-15-

into it, with fallen telephone poles and wires. From every second or third house came the voices of people buried and abandoned, who invariably screamed, with formal politeness, "Tasukite kure! Help, if you please!" Several ruins from which these cries came the priests recognized as the homes of friends, but it was too late to help. All the way Mr. Fukai whimpered, "Let me stay." The Catholics turned right when they came to a block of fallen houses that were one flame. At Fukai Bridge, which would take them across to the East Parade Ground, they saw that the whole community on the opposite side of the river-branch was a sheet of fire; they dared not cross, and decided to take refuge in Asano Park, just off to the left. Father Kleinsorge, who had been weakened for a couple of days by a bad case of diarrhoea, began to stagger under his protesting burden, and as he tried to climb up over the wrecked houses that blocked their way to the park, he stumbled, dropped Mr. Fukai and plunged off to the right, head over heels, to the very edge of the river. When he picked himself up, he saw Mr. Fukai trying to run away. Father Kleinsorge shouted to a score of so diers who were standing by the bridge to stop him. When Father Kleinsorge started back to get Mr. Fukai, Father LaSalle called to him, "Hurry! Don't waste time!" and so Father Kleinsorge just requested the soldiers to take care of Mr. Fukai. They said they would, but the little broken men got away from them and the last the priests could see of him, he was running back towards the fire.

Mr. Tanimoto, fearful for his family and church, started to run by the shortest route toward them, along Koi Highway. He was

-16-

the only person making his way into the city; he met hundreds
and hundreds who were fleeing, and everyone of them seemed to be
hurt in some way. Some had their eyebrows burned off and had
skin halting from their faces and hands. Others, because of pain,
held their hands up as if carrying something. Many were naked or
in shreds of clothing. On some undressed bodies the burns made
patters --of undershirt straps and kimono sleeves and, on the
backs of some women (since white repelled the radiation of the
bobm and dark clothes absorbed it and conducted it to the skin) the
shapes of flowers they had had on their kimonos. Many, though
injured themselves, supported relatives who were worse off. All
had their heads bowed, looked straight ahead, were silent, and
showed no expression at all.

After crossing Koi Bridge and Kannon Bridge, as he approached
the center of the explosion, having run the whole way, Mr. Tanimoto
saw that all the houses had been crushed, and many were afire. He
tried to penetrate the ruins, but flames blocked him. Under many
houses people screamed for help, but no one helped: in general,
survivors that day assisted only their relatives or immediate
neighbors, for they could not comprehend or tolerate a wider circle
of misery. The wounded limped past the screams, and Mr. Tanimoto
ran past them. As a Christian he was filled with compassion for
those who were trapped, and as a Japanese he was overwhelmed with
the shame of being unhurt, and so he prayed as he ran, "God help
them and take them out of the fire."

He thought he would skirt around the fire to the left, so he
ran back to Kannon Bridge and followed for a distance one of the
river-branches. He tried several cross streets, but none was open,
so he turned far left and ran out to Yokogawa, a station on the
rail line which detoured the city in a wide semi-circle, and he

-17-

followed the rails until he came to a train burning on the tracks. So impressed was he by this time by the extent of the damage that he ran due north three miles to Gion in the foothills. All the way he overtook dreadfully burned and lacerated people, and in his *uninjured* guilt he turned to right and left as he hurried and said to some of them, "Excuse me for having no burden like yours."

Near Gion he began to meet country people going towards the city to help, and when they saw him, several exclaimed, "Look! There is one who is not wounded."

At Gion he bore toward the right bank of the main river, then Ota, and ran down it until he reached fire again. He threw off his shirt and shoes and plunged into the river. In midstream, where the current was fairly strong, exhaustion and fear finally caught up with him -- he had run nearly seven miles -- and he became limp. He prayed, and drifted in the water. /"Please, God, help me to cross. It would be nonsense for me to be drowned when I am the only uninjured one." He managed a few more strokes and fetched up on a spit downstream.

He climbed up the bank and ran along it until, near a large Shinto Shrine, he came to more fire, and as he turned left to get around it, he met, by incredible luck, his wife. She was carrying their infant son. Mr. Tanimoto was emotionally worn out, and nothing now could surprise him, so he did not embrace her but simply said, "Oh, you are safe." She told him that she had come home from Ushida, where she had spent the night with friends, just in time for the explosion; she had been buried under the parsonage with the baby in her arms. She told how the wreckage pressed down on her; the baby cried. She saw a chink of light and by reaching up with a hand she worked the hole bigger, bit by bit. After about half an hour she heard the crackling noise of wood burning. Tiles fell in

-18-

through the back opening, and at last it was big enough so that she
could push the baby out, and afterwards she crawled out herself.
She said she was now going out to Ushida again. He said he
wanted to see his church and take care of the people in his
Neighborhood Association. They parted as casually -- as bewilderedly
-- as they had met.

His way around the fire took him across the East Parade Ground,
which, being an evacuation area, was now the locale of a gruesome
review -- rank on rank of the burned and bleeding. Those who were
burned moaned, "Mizu, mizu! Give us water!" Mr. Tanimoto found a
basin in a nearby street and located a water tap that still worked
in the crushed shell of a house, and he began carrying water to the
suffering strangers. When he had given drink to about thrifty of
them, he realized he was taking too much time. "Excuse me," he said
loudly to those nearby who were reaching out their hands to him
and crying their thirst, "I have many people to take care of," and
he ran away.

He went to the river again, and jumped down on a sandspit
where there were hundreds of people so badly wounded that they could
not get up and go farther from the burning city. When they saw a
man erect and unhurt, the chant began again: "Miju, miju, miju." He
could not resist them; he carried them water from the river (a
mistake, since it was tidal and brackish). Two or three small boats
were ferrying hurt people across the river, and when one touched the
spit, Mr. Tanimoto again made his loud apologetic speech, and jumped
into the boat. It took him across to Asano Park. There in the
underbrush he found his charges of the Neighborhood Association, who
had come there by his previous instructions, and saw many

-19-

acquaintances, among them Father Kleinsorge and the other Catholics.
But he missed his friend Fukai. "Where is Fukai-san?" He asked.

"He didn't want to come with us," Father Kleinsorge said.
"He ran back."

When she heard the voices of the people caught along with her
in the delayed tin factory, Toshiko Sasaki began speaking to
them. Her nearest neighbor, she discovered, was a high school girl
drafted for factory work whose back, the girl said, was broken.
Miss Sasaki replied, "I am lying here and I can't move. My left leg
id cut off."

Some time later one person's footsteps walked overhead and off
to one side, and there the person began burrowing. The digger
released several people and when he came close to the high school
girl, she found that her back was not broken, after all, and she
crawled out. Miss Sasaki spoke to the rescuer, and he worked toward
her. He pulled away a great number of books until he had made a
tunnel and she could see his prespiring face as he said, "Come out,
miss." She tried, but, "I can't move," she added. The man
excavated some more and told her to use all her strength to get out.
But books were heavy on her hips, and the man finally saw that a
bookcase was leaning forward onto the books and that a heavy beam
pressed down on the bookcase. "Wait," he said, "I'll get a crowbar."

