Aug 9th: Nagasaki

2 Comments

1. 

   MikeInOhio on August 9, 2007 at 12:50 pm

   I just finished reading this while sitting here at work eating my lunch.  Try and imagine that this your 13 year old son, grandson, or nephew telling this story.

   Written by Katsuji Yoshida
   (13 years old at the time of the bombing)

   Today the Sky is Clear

   Mr.Yoshida was a second year student in the shipbuilding course at Nagasaki Prefecture School of Industrial Science. He received three major skin transplant operations at the Omura Naval Hospital after the bombing and has undergone numerous transplants since then.

   August 9,1945. No matter how hard I try, I have never been able to forget the events of that morning.
   An air-raid alarm was sounded but soon lifted. Seven students including myself left the shelter and began to walk back toward school. Along the way we stopped at a roadside house to draw drinking water from the well. For no particular reason, I looked up at the sky to my right when about to drop the bucket into the water, and I noticed two parachutes falling between a crack in the clouds. My friends also looked up, shading their eyes with their hands.

   Suddenly, there was a violent explosion and I was thrown across the road into a rice paddy. Other survivors have described the experience of the atomic bombing by the expression pika-don [an onomatopoeic term equivalent to “flash-boom”], but for me it all happened in a fleeting dream-like instant.

   It is said that there is no pain when injuries exceed a certain degree of severity. I was aware during the brief space of time between the explosion and my impact against the ground. It seemed like a fish was being fried and I could feel my body curl up with the intense heat. People usually associate blisters with burns, but when I regained consciousness in the rice paddy I found myself covered in blood. The skin on my arms had peeled off and was hanging down like a torn shirt from my fingertips. The open flesh was bright red with blood, but strangely enough there was no pain. On the contrary, I felt as healthy and energetic as ever. Along with my friends, I told myself that it was only a minor burn and that a little ammonia tincture would cure everything. The relief at having survived perhaps blocked out other perceptions temporarily.

   However, I was shocked to see the men and women who had been working in the fields. Hideously burned, they came down from the hillsides, screaming and crying, and formed a group nearby.
   Overhead I could hear the ominous sounds of airplane engines and felt terror for the first time. Trying to conceal ourselves from the enemy planes, my friends and I lay on the ground and pulled charred weeds over our bodies. It was then that I began to feel a prickling pain.

   The friend lying beside me was carrying a broken piece of mirror. We had been remarking to each other about how our faces had changed, but we were filled with astonishment and horror to look at ourselves in the mirror. Meanwhile, people continued to stagger down from the hillside; people groaning and crying, children searching for their parents, and people who were so badly burned that it was impossible to distinguish men from women.

   My companions and I were full of energy at first and talked about making the trip homeward over the hills in Nishiyama But when we tried to make a start, no one could move. My face was swelling so quickly that I could feel it growing larger.
   A steady procession of uninjured people filed past us over the hills toward Mie and Shikimi. I can never forget the pathetic cries of the many people on the verge of death. They begged for water, but the passers-by could think of nothing else but finding refuge. My friends and I joined in the chorus of screams for water but nobody stopped to listen.

   I could see through my swollen eyelids but remained helplessly unable to move. A small creek nearby was filled with people trying to take a drink. Many of them died with their faces in the water, and others stepped over the growing pile of corpses without the slightest hesitation.

   Two students about my age arrived at the spot where we were lying. One had broken both his legs and was being carried by the other, whose eyeballs were hanging down onto his cheeks. I could see the blood vessels pulsating in the exposed muscles. Realizing we were nearby, the latter student said “I feel so relieved” and then collapsed dead on the ground. More than forty years have passed, but the sight of those two students is branded vividly in my memory.

   The waters of the Urakami River, which the lyrics of our school song extolled as “pure, and sparkling,” were stained red with blood and flowed over the ravaged corpses of people and animals. It all seems like a terrible nightmare now.
   Before long I became completely unable to see. My face was so swollen that I could not even open my eyes by force. Darkness began to set in. Whenever someone passed I spoke out in the direction of the footsteps: “Is the neighborhood near Suwa Shrine damaged?” The answer was always the same: “The whole city is destroyed.”

