might be "K". I drew her legs with my full force calling by name, but she didn*t answer or move at all. I finally escaped from there, writhing with pain. I could catch sight of no body in the dark factory. (Because time passed after the others escaped, besides a lot of smoke was going up.) I regret deeply that I couldn't pull away the destroyed house and see he was still alive or not. On the way to escape I met a lot of people crying for water, but I could give them no water. I have a lot of things to regret.
1.5 km, Male, Age 16
The A-bomb was dropped while I was working in an underground factory. I got out of it about thirty minutes later and tried to go to the rescue at the head office. There was a sea of fire on the main road, so I walked along the back street. I saw all farmers' houses were burning and cows and horses were half burnt. When I arrived at the main office, a woman in front of me fell down. Then her two children came to find their mother. I still remember those sights clearly. I found a guard dead but his watch still working. How fragile a man's life is! Later, I and two of my friends from my home town looked for one of my classmates. He was at the design section of the main office and exposed directly to the bomb. We looked for him calling his name. We found him, whose upper body part was burned seriously, and there was a little pool of water on the edge of his pants. We held him in our arms and carried him gently to a train. Later I heard he had died in the hospital. I saw a student whose leg was in the iron bars. He was calling for help but I had no way to help him. He is still living in my brain.
2.0 km, Male, Age 14
My house was in Sakamoto-machi, about 800 m from the center of the explosion. My mother and sister were trapped burning house and took refuge in an air-raid shelter. My mother was burned and injured. My sister, 4 years old, was near death as she had been caught in beams. I came back from work to find nothing remained of my house.
The shelter in Sakamoto-machi was filled with dead or injured people. There were charred bodies everywhere. Bodies of half naked people with swollen faces fell on one upon another. Their skin were sore and their eyeballs were burned out. I saw a dead woman holding her baby in her arms tightly. Her three other children, who were also dead, were lying beside her. It was a pitiful sight.
People trapped under the ruins were crying for help. "Water!" "Please give me water." Naked people with sore bodies writhing in agony. I felt helpless at the sight. Cries of pain and death throes were heard all night. My father scooped up water from a river with a burned saucepan and gave it to the injured people. They literally jumped at the saucepan and gulped the water. After a while, they died.
On the next day, August 10, there wasn't death throes any more. Most of them were dead. It was the living hell, the world of death. The river was filled with dead bodies. My sister died early morning on that day.
My parents and I went to my mother's hometown, leaving my sister's body in the ruins. When my mother left the place, she talked to my sister with tears trickling down her cheeks in big drops, "Please forgive me, my dear. I have to go. Come back to us as a soul." On August 17, she died too. My brother and I were taking her back from a hospital. We were carrying her in a cart. Being in agony, she was trying to breath, but it suddenly stopped and she was dead. My father went back to Nagasaki on August 11 to find my sister*s body. He couldn't find it as there were bleached poured oil over the bodies and burned them. In June 1957, my father died of stomach cancer accompanied with weariness and other disease.
3.0 km, Female, Age 13
On that day, my teachers and seniors wore headbands as usual. There was a slogan on each headband saying, "Devote ourselves to the nation". They were all killed by the atomic bomb at a munitions factory in Urakami.
On the morning of that day, my sister left home to dig an air-raid shelter in our neighborhood. Just before noon, I took her place. At first, I thought I heard something explode. In that moment, the flash along with the blast like thunder made me cover my eyes with both hands and lie down on the ground at the mouth of the shelter. I was blown burnt and blistered. The roofs of houses were blown away and the houses themselves were leaning to one side. I did not know where my parents and sisters were. Then I happened to see the woman who was our next-door neighbor and said to her, "Don't leave me alone!" I felt so lonely, but after a few hours, I was able to meet my family again.
The whole sky of Nagasaki became so dark that it seemed as if it was midnight. In the city, people were running about in confusion. Some were screaming and some were very quiet. People escaping from the mountain area were all burnt black and under their burnt clothes, I saw their red-burnt skin. It was impossible to tell men from woman. The scene was too miserable to look at.