The man was gone a long time, and when he came back he was
ill-tempered, as if her fate was no concern of his. "We have no
men to help you," he shouted in through the tunnel. "Come out of
your own power."

"That's impossible," she said, "My left leg....." The man went

-20-

away.

Much later several men came and dragged her out. Her left leg was not off but it was badly broken and cut and hung askew below the knee. They took her outside. It was raining. She sat on the ground in the rain. When the downpour worsened, someone directed all the wounded people to take cover in the factory's air raid shelter. "Come along," a torn-up woman said to her, "You can hop." But Miss Sasaki could not move and she just waited in the rain. Then a man propped up a large sheet of corrugated tin as a kind of lean-to, and he took her in his arms and carried her to it. She was grateful until he brought two other horribly wounded people -- a woman with a whole breast sheered off and a man whose face was all raw from burn -- to share the simple shed with her. The access to the place where the man had set up the shelter was too narrow for a truck, which carried most of the wounded away from the plant, to enter. No one came back. The rain cleared and the cloudy afternoon was hot; before nightfall the three grotesques under the slanting piece of twisted tin began to smell quite bad.

The former head of the Neighborhood Association to which the Catholics belonged was an energetic man named Yoshida. He had boasted, when he was in charge of air raid defenses, that fire might eat away all of Hiroshima, but it would never come to Nobori-cho. The bomb blew down his house and a joist pinned him by the legs, in full view of the Catholic mission house across the way and of the people hurrying along the street. His cries for help brought no response from them; they went along; Nobori-cho became absolutely deserted, and the fire swept through. Mr. Yoshida saw

-21-

the wooden mission house -- the only erect building in the area -- go up in a lick of flames, and the heat was terrific on his face. Then flames came along his side of the street and entered his house. In a paroxism of terrified strength, he freed himself and ran down the alleys of Nobori-cho hemmed in by the fire he had said would never come. Mr. Yoshida began at once to behave like an old man; tow months later all his hair was white.

As Dr. Fujii stood in the river up to his neck to avoid the heat of the fire, the wind grew stronger and stronger and soon, even though the expanse of water was small, the waves grew so high that the people under the bridge could no longer keep their footing. Dr. Fujii went close to the shore, crouched down and embraced a large stone with his usable arm. Later it became possible to wade along the very edge of the river, and Dr. Fujii and his continue moved about two hundred yards upstream to a sandspit near Asano Park.

Many wounded were lying on the sand. Dr. Machii was there with his family; his daughter, who had been outdoors when the bobm burst, was badly burned on her hands and legs, but fortunately not on her face. Though Dr. Fujii's shoulder was by now terribly painful, he examined the girl's burns curiously. Then he lay down. He was, in spite of the misery all around, ashamed of his appearance, and he remarked to Dr. Machii that he looked like a beggar, dressed as he was in nothing but torn and bloody underwear. Late in the afternoon, when the fire began to subside, he decided to go to his parental house in the suburb of Nagatsuka. He asked Dr. Machii to join him, but the doctor said he thought his family would spend the night on the spit, because of his daughter. Dr. Fujii walked by way of Ushida, where, in the partially damaged house of some relatives, he found first aid materials he had stored there; his two surviving nurses bandaged him, and he them. They went on. Now not many people

-22-

walked in the streets, but a great number sat and lay on the pavement, vomited there, waited for death and died in the roadway. The number of corpses on the way to Nagatsuka was shocking; the doctor wondered could a Molotov flowerbasket have done all this?

Dr. Fujii reached his family house in the evening. It was five miles from the center of town, but its roof had fallen in and the windows were all broken.

All the day people poured into Asano Park. This private estate, whose gates were opened to the public for the first time by the disaster, was far enough away from the epicenter of the explosion so that its bamboos and huge pines, its laurel and maples, were still alive, and the green place invited refugees -- partly because they felt the Americans, if they came back, would only bomb buildings; partly because the foliage seemed a center of coolness and life, and the estate's exquisitely precise rock gardens, with their quiet pools and arching bridges, were very Japanese, normal, secure; and also partly (according to some who were there) because of an irresistible, atavistic urge to hide under leaves. Mrs. Nakamura and her family were among the first to arrive, and they settled in the bamboo grove near the river. They all felt terribly thirsty, and they drank from the river. At once they were nauseated and began vomiting, and they retched the whole day. Others were also nauseated; they all thought they were sick from a gas the Americans had dropped (probably because they had sensed the strong odor of ionization, an "electric smell," given off by the bomb's fission). When Father Madsen and the other priests came into the park, nodding to their friends as they passed, the Nakamuras were all sick and prostrate. A woman named Iwasaki, who lived in the neighborhood of the mission and who was

-23-

sitting near the Nakamuras, got up and a sked the priests if she
should stay where she was or go with them. Father Kleinsorge said,
"I harldy know where the safest place is." She stayed where she
was, and later in the day, though she had no visible wounds or
burns, she died. The priests went farther along the river and settled
down in some underbrush. Father LaSalle lay down and went right to
sleep. The others rested. The theological student, who was wearing
slippers, had carried with hi a bundle of clothes in which he had
packed two paris of shoes. When he sa down with the others he
found that the bundle had broken open and a couple of shoes had
fallen out and now he only had tow lefts. He retraced his steps and
found one right. When he rejoined the priests he said, "It's funny,
but thangs don't matter any more. Yesterday my shoes were my most
important possessions. Today I don't care, one pair is enough."

Father Cieslik siad, "I know. I started to bring my books along,
and then I thought, "This is no time for books."

When Mr. Tanimoto reached the park, it was very crowded, and
to distinguish the living from the dead was not easy, for most
people lay still, with their eyes open. To Father Kleinsorge, an
Occidental, the silence in the grove by the river, where hundreds
of gruesomely wounded suffered together, was one of the most
dreadful and awesome phenomena of his whole experience. All day
and all night the hurt ones were quiet; no one wept, muchless
screamed in pain, no one complained, none of the many who died did
do noisily, not even the children cried, very few people even spoke,
and later, when Father Kleinsorge gave water to some whose faces
had been almost blotted out by flesh burns, they took their share
and then raised themselves a little and bower to him, in thanks.

-24-

Mr. Tanimoto, with his basin still in his hand, greeted the priests and then looked around for other friends. He came on Mrs. Matsumoto, wife of the director of the Methodist School, and asked her if she was thirsty. She was, so he went to one of the pools in Count Asano's rock garden and got water for her. Then he decided to try to go through to his church. He went into Nobori-cho by the way the priests had taken as they escaped, but he did not get far; the fire along the streets was so angry that he had to turn back. He walked to the riverbank and began to look for a boat, in order that he might carry some of the worst wounded across the river from the Asano Park. Soon he found a goo-sized pleasure punt, drawn up on the bank, but in and around it was an awful tableau -- five dead men, nearly naked, badly burned, who must have expired more or less all at once, for they were in attitudes which suggested that they were working together to push the boat down into the river. Mr. Tanimoto lifted them away from the boat, and as he did so, he experienced such horror at disturbing the dead, preventing them, he momentarily felt, from launching their craft and going on their ghostly way, that he said, out loud, "Please forgive me for taking this boat. I must use it for others who are alive." The punt was heavy, but he managed to slide it into the water; there were no oars, and all he could find for propulsion was a bamboo pole. He worked the boat upstream to the most crowded part of the park, and began to ferry the wounded. He could pack twenty into the boat for each crossing, but as the river was too deep in the center pole his way across, he had to paddle with the slender bamboo stick, and consequently each round trip took quite a long time. He worked several hours that way.