   Soon the area was steeped in darkness. The fire spurting out of the windows of a nearby school provided a faint light. My companions and I encouraged each other as the minutes and hours passed. It was the middle of summer but I felt incredibly cold. And yet at the same time I felt a ravishing thirst. It is impossible to describe, or even imagine, how desperately I longed for a drink of water.

   I asked a friend who has now passed away to bring a message to my family. The cold and the thirst made it impossible to sleep. During the night I heard the sound of passing airplanes several times. When dawn finally arrived, I felt as though I had endured a year of bitter hardships.

   Early in the morning a woman who had come from Isahaya as a member of a relief team helped me onto a wooden stretcher for treatment. I told myself that I had to stay alive until I reached home. While receiving first aid, airplanes passed overhead and everyone fled to the air-raid shelter, leaving me to wait alone under the hot sun. It was like a slow execution. Unable to move and lying impaled on the stretcher in excruciating pain, I wondered if I would have to suffer endlessly without death ever coming to relieve me.

   And we still have politicians talking about “keeping all options on the table”.

2. 

   MikeInOhio on August 9, 2007 at 1:22 pm

   The rest of the story by Katsuji Yoshida

   After receiving first aid, I was carried to the gutted ruins of the nearby commercial school. With unseeing eyes I could feel the residual heat in the building. I heard later from my mother that there were hundreds of other people in the same condition lying in the school groaning and crying out names of relatives.
   My mother went into the building, calling my name over and over again as she walked amid the injured. I answered, but she could not believe it was me when she saw my disfigured body. When she took me out of the building she still had doubts as to whether it was really her son.

   On the way home I begged for water and spoke deliriously as my mother trudged through the scorched ruins strewn with the dead and mortally injured. Perhaps because of the joy and relief at being rejoined with my parents, I fell into a state of unconsciousness after finally arriving at our house. For more than a year thereafter I received treatment at the temporary hospital in Shinkozen Primary School and later at the Naval Hospital in Omura.

   After discharge from hospital I returned once more to my home in Nagasaki. Although a large portion of the population had suffered the effects of the atomic bombing, it was a great tribulation for people like myself with burns to go outdoors. The reason is that our hideous scars attracted stares from everyone. I could feel people’s eyes on me when I walked on the streets, and felt terrible shame and hatred for war. I think that survivors with burns on their faces suffered more mental torment than anyone else. Although true even for men, this was a terrible stigma especially for women.

   For a long time I felt utterly hopeless. Even going out to get a haircut at the neighborhood barbershop was too great a hardship for me to bear, and I asked the barber to come to my house on his holiday. Eventually, though, I realized that thinking this way would only make me more and more miserable. After graduating from school I was fortunate enough to obtain employment at a food wholesale company, and I made up my mind to strive with all my energy.

   At the beginning I worked inside the company offices accumulating knowledge about the various types of merchandise and therefore did not have to go outside. I was able to work with a relaxed and cheerful attitude. Soon, however, I was told that I would be dealing directly with customers starting the following month. I tried to drum up courage in my heart, but the new duties as a salesman made each day a painful experience. I cursed the war and the atomic bomb and asked God how he could be so cruel to the atomic bomb survivors.

   I remember one day when a young mother came into the store holding a little child in her arms. One look at my face and the child burst into tears. It is easy to understand why such a disfigured face shocked the child, but still I can never forget the indescribable feeling of misery that welled up inside me. Why did my face have to be burned? Why hadn’t I been allowed a chance to hide? I could only turn my grief and bitterness toward heaven.

   This mental suffering is one of the lasting effects of exposure to the atomic bombing. But again I told myself that no amount of crying and complaining would bring my body back to normal I resolved to make the best of the situation. I began to receive messages ever since. In the wintertime, the skin becomes pale and cracked because of the damaged epidermal tissues, and so the messages are indispensable during the season.

   I look back now with joy that the atomic bomb survivors have persevered over the years, and that we have been able to appeal for genuine world peace and to inform people about the horror of war and the atomic bombing. It is our fervent hope that the term “atomic bomb survivor” never has to be applied to anyone else again.
   I believe that the thousands of victims who are no longer here are watching over us with approval and encouragement.

   I pray that the clear, peaceful sky we see today will remain for all eternity.