We were homeless and took refuge in a safer side of the mountain area. There we found many wounded people groaning in tents. Some were really dying.
After a few days, many dead bodies were cremated here and there and at night those places were phosphorescent. I remember that I was horrified at the scene though I was a child, and prayed that the war would soon end.
I was in the wash room downstairs. When I was about to go out, suddenly I felt the yellow flash and had a dizzy spell. The moment I stepped out, I was blown from my back. It became dark. I couldn't see anything, nor breathe. I was afraid I would die at that place. I looked for a slight light and took a drink of it. Then it became easier for me to breathe again. I looked around. Everything had been destroyed. In front of the factory gate there were so many people running out this way with awful faces. "xxx, xxx," I was called. Then I looked in that direction, and found that my good friend was being carried on someone's back with bloody legs. So I carried him to the foxhole in front of the street car stop. The instep of his left foot was broken. I wanted to take him to a hospital right then, but we were surrounded by fire and burnt houses. All I could do was to give him a drink of water.
The fires were burning more and more. Hot wind was blowing. On the road I could see many people crawling and dead people. At my feet was a dead girl who looked about 12 years old. Then I happened to look up at the sun. It was bloody red. It looked like the color of hell.
People said that the enemy had landed at Mogi and all of us would be killed if we were there. So only the seriously wounded and dead people were left there. When I looked at the mountain side, the fire was going up and up.
About five or six o'clock a truck came. They told us that they were going to carry only the badly wounded. So I helped my friend into the lorry and I was alone. Then I met my dormitory friend, and we moved toward our Sanno Dormitory. When we reached there somehow, it was all burnt down. The dusk was drawing near. We got to Mitsubishi Ground. The sun set completely. Some people were asking for water far away or near by. At that time I saw a kind of flare bomb thrown from a plane and it became bright like the daytime. We lay down in the gutter. After a while my friend said, "What's the matter with us?"
My head was painful, and my heart, too. The red fire was burning on the hill. I thought it was Chinzei Gakuin School. I was looking at the flame with my friend, I went to sleep.
In those days I was living in Sanno Dormitory. I'm not sure how many people were there but more than one hundred. I went to the ruins of the burnt dormitory. I think it was immediately after the A-bombing. I saw several lines of five skeletons lying side by side. I think they had been on night duty.
The ground under my feet was hot. So I turned over the roof tiles and found a red fire still burning.
1.5 km, Female, Age 20
The whole of Kotobuki-machi had been almost completely destroyed with the strike of bomb three day before.
So some twenty of us who lost our houses were lodging at the neighboring timber merchant's house. We prepared lunch and were having lunch shortly before noon. They had by then called off the air-raid warning. No sooner had we heard the news on the radio that enemy bombers were approaching, than they were already flying low right over our heads with the thundering roar of their engines. We saw a strange lightning flash through the window. We lost no time in rushing from the window to lie down on our stomachs. For some minutes we could see nothing because of the blast. When I tried to breathe, I felt an acute pain in my throat. The air was so heated that it must have burned my throat. So I covered nose and mouth with my hands and breathed slowly. After a while we became able to see. When we looked around us, we found almost everything had caught fire. We ran out. Those who had been outside had their skin torn from their hands and faces, and the skin was dangling. As we ran to escape, we heard voices crying, "Help me!" from under the collapsed houses but none of us could stop to turn around toward those voices. The fire had already begun to spread, and terror caught us. All we were doing was trying to hurry away from this hell. We could not pay any attention to others.
The bridge having broken down in the previous bombing, we had to cross the suspension bridge. We hurried to the shelter allotted to us at the foot of the mountain, but when we reached there it was packed with strangers and there was no room for us. Soon danger threatened that part of the city as well, and all of the refugees began to climb up the hill known as Konpira-san. The top was full of burned people groaning in agony and asking for water. As I wandered about the mountain and looked down over the city of Nagasaki, what I saw was nothing but a sea of blazing fire.
3.0 km, Male, Age 23
Atomic bombs are the enemy of all life.