Early in the afternoon the fire swept into the woods of Asano Park. Especially it ravaged the pines. The first Mr. Tanimoto

-25-

noticed from his boat was that a huge number of people had moved
toward the river bank. On touching at the Asano side, he went up
to investigate, and when he saw the fire, he shouted, "All the young
men who are not badly hurt come with me." Father Kleinsorge moved
Father Schiffer and Father aSalle close to the edge of the river
and gave directions to get them across if the fire came too near,
and then joined Tanimoto's volunteers. Mr. Tanimoto sent some to
look for buckets and basins, and told others to beat the burning
underbrush with their clothes; when utensils were at hand, he formed
a bucket chain from one of the pools in the rock garden. The team
fought the fire for more than two hours, and gradually the flames
died down without much advance. In the park, whole Tanimots' gang
worked, the frightened people pressed closer and closer toward the
river, until the mob began to push some of the unfortunates on the
very bank into the water. Among those who were driven into the
river and drowned were Mrs. Matsumoto, of the Methodist School, and
her daughter.

When Father Kleinsorge got back from his work, he found Father
Schiffer still bleeding and awfully plaе. Some Japanese stood
around and stared at him, and Father Schiffer whispered with a
weak smile, "Not yetas if I were already dead." "Not yet," Father
Kleinsorge said, but he was worried. He had brought Dr. Fujii's
first aid kit with him, and he had noticed Dr. Kanda in the crowd,
so he sought him out and asked him if he would dress Father Schiffer's
bad cuts. Dr. Kanda had seen his wife and daughter dead in the ruins
of his hospital; he sat now with his head in his hands, and though
he was not yet fifty, he looked more than eighty years old. "I can't
do anything," he said. Father Kleinsorge bound more bandage around

-26-

Father Schiffer's head, and moved hi to a steep place so that his
head was high, and soon the bleeding diminished.

The roar of approaching planes could be heard at about this
time. Some one in the crowd near the Nakamura family shouted, "IT'S
the Grummans coming to s rafe us!" A baker named Nakashima stood up
and commanded, "Everyone who is wearing anything white, take it
off." Mrs. Nakamura took the shirts off her children, and she
opened her umbrella and made them get under it. A great number of
people, even badly burnt ones, crawled into bushes and stayed there
until the hum, evidently a reconnaissance or a weather run, died away.

It began to rain. Mrs. Nakamura kept her children under the
umbrella. The drops grew abnormally large, and some one shouted,
"The Americans are dropping gasoline. They're going to set fire to
us!" (This alarm stemmed from one of the theories being passed
through the park as to why so much of Hiroshima had burned: it was
that a single plane had sprayed gasoline on the city and then,
somehow, set fire to it in one flashing moment.) But the drops were
palpably water, and as they fell the wind grew stronger and stronger,
and suddenly -- probably because of the tremendous convection currents
set up by the blazing city -- a tornado ripped through the park. Huge
trees crashed down; small ones were uprooted and actually flew into
the air. Higher, a wild array of flat things whirled in the twisting
funnel; pieces of tin roofing, papers, drros, strips of matting.
Father Kleinsorge put a piece of cloth over Father Schiffer's face
so that the feenle man would not think he was going carzy. The gale
blew Mrs. Murata, the Catholic's housekeeper, who was sitting close
bys the river, down the embankment at a shallow, rocky place, and she
came out with her bare feet all bloody. The vortex moved out onto
the river, where it sucked upa waterspout and eventually spent itself.
After the storm Mr. Tanimoto began ferrying people again, and

-27-

Father Kleinsorge asked the theological student to go across and make his way out to the Jesuit Novitiate at Nagatsuka, about three miles from the center of town, and to request the priests there to come with help for Father Schiffer and LaSalla. The student got into Mr. Tanimoto's boat and left. Father Kleinsorge asked Mrs. Makanura if she would like to go out to Nagatsuka when the other priests came. She said she had some luggage and her children were sick -- they were still vomiting and so, for that matter, was she -- and therefore she feared she could not. He said he thought the fathers from the Novitiate could come back the next day with a pushcart to get her.

Late in the afternoon, when he went ashore for a time, Mr. Tanimoto, upon whose energy and initiative many had come to depend, heard several people begging for food. He consulted Father Kleinsorge, and they decided to go back into town to procure the bags of rice which were in Mr. Tanimoto's Neighborhood Association shelter and in the Catholic mission shelter. Father Cieslik and two other persons went with them. At first, when they got among the rows of prostrate houses, they did not know where they were; the change was too sudden, from a busy city of four hundred thousand that morning to a mere pattern of residue in the afternoon. The asphalt of the streets was still scorching hot that walking was uncomfortable. They encountered only one person, a woman who said to them as they passed, "My husband is in those ashes." At the mission Father Kleinsorge was dismayed to see the large house razed. In the garden, on the way to the shelter, he noticed a pumpkin roasted on the vine. He and Father Cieslik tasted it and it was good. They were surprised at their hunger; they ate quite a bit. They got out their rice and gathered up several cooked pumpkins and some

-28-

potatoes which were nicely baked under the ground, and started
back. Mr. Tanimoto joined them on the way; one of the people
with him had some cooking utensils. In the park Mr. Tanimoto
organized the lightly wounded women of his neighborhood to cook.
Father Kleinsorge offered the Nakamura family some pumpkin, and
they tried it but they could not hold anything on their stomachs.
Altogether the rice was enough to feed nearly a hundred people.

Just before dark Mr. Tanimoto came across a twenty-year-old
girl, Mrs. Kamai, the Tanimoto's next-door-neighbor. She crouched
on the ground with the body of her infant daughter in her arms.
The baby had evidently been dead all day. Mrs. Kamai jumped up
when she saw him and said, "Would you please try to locate my
husband?"

Mr. Tanimoto know that her husband had been inducted into the
army just the day before/ he and Mrs. Tanimoto had entertained Mrs.
Kamai in the evening, to make her forget. Kamai had reproted to
the Chugoku Regional Army Headquarters -- near the ancient castle;
some four thousand troops were stationed there. From the many
maimed so diers Mr. Tanimoto had seen during the day he surmised
that the barracks had been badly hit but whatever it was that had
it Hiroshima. He knew he hadn't a chance of finding her husband,
even if he searched, but he wanted to humor Mrs. Kamai. "I'll try,"
he said.

"You've got to find him," she said. "He loved our baby so much.
I want him to see her once more."