On August 9, 1945, at 8:00 p.m., I was in a party with another 62 members sent to the Ohashi Bridge at Urakami, a little way from the hypocenter, where we collected dead bodies in a vacant lot on near the bridge. It was cruel enough to make me think that it was war! It was such a terrible scene that I couldn't believe I myself was alive and doing this job.
First we gathered in front of the Nagasaki Police Station, where a bag of crackers and a canned meat were retioned out, and then we listened to the marshal's address of institutions. After managing to reach the Nagasaki Station, we followed the railroad to the Ohashi Bridge in Urakami. On the way to Urakami, we saw many dead bodies lying in the darkness.
Seriously injured people were pleading, "Give me water! I want a drink…" But I knew that drinking water would kill them, so I passed them without answering their demands. Now, however, reflecting on that situation, I can't stop feeling bad for not giving them water. I really felt sorry for them.
We found a body in a fire cistern, too. It was swollen so big that it looked like a Japanese wrestler, and we couldn't get him out of it even though a few of us tried hard. The cistern was made of concrete, so we broke it to take the body out and then took him to the vacant lot. It isso cruel that I can*t describe it.
We did our best to gather the dead bodies around Urakemi in one vacant place, but we couldn't finish the job. Around 6 o'clock next morning a fire-fighting team came to take over, so we went back to the Nagasaki Police Station to report. On the way back, I saw an air-raid shelter. I looked inside carefully and was astonished to fine a person dead, sitting up. Both of his wrists and ankles were burnt and I could see the bones. On one of his wrists there was a metal watchband left. His black clothes were burnt, while the white clothes escaped being burnt.
I can't write any more. It was too cruel. On August 10 and 11, we all were busy burying the bodies of our friends and families. I clearly remember that they looked just like coal from the coal mines.
3.0 km, Female, Age 31
My father was a retired navy surgeon as that time, but many of the wounded came to him for medical care because the doctors at the center of explosionwere all killed. All of our family treated the wounded. My father was surrounded by us untrained helpers.
The shelves where he kept the medicine had fallen down and was destroyed by the blast. There was only a little medicine, carbolic acid left. Fragments of concrete and glass were stuck into the bodies of the victims. We pulled them out one by one with tweezers, disinfected with the carbolic acid, and then applied bandages made of Yukata or sheets. Their wounds were of such extreme cruelty that no one except a witness could imagine it. Their burns were also too miserable to be described. There was only an ointment brought from somewhere else to use on the wounds. The wounded were lying not only in our large yard but also in our house which had been damaged in the blast, waiting for their turn to get help. There were only a few of us and so many of them! We couldn't attend to so many. A person waiting for his turn died in pain crying, "It hurts!" A woman covered with mud was lying down in the shade of the back door waiting for her turn, asking me breathlessly, "Shall I be saved?". The woman is still engraved on my memory. The burnt skin of the wounded was hanging in strips from their bodies, and because their bodies and ears were infested with maggots, they complained about difficulty in hearing. I can never forget the sight of such patients tottering around in red and yellow bandages, made out of flags used for lack of cloth bandages in the house.
Some people asked me for water in faint voices. I held their heads as I poured water into their mouths, but they could have only one drink. We did our best. But we felt great regret we couldn't do more.
I hope that such a terrible war will never happen again.
I deeply appreciate the help of our relatives and the people of the town.
0.5km, Male, Age 40
I found my wife lying on the sand of the Okawa River. She was badly burned. She faintly asked me for some water. So I picked up a small aluminum kettle and gave her some river water. I laid her on a tatami mat blown from somewhere else, covered her with a shutter board, and asked the relief party to carry her to the hospital. Just then I asked her about our daughter. She replied our daughter had been playing at the neighbor's and she did not know where she was. Then I walked around my ruined house looking for my daughter. After two days I found her at last. I dug the gutter and found her 'monpe' pants that partly escaped the fire. So I picked up her bones in a small burnt bucket.
After my wife's death I carried some dead trees into the hollow of the emergency crematory, put on some petroleum and cremated her by myself. I picked up her bones in the evening.