SOME EVENTS AT HIROSHIMA

III: "Details Are Being Investigated"

Late in the afternoon of the day the atomic bomb exploded, a Japanese Naval launch ran slowly up one after another of the seven branches of the Ota River at Hiroshima. It stopped here and there to make an announcement -- alongside the crowded sandspits on which hundreds of wounded lay, at the bridges on which others were crowded, and eventually, as twilight fell, opposite the large wooded estate of Count Asano, where at tremendous number of people, most of them badly burned or cut or both, had taken refuge from the fire in the city. A young officer stood up in the launch and shouted through a megaphone, "Be patient! A Naval hospital ship is coming to take care of you!" The sight of the shipshape launch against the background of the havoc across the river, the unruffled young man in his neat uniform, above all the promise of medical help, the first word of possible succor anyone had heard for nearly twelve awful hours, cheered the people in the park tremendously. Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura, a tailor's widow who had dug herself out from under the ruins of her collapsed house, settled the family for the night with an encouraging assurance that a doctor would come and stop their retching -- for like many survivors of the bombing they had all been nauseated since morning. Rev. Kiyoshi Tanimoto, pastor of the Hiroshima Methodist Episcopal Churbh, who all day had felt guilty about being uninjured among so many dreadfully hurt citizens, and who had worked off his guilt by devising all sorts of aids and reliefs for them, resumed ferrying the wounded across the river in a punt he had found. Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge, S.J., only lightly cut by window glass on his left side, but exhausted from carrying a man out of the city on his back, fetching water, fighting fire, and going after food for the refugees, lay down and said

-2-

the Lord's Prayer and a Hail Mary to himself, and fell right asleep; but no sooner had he dropped off than Mrs Murata, the conscientious housekeeper for the Catholic Mission, shhok him and said: "Kleinsorge-Shimpu: Did you remember to repeat your evening prayers?" He answered rather grumpily, "Of course, "and tried to go back to sleep but could not. This apparently was just what Mrs Murata wanted. She began to chat with the exhausted priest. One of the questions she raised was the probable time of arrival of "the others"-priests from the Novitiate of the Society of Jesus at Nagatsuka, for whom Father Kleinsorge and Father Cieslik had sent by messenger in mid-afternoon, because two of their fellow-survivors from the Jesuit Mission in the city, Father Superior La Salle and Father Schiffer, had lost a great deal of blood; Father Schiffer seemed to be dying.

The messenger-a Japanese Marist theological student who had been living at the Mission house in town, had arrived at the Novitiate in the hills about three miles out, at half-past four. The sixteen priests there had been doing rescue work in the outskirts; they had worried about their colleagues in the city, but had not known how or where to look for them during the fire. Now they hastily made two litters out of poles and boards, and the student led half a dozen of them back into the devastated area. They worked their way along the Ota above its branches; twice the heat of the fire on the street levelforced them into the river. At Mission Bridge they encountered a long line of soldiers, making a bizarre forced march away from the Chugoku Regional Headquarters in the center of the town. All were grotesquely burned, and they supported themselves with staves or leaned on each other. Sick, burned horses, hanging their heads, stood on the bridge. When the rescue party reached the park after dark, its progress was made extremely difficult by the tangle of fallen trees of all sizes that had been knocked down by a tornado in the afternoon. At last-not long after Mrs Murata's speculations - they reached their friends, and gave them wine and strong tea.

The priests discuss

- 4 -

but the girl to the left of Father Kleinsorge complained that she was cold.
He covered her with his jacket. Before Mr Tanimoto and the priests had rescued
her and her older sister, they had been in the salt water of the river for a
couple of hours, the bigger one said. The younger one had huge, raw places
on her body from flash burns; the salt water must have been excruciatingly painful
on them. She began to shiver heavily, and again she said it was cold. Father
Kleinsorge borrowed a blanket from someone nearby and wrapped her up, but she
shook more and more, and said again, "I am so cold," and then she suddenly stopped
shivering and was dead.

Mr Tanimoto found about twenty men and women in shallow water at the edge of
the river, where they had been crying for help. He drove the boat onto the
bank and urged them to get aboard. They just lay in the water, and Mr Tanimoto
realized that they were too weak to lift themselves. He reached down and took
a woman by the hands, but the skin slipped off in huge, glove-like pieces. He
was so horrified that he had to sit down for a moment. Then he got out into
the water and, though a small man, lifted the naked bodies of the men and women
into his boat; their backs and breasts were clammy, and he remembered sickly how the
great burns he had seen during the day had looked: yellow at first, then red and
swollen with the skin sloughed off, and then, in the evening, suppurated and smelly.

With the tide risen and his bamboo pole to short to begin with, he had to
paddle most of the way across with the round stick. On the other side, at a higher
spit, he lifted the slimy living bodies out and carried them up the slope away
from the tide. He had to keep consciously repeating to himself, "These are
human beings."

He made three such trips. When he had finished, he decided he had to have a rest, and he went back to the park. As he stepped up the dark bank he tripped on one person, and another said angrily, "Look out! That's my hand," and Mr Tanimoto ashamed of hurting wounded people, ashamed of being able to walk upright, suddenly thought of the naval hospital ship, which had not come - it never did - and he

- 4 -

- 5 -

had for a moment a feeling of blind murderous rage at the personnel of
the ship and then at all the doctors. Why didn't they come to help these
people? Cowards, he called them, and worse.

Dr. Masakazu Fujii, whose case was typical of the medical men of Hiroshima, lay in
dreadful pain on the floor of a roofless house on the edge of the city. Un til
that morning he had been the prosperous, easy-going proprietor of a small private
hospital beside the Kyo River; the blast had knocked the hospital - and him - into
the water. His niece, two patients and four of his six nurses had been killed.
After lying in and beside the river during the worst of the fire, he had slowly
made his way, dressed in torn and blood-soaked underwear, to this, his family home,
in Nagatsuka. By night he had examined himself and found: left clavicle fractured;
multiple abrasions and lacerations of face and body, especially deep cuts on the chin,
back and legs, requiring stitches; massive contusions on chest and trunk; a couple of
ribs possibly fractured. Otherwise he might have been at Asano Park assisting the
wounded.

By nightfall ten thousand patients had invaded the Red Cross Hospital.
Dr. Terufumi Sasaki, a twenty-five-year-old beginner, the only unwounded doctor in
the hospital, and one of six who were able to work, moved aimlessly and dully
up and down the stinking corridors with wads of bandages and bottles of Merchurechroe,
wearing a nurse's glasses because his own had been shattered, binding up the worst
cuts as he came to them. Other doctors were putting compresses of saline solution on
the worst burns. That was all they could do. After dark they worked by the light
of the city's fires and by candles which the ten remaining nurses held for them.
Dr. Sasaki had not looked outside the hospital all day; the scene inside was so
terrible and so compelling that it did not occur to him to ask any questions

- 6 -

about what had occured beyond the windows and doors. Ceilings and partitions had fallen: plaster, dust, blood and vomit were everywhere. Patients were dying by the hundred but there was nobody to carry away the corpses. Some of the hospital staff distributed biscuits and rice buns, but the charnel-house smell was too strong and few were hungry. By three o'clock in the morning, after nineteen straight hours of his gruesome work, Dr. Sasaki was incapable of dressing another wound. He and some others of the hospital staff got straw mats and went outdoors - thousands of patients were on the front driveway and in the yard - and hurried around behind the hospital and lay down in hiding to snatch some sleep. But within an hour patients had found them; a circle formed around them: "Doctors! Help us! How can you sleep?" Dr. Sasaki got up again and went back to work. Early in the morning he thought for the first time of his mother, at their country home in Mukaihara, thirty miles from town. He usually went home every night. He was afraid she would think him dead.

Near the spit upriver to which Mr Tanimoto had transported the priests, there lay a large case of fresh rice cakes which a rescue party had evidently brought but not distributed to the wounded lying thereabouts. The unhurt priests passed them around and helped themselves. A few minutes later a band of soldiers came up and an officer, hearing the priests speaking a foreign language, drew his sword and hysterically asked who they were. One of the priests calmed him down and explained that they were Germans, allies. The officer apologized and said that there were reports going around that American parachutists had landed.

The priests decided to take Father Schiffer first. Before the carrying party started away, Father Superior La Salle said he felt awfully cold. One of the Jesuits gave up his coat, another his shirt; they were glad to wear less in the muggy night. The stretcher-beareme started out. The theological

- 7 -

student led the way and tried to warn the others of obstacles, but one of the priests got a foot tangled in some telephone wire and tripped and dropped the litter. Father Schiffer rolled off, lost his consciousness and then vomited. The bearers went on with him to the edge of the city, left him and turned back for the Father Superior. The wooden litter must have been terribly painful for Father La Salle, in whose back there were scores of partifiables of window glass.

Near the edge of town the group had to walk around an automobile abandoned on the narrow road; the bearers on the left, unable to see their way in the darkness, fell into a deep ditch. Father La Salle was thrown onto the ground and the litter broke in two. Brother Kinjo went ahead to get a handcart from the monastery, but soon found one beside an abandoned house, and he wheeled it back. The priests lifted Father La Salle into the cart and pushed him over the bumpy road the rest of the way to the monastery. Other priests had picked up Father Schiffer and carried him on. The Rector of the Novitiate, who had been a doctor before he entered the religious order, cleaned the two priests' wounds and put them to bed, between white sheets, and they thanked God for the care they received.

Thousands of people had nobody to help them. Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a secretary in the personnel office of the East Asia Works, was one of them. Abandoned and helpless, under a crude lean-to made of a large piece of corrugated roofing, in a courtyard of the tin factory, with a woman who had lost a breast, and a man whose burned face was scarcely a face at all more, for company, she suffered awfully that night from a compound fracture below her left knee, that she had received when the plant office building collapsed. She did not sleep at all; neither did she converse with her sleepless companions.

In the park, Mrs Murata kept Father Kleinsorge awake all night by talking to him. None of the Nakamura family was able to sleep; the children, besides being very sick, were interested in everything that happened. They were delighted when one of the city's gas storage tanks went up in a tremendous burst of flame. Toshio, the

- 8 -

boy, shouted to the others to look at the reflection in the water! Mr. Tanimoto who had run seven miles through the city and worked fifteen hours, dozed uneasily. When he awoke in the first light, he looked across the river and saw that he had not carried the festered, limp bodies high enough on the spit over there, during the night. The tide had risen above where he put them; they had not had the strength to move; they must have drowned. He saw that a number of bodies floated in the river.

Early that morning the Japanese radio began to broadcast a succinct announcement which very few, if any, of the people most concerned with its content, the survivors in Hiroshima, happened to hear: "Hiroshima suffered considerable damage as the result of an attack by a few B-29s. It is believed that a new type of bomb was used. The details are being investigated. Nor merits it probable that any of the survivors happened to be tuned in on a short-wave rebroadcast of a grave but rather boastful statement by the President of the United States, which identified the new bomb as being atomic:"...That bomb had more power than two thousand tons of TNT. It had more than two thousand times the blast power of the British 'Grand Slam', which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare...." Those victims who were able to worry about the matter at all thought about it and discussed it in more primitive, childish terms: gasolinesprinkled from an airplane, maybe, or some combustible gas, or a big cluster of incendiaries, or the work of parachutists; but in any case, even if they had known the truth, most of them were too busy or too badly hurt to care-or to have been proud-that they were the objects of the first great experiment in the use of atomic power, which no country except the United States, with its industrial know-how, its willingness to throw two billion gold dollars into an important wartime gamble, could possibly have developed (as the bragging voices on the short-wave said.)

Mr Tanimoto was still angry with doctors. He decided that he would personally

- 9 -

bring one to Asano Park, by the scruff of the neck, if necessary. He crossed
the river, went past the Shinto Shrine where he had met his wife for a brief
moment the day before, and walked to the East Parade ground. Since this had been
designated as an evacuation area, he thought he would find an aid station there.
He did find one, operated by a unit of the Army's First Medical Corps - but he
also saw that it had thousands of patients sprawled across the field. Never
theless he went up to one of the officers and said, as reproachfully as he could,
"Why have you not come to Asano Park? You are badly needed there."

Without even looking up from his work, the doctor said in a tired voice: "This
is my station."

"But there are many dying on the riverbank over there."

"The first duty," the doctor said, "is to take care of the slightly wounded."

"Why - when there are many who are heavily wounded on the riverbank?"

The doctor moved to another patient. "In an emergency like this," he said,
as if he were reciting from a manual, "the first task is to help as many as possible -
to save as many lives as possible - The heavily wounded have no hope. They will
die. We can't bother with them."

"That may be right from a medical standpoint," Mr Tanimoto began; but then he looked out across the field, where the many dead lay close and intimate with those who were still living, and suddenly he turned away without finishing his sentence, angry now with himself. He did not know what to do; he had promised some of the dying people in the park that he would bring them medical aid. They might die feeling cheated. He saw a ration stand at one side of the field, and he went to it and begged some rice cakes and biscuits, and he took them back, in lieu of doctor, to the people in the park.

Quite early the day was hot. Father Kleinsorge went to fetch water for the
wounded, in a bottle and a teapot he had borrowed. In theock garden he had to
climb over and crawl under the trunks of the fallen pine trees; he found he was

-10-

weak. There were many dead. At a beautiful moon bridge he passed a naked living woman who seemed to have been burned from head to toe, and was red all over. Near the entrance to the park an Army doctor was working, but the only medicine he had was iodine, which he painted over cuts, bruises, slimy burns, everything; and all that he painted, by now, had pus in them. Outside the gate Father Kleinsorge found a faucet that still worked - part of the plumbing of a vanished house and he filled his vessels and returned. When he had served the water he took a second trip. This time the woman on the bridge was dead. On his way back with the water he got lost on a detour around a tree, and as he looked for his way in the woods he heard a voice ask from the underbrush: "Have you anything to drink?" He saw a uniform, and thinking there was just one soldier, he approached with the water, but when he had penetrated the bushed hesaw there were about twenty, and they were all in exactly the same nightmarish state: their faces were wholly burnt, and their eyesockets were hollow and the skin from their melted eyes had run down their cheeks; they must have had their faces upturned when the bomb went off - perhaps they were anti-aircraft personnel; there were few such awfully injured people in the city, and besides, their mouths were mereswollen, pus-covered wounds which they could not bear to stretch enough to take the spout of the teapot. So Father Kleinsorge got a large piece of grass and drew the stem so as to make a straw, and gave them all water to drink that way. One of them said, "I can't see anything."

Father Kleinsorge answered as cheerfully as he could, "There's a doctor at the entrance to the park. He's busy now, but he'll come soon and fix your eyes, I hope."

Since that day Father Kleinsorge has thought back to how queasy he had once been at the sight of pain; how someone else's cut finger used to make him turn faint. Yet there in the park he was so apathetic - or so dulled - that immediately after leaving the horrible soldiers he stopped on a path by one of the pools and discussed with a lightly wounded person whether it would be safe to eat the fat, two-foot carp that floated dead on the surface of the water. They decided, after some discussion, that it would be unwise.

- 11 -

He filled the containers a third time and went back to the riverbank. There, amid the dead and dying, he saw a young woman with a needle and thread mending her kimono, which had been slightly torn in the disaster. Father Kleinsorge joined her. "O-Share!" he said, "My, but you're a dandy!" She laughed.

He felt tired and lay down. He began to play with two engaging children whose acquaintance he had made the afternoon before. He learned that their name was Kataoka; the girl was thirteen, the boy five. The girl had been just about to set out for a barber shop when the bomb fell. As the family statted for Asano Park, their mother decided to turn back for some food and spare clothing; they became separated from her in the crowd of fleeing people, and they had not seen her since, and occasionally they stopped suddenly in their perfectly cheerful playing and began to cry together for their mother.

For all the children in the park it was difficult to sustain the sense of tragedy. Even the Nakamuras, who were not well, would play spasmodically. The boy Toshio got quite excited when he saw his friend Seichi Sato riding up the river in a boat with his family, and he ran to the bank and waved and shouted, "Sato-kun! Sato-kun!"

The boy turned his head and shouted, "Who's that?"
"Nakamura."
"Hello, Toshio!"
"Are you all safe?"
"Yes, what about you?"
"Yes, we're all right. My sisters are vomiting, but I'm fine."

Father Kleinsorge began to be thirsty in the dreadful heat, and he did not feel strong enough to go for water again. A little before noon he saw a Japanese woman handing something out. Soon she came to him and said in a kindly voice, "These are tea leaves. Chew them, young man, and you won't feel thirsty." The woman's sweetness made Father Kleinsorge suddenly want to cry; for weeks he had been feeling oppressed by the hatred of foreigners, which the Japanese seemed increasingly to feel,

-13-

acquaintances who supposed she was dead came to look for her body, and, surprised to find her alive, told her that her mother, father and baby brother, who at the time of the explosion were in the Tamura Pediatric Hospital, where the baby was a patient, had all been given up as certainly dead, since the Hospital was totally destroyed. Her friends then left her to think that piece of news over. Later some men picked her up by the arms and legs and carried her quite a distance to a truck. For about an hour the truck moved over a bumpy road and Miss Sasaki, who had convinced herself that she was dulled to pain, discovered that she was not.

The same men lifted her out at the Inokuchi Relief Station, where some Army doctors looked at her. The moment one of them touched her wound, she fell unconscious.

She came to in time to hear them discuss whether or not to cut off her leg: one pointed out gas gangrene in the lips of the wound and said she would die unless they amputated, and the other said that was too bad, because they had no equipment with which to do the job; she fainted again.

She recovered consciousness on a moving stretcher. She was taken onto a launch, which went to the nearby island of Nishoshima, and she was carried up to a military hospital there. Another doctor examined her and said that she did not have gas gangrene, though she did have a rather ugly compound fracture. He said quite coldly that he was sorry, but this was a hospital for surgical cases only, and because she had no gangrene she would have to return to Hiroshima that night. But then the doctor took her temperature and what he saw in the thermometer made him decide to let her stay.

That

the next day Father Cieslik went into the city to look for Mr. Fukai, the Japanese secretary of the diocese, who had ridden unwillingly out of the flaming city on Father Kleinsorge's back and then had run back crazily into it. Father Cieslik started hunting in the neighborhood of Sakai Bridge, where the Jesuits had last seen Mr. Fukai; he went to the East Parade Ground, the evacuation area to which the secretary might have gone, and looked for him among the wounded and dead there; he went to the Prefectural Police and made enquiries. But he could not find any trace of the man. Back at the Novitiate that evening, the theological student who had been rooming with Mr. Fukai at the mission house recalled that the secretary had remarked to him,

- 14 -

during an air alarm one day not long before the bombing, "Japan is dying. If there is a real air raid here in Hiroshima, I want to die with our country."

At the Red Cross Hospital, Dr. Sasaki worked for three straight days with only one hour's sleep. On the second day he began to sew up the worst cuts and straight through the following night he stitched. Every wound in the hospital was festered. Fortunately someone had found an intact supply of нарUCOПОН, a Japanese-made sedative, and he gave it to many who were in pain. Word went around among the staff that there must have been something peculiar about the great bomb because on the second day the chief of the hospital went down in the basement to the vault where the X-ray plates were stored and found the whole stock exposed as they lay. That day a fresh doctor and ten nurses came in from Yamaguchi with extra bandages and antiseptics, and the third day another physician and a dozen more nurses arrived from Matsue: there were still only eight doctors for ten thousand patients. Toward afternoon of the third day, exhausted from his foul tailoring, Dr. Sasaki became seriously obsessed with the idea that his mother thought him dead. He asked permission to go out to Mukaihara. He walked out to the first suburbs, to where the electric train service began functioning, and he reached home late in the evening. His mother said she had known he was all right since the very first day: a wounded nurse had stopped by to tell her. He went to bed and slept for seventeen hours.

Before dawn on the eighth someone entered the room at the Novitiate where Father Kleinsorge was in bed, reached up to the hanging light-bulb and switched it on. The sudden flood of light, pouring in on Father Kleinsorge's half-sleep, brought him leaping out of bed, braced for a new concussion. When he realized what had happened, he laughed confusedly, and went back to bed and stayed there all day.

On the ninth he was still tired. The Rector looked at his cuts, and said

- 15 -

they were not even worth dressing, and if Father Kleinsorge kept them clean, they would heal in three or four days. Father Kleinsorge felt uneasy; he could not yet comprehend what he had been through; as if he were guilty of something awful he felt he had to go back to the scene of the violence he had experienced. He got up out of bed and walked into the city. He scratched for a while in the ruins of the mission house, but found nothing. He called at the sites of a couple of schools and asked after people he knew. He looked for some Japanese Catholics but found only fallen houses. He walked back to the novitiate, stupified and without any new understanding.

At two minutes after eleven o'clock in the morning on the ninth, the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. It was several days before the survivors of Hiroshima knew they had company, because the Japanese radio and newspapers were still extremely cautious on the subject of the strange weapon.

Mr. Tanimoto worked on in the park. He went to the suburb of Ushida, where his wife was staying with friends, and got a tent which he had evacuated to the friend's house. He took it to the park and set it up as a shelter for the wounded who could not move or be moved. Whatever he did in the park, he felt he was being watched - by a twenty-year-old girl, Mrs. Kamai, his former neighbor, whom he had seen on the day the bomb exploded, with her dead baby daughter in her arms. She had asked him to find her husband, who had been inducted into the Army the very day before the bombing, and who, she said, had loved their baby so much that she wanted him to see her just once more. She kept the tiny corpse in her arms for four days, even though it began smelling badly on the second day. Once Mr. Tanimoto sat with her for a while, and she told him that the bomb had buried her under their house with the baby stepped to her back, and when she had dug themselves free, she found the baby choking, its mouth full of dirt. With her little finger she had carefully cleaned out the infant's mouth, and for a time the child breathed

- 16 -

normally and seemed all right; then suddenly it died. Mrs. Kamai also talked about what a fine man her husband was, andagi niseurged Mr Tanimoto to search for him. Mr. Tanimoto had been all through the city the first day and had seen terribly burned soldiers from the Chugoku Regional Army Headquarters everywhere. He knew it would be impossible to find Kamai even if he were living, but of course he didn't tell her that.

Every time she saw Mr Tanimoto she asked whether he had found her husband. Once he tried to suggest that perhaps it was time to cremate the baby, but Mrs Kamai only held it tighter. He began to keep away from her, but whenever he looked at her, she was staring at him and her eyes asked the same question. He tried to escape her glance by keeping his back turned to her as much as possible.

The Jesuits took about fifty refugees into the exquisite chapel of the Novitiate. The Rector gave them what medical care he could, mostly just the cleaning away of pus. Each of the Nakamuras was provided with a blanket and a mosquito net. Mrs. Nakamura and her youngest daughter had no appetite and ate nothing; her son and other daughter ate and lost each meal they were offered. On the tenth a friend, Mrs. Osaki, came to see them and told them that her son Hideo had been burned alive in his factory. This Hideo had been a kind of hero to the Nakamura boy, who had often gone to watch him work his machine in the plant. That night Toshio woke up screaming. He had dreamed that he had seen Mrs. Osaki coming out of an opening with her family, and then he saw Hideo at his machine, a big one with a revolving belt, and he himself was standing beside Hideo and for some reason this was terrifying.

Father Kleinsorge, having heard from someone in town that Dr. Fujii had been injured and that he had gone to the summer house of a friend of his named Okuma in the village of Fukawa, asked Father Cieslik on the tenth if he would go and see how Dr. Fujii was. Father Cieslik rode the electric train twenty

- 17 -

minutes from Misasa Station, outside Hiroshima, and then walked for an hour and a
half in a terribly hot sun to Mr. Okuma's. Hefound Dr. Fujii sitting in a chair
in a kimono, applying cold compresses to his broken collarbone. The doctor
said his eyes bothered him, as he had lost his glasses when his hospital
capsized. He showed Father Cieslik huge blue and green striped where beams had
bruised him. He offered the Jesuit first a claret and then some whiskey, though
it was only eleven in the morning. Father Cieslik thought it would please
Dr. Fujii if he took some, so he said yes. A servant brought some Japanese
Santorij, and the Jesuit, the doctor and the host had a very pleasant chat. Mr.
Okuma had lived in Hawaii and he told some things about Americans. Dr. Fujii
talked a bit about the disaster. Mr. Okuma asked a nurse had gone to the ruins and
brought back a small safe which the doctor had put in his air raid shelter. This
contained some instruments, and Dr. Fujii gave Father Cieslik a few pairs of scissors
and tweezers for the doctor at the Novitiate. Father Cieslik was bursting with
some inside dope he had, but he waited until the conversation turned naturally to
the mystery of the bomb. Then he said he knew what kind of a bomb it was; he had
the secret on the best authority - that of a Japanese newspaperman who had dropped
in at the Novitiate. The bomb was not at all a bomb at all: it was a kind of
fine magnesium powder sprayed over the whole city by a single plane, and it exploded
when it came into contact with the live wires of the city power system.

"That means," said Dr Fujii, "perfectly satisfied, since after all the information
came from a newspaperman, "that it can only be dropped on big cities and only in
the daytime, when the tram lines and so-forth are in operation."

After five days of ministering to the wounded in the park, Mr Tanimoto returned,
on August 11, to the parsonage and dug around in the ruins. He retrieved some
personal diaries and church records, which, since they were in book form, were only
charred around the edges; as well as some cooking utensils and pottery. While he
was working a Miss Tanaka came and asked him to go with her at once to her father.

- 18 -

Mr Tanimoto had reason to hate her father - a retired official of the N.Y.K. shipping company, a wealthy, tyrannical person who, though he made a great show of his charity, was notoriously selfish and cruel, and who just a few days before the bombing had said openly to several people that Mr. Tanimoto (a graduate of Emory College, Atlanta, Georgia) was a spy for the Americans. Several times he had derided Christianity and called it un-Japanese.

The day of the bombing Mr Tani ka had been walking in the street in front of the radio station. He received serious flash burns but was able to walk home. He took refuge in the Neighborhood Association shelter and from there trudged hard to get medical aid. He expected all the doctors of Hiroshima to come to him because he was so rich and so famous for his money away. When none of them came, he set out angrily looking for them; leaning on his daughter's arm, he walked from private hospital to hospital, but all were in ruins, and he went back and lay down in the shelter again and now, on the fifth day, he was very weak.

Mr. Tanimoto descended into the tomb-like shelter and when his eyes were adjusted to the darkness he saw Mr Tani ka with his face and arms puffed up and covered with pus and blood, and his eyes swollen shut. The old man smelled awful and he moaned constantly. He seemed to recognize Mr Tanimoto's voice. Standing at the shelter stairway for light, Mr Tanimoto read loudly from a pocket Bible, "....A thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. Thou carriest the children of men away as with a flood; they are as a sleep; in the morning they are like grass which groweth up. In the morning it flourisheth and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth. For we are銷毀 consumed by Thine anger and by Thy wrath are we troubled. Thou has sated our inquities before Thee, our secret sins in the light of Thy countenance. For all our days are past away in Thy wrath; we spend our years as a tale that is told....."

Mr. Tanaka died, evidently penitent, as Mr. Tanimoto read the psalm.

On the eleventh word came to the Ninoshima Military Hospital that a large

- 19 -

number of military casualties from thetokaidō and other places. Chugoku
Regional Army Headquarters was to arrive on the island that day, and it was
deemed necessary to evacuate all civilian patients. Miss Sasaki, still
running an alarmingly high fever, was put on a large ship, out on deck, with
a pillow under her leg. There were awnings over the deck but the angle of
the course put her in the direct sunlight. She felt as if she were
under a magnifying glass in the sun. Pus oozed out of her wound and soon the
whole pillow was covered with it. She was taken to the Goddess of Mercy Primary
School in Hatsukaichi, and lay there for several days before a specialist on
fractures came from Kobe. By then her leg was red and swollen up to her hip.
The doctor decided he could not set the breaks. He made an incision and put
in a rubber pipe to drain off the putrescence.

At the Novitiate the motherless Kataoka children were inconsolable.
Father Cieslik worked hard to keep them distracted. He put riddles to them;
he asked, "What is the cleverest animal in the world?" and when the thirteen-
year-old girl guessed the ape, the elephant, the horse, he said, "No, it must
be the hippopotamus" -- because in Japanese that animal is *kaba*, the reverse
of *baka*, stupid. He told Bible stories, beginning, in the order of things,
with the creation. He showed them a scrapbook of photographs of Europe.
Nevertheless, they cried most of the time for their mother. Several days later
Father Cieslik started hunting for the children's family. Firstly he learned
through the police that an uncle had been inquiring about them of the authorities
in Kure, a nearby town. After that he heard that an older brother had been
trying to trace them through the post office in Ujina, a suburb of Hiroshima.
Still later he heard that the mother was still alive and was living on Goto
Island, off Nagasaki. And at last, by keeping a check on the Ujina post office,
he got in touch with the brother and returned the children to their mother.

A vague, incomprehensible rumor had reached Hiroshima -- that the city had

-20-

been destroyed by the energy released when atoms were somehow split in two.
The weapon was referred to in this word-of-mouth report as genshi bakudan-sho,
literally "the original child bomb." No one understood the idea or put any
more credence in it than in powdered magnesium, etc. The newspapers were
still confining themselves to extremely general statements, such as Domei's
assertion on August 12th: "There is nothing to do but admit the tremendous
power of this inhuman bomb..." Already Japanese physicists had entered the
city with Lauritzen Electroscopes and Neher Electrometers; they understood the
idea all too well.

"In the 12th the Nakamuras, all of them still rather sick, went to the nearby town of Kabe and moved in with Mrs. Nakamura's sister-in-law. The next day Mrs. Nakamura, drawn by some fascination just as Father Kleinsorge had been, and although she was too ill to walk much, returned to Hiroshima alone, by electric car to the outskirts, by foot from there. All week at the Novitiate she had worried about her mother, brother and older sister, who lived in the part of town called MM Fukuro. She learned there that they were all dead. She went back to Kabe so amazed and depressed by what she had seen and learned in the city that she could hardly speak that evening."

A relative orderliness, at least, began to be established at the Red Cross Hospital. Dr. Sasaki, back from his rest, undertook to classify his patients (who were still scattered everywhere, even on the stairways). The staff gradually swept up some of the debris. Best of all, the nurses and attendants began to remove the corpses. Relatives identified most of the first day's dead. Beginning the second day, whenever a patient appeared to be in danger, a piece of paper with his name on it was fastened to his clothing. The corpse-detail carried the bodies to a clearing outside, placed them on pyres of lumber from ruined houses, burned them, put some of the ashes in envelopes originally intended for X-ray plates, marked the envelopes with the names of the deceased and piled them, neatly and respectfully, in the main office. In a

-21-

few days the envelopes filled one whole side of the impromptu shrine.

On the morning of August 15th, ten-year-old Toshio Nakamura heard an airplane overhead. He ran outdoors and identified the plane with a professional eye as a B-29. "There goes 'Mr. B,'" he shouted.

One of his relatives called out to him, "Haven't you had enough of 'Mr. B'?"

This question had a kind of symbolism. At almost that very moment the dull, dispirited voice of Hirohito, the Emperor Tennoh, was speaking for the first time over the radio: "After pondering deeply the general trends of the world and the actual conditions obtaining in Our Empire today, We have decided to effect a settlement of the present situation by resorting to an extraordinary measure...."

Mrs. Nakamura had gone to the city again, to dig up some rice she had buried in her air raid shelter. She got it and started back for Kabe. On the electric car, quite by chance, she ran into her younger sister, who was married and had not been in Hiroshima the day of the bombing. "Have you heard the news?" her sister asked.

"What news?"

"The war is over."

"Don't say such a foolish thing, sister."

"But I heard it over the radio myself." And then, in a whisper: "It was the Emperor's voice."

"Oh," Mrs. Nakamura said (she needed nothing more to change her over from thinking -- in spite of the atomic bomb -- that Japan still had a chance to win the war), "in that case --"

Months later, in a letter to an American friend, Mr. Tanimoto described the events of that morning: "At the time of the Post-War, the marvelous thing in our history happened. Our Emperor broadcasted his won voice through radio directly to us, common people of Japan. Aug. 15th we were told that some news of great importance could be heard & all of us should hear it. So I went to Hiroshima railway station. There set a loudspeaker in the ruins of

-22-

the station. Many civilians, all of them were in boundage, some being helped by shoulder of their daughters, some sustaining their injured feet by sticks, they listened to the broadcast and when they knew what came to realize the fact that it was the Emperor, they cried with full tears in their eyes, 'What a wonderful blessing it is that Tennoh Kikaku himself call on us and we can hear his own voice in person. We are thoroughly satisfied in such a great sacrifice.' When they came to know the war was ended -- that is, Japan was defeated, they, of course, were deeply disappointed, but followed after their Emperor's commandment in calm spirit, making whole hearted sacrifice for the everlasting peace of the world -- and Japan started her new way."

SOME EVENTS AT HIROSHIMA

IV: Panic Grass and Fever-Few

Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge, S.J., set out on foot for
Hiroshima from the Jesuit Novitiate in Nagatsuka, three miles
outside town, with a papier mache suitcase in his hand. He had
begun to think that this bag had a talismanic quality. The
atomic bomb had exploded twelve days before; on that morning
Father Kleinsorge had been on the top floor of the Jesuit mission
house inside the city. Because the suitcase contained his breviary,
the account books of the diocese and a large number of yen
belonging to the Society of Jesus, he had hidden it under his desk
in a room on the ground floor. After the explosion he went into
his room and found the desk in splinters all over the floor, yet
the paper suitcase stood handle-side-up and unscratched in the
doorway, where he could not possibly miss it. Now he was carrying
this extraordinary piece of luggage to the Yokohama Specie Bank,
already reopened in its half-ruined building, where he intended to
deposit the yen. On the whole, he felt quite well that morning.
It is true that the minor cuts on his left side had not healed in
five or six days, as the Rector of the Novitiate, a man with some
medical training, had positively promised they would; but Father
Kleinsorge had rested well for a week and considered that he was
now ready for hard work. By this time he was accustomed to the

-2-

terrible scene through which he walked toward the city -- the large
rice field near the Novitiate streaked with brown; the houses on
the outskirts standing but decrepit with broken windows and
dishgewiled tiles; and then, quite suddenly, the beginning of the
four square miles of reddish brown scar where nearly everything
was buffeted down and burned; range on range of collapsed city
blocks, with here and there a sign erected on a pile of ashes and
tiles -- "Sister, where are you?" or "All safe and we live at
Toyosaka"; naked trees and staggered telephone poles; the few
standing, gutted buildings only accentuating the horizontality of
everything else -- the Museum of Science and Industry with its dome
stripped to its steel frame, as if for an autopsy, the modern
Chamber of Commerce Building, its tower just as cold, rigid and
unassailable after the accident as before, the huge, low-lying,
camouflaged City Hall, the row of dowdy banks, caricaturing a shaken
economic system; and in the streets a macabre traffic, hundreds of
lopsided bicycles, shells of streetcars and automobiles, halted in
mid-motion. When Father Kleinsorge reached the center of town, the
day had become very hot. He walkes straight to the Yokohama Bank,
which was doing business in a temporary wooden stall in the ground
floor of its building, deposited the money, went by the mission
house in the section called Nobori-cho just to have another look at
thewreckage, and then started back to the Novitiate. About half
way there he began to have peculiar sensations. The more or less
magical suitcase, now empty, suddenly seemed terribly heavy. His
knees grew weak. He felt excruciatingly tired. With a considerable
expenditure of spirit