Went for Rescue, Female, Age 20
Hibakusha were carried one after another by trucks and other vehicles. Their clothes were all torn, their skin was black from burning, and pieces of shattered glasses were stuck all over their bodies. When I saw these people, I was overwhelmed with anger and cried inside me, "Why do the innocent civilians have to suffer like this?" People were crying in pain, and for water; little children were hysterically calling and crying for their mothers. Doctors, first-aid soldiers and nurses ran around to treat the injured, hardly realizing the dawn of another day. In spite of all these efforts, many people died, unable to wait for their turn to be treated. It was hell in this living world.
I wonder if people living today can ever imagine a swarm of maggots wriggling on a living person's body a few hours after a new bandage is applied. Medicine was scarce. All we had was "Libakan", a mixed medical solution of rivanol and cod-liver oil. We soaked gauze in this solution and applied it to scars and burns. Changing gauze caused unbearable pain to patients. Every time, this made the injured parts bleed very badly. I could imagine what pain the patient must have been going through, and said in my mind "Please be patient." I could not hold back tears thinking what if my family had to endure the same agony.
Many died without any relative beside them to watch their last moments. They could not eat what they wanted before they died because there was no way to get it. I strongly feel we should make our voices heard around the world never to let such a tragedy happen again.
When a beautiful young woman combed her hair, the comb in her hand was entangled with a bundle of hair. She would stare at the comb, then weep. Soon her head became bald, and one could not tell if she was a girl or boy. Though she did not have any external injuries, she died; the skin of her body became abnormally soft, and her skin would literally slip off if you touched it. We carried many bodies swarming with a lot of maggots on the stretcher to the cremation place, to be burned with other bodies. Day after day, we carried out the same task.
Every time I think of those people who had to die alone after suffering from hunger and agony, I feel grateful for the peace we have today, and hope that this peace will last forever.
Went for rescue, Female, Age17
Many burnt people got off the freight train one after another, suddenly the front of the station was crowded and no one could walk. People burnt black were crying out at us students, "Give me water!" They kept asking us one after the other. We were scared of them coming near us. We were really scared. We started to move as though in a dream. We put the people who couldn't move on stretchers in groups of four and took them to the Navy Hospital as fast as we could.
In front of the hospital and the school gymnasium, there were mountains of people burnt black. I lost all sense of what was going on. It was just like a dream filled with fear and sadness.
Went for rescue, Female, Age 33
I'll never forget rescuing victims at the National School in Isahaya.
Victims were lying close to each other in the hall. I cannot forget the voice of a man sobbing in front of the stage with his head in his hands and his face on the floor crying in Korean "Aigo, aigo." I could feel his despair and it broke my heart.
Maggots were creeping out of the wounded leg of a man in his thirties who was near the south entrance. I took the maggots out by patting the wound with paper I had softened. Then I dressed his wound with bandage made of yukata (summer kimono) coated with medicine to keep the flies out. The man seemed to feel bad and didn't move and kept his eyes closed.
While I was taking a rest, a woman in twenties fainted forward on the stairs in the hall entrance. Two or three of us went over to her and asked what had happened. She said that she wanted to go to the bathroom. It didn't seem like she could go by herself, so she leaned on my shoulder and took the hand of another person and we went slowly to the bathroom. On the way back to the hall, she asked us to check her back. Just under her shoulders was a blister that was red and swollen and looked painful. We put some medicine on it and covered it with a bandage made of a sheet. Her face looked like it had been burnt black, too. She nodded at us and then closed her eyes again.
I strongly felt that we should never have war again.
Everywhere I looked there were seriously injured people. I once helped civilian guards put a man in his thirties groaning in pain on a stretcher.
The patient's bathroom was filthy with diarrhea and blood covered feces. We sometimes threw ashes over them and then covered everything with creosol.
On August 31, we cleaned the bloodstains and dirt out of classrooms with scrub brushes made of rope. The only thing that I can do is to pray to God that there will never be war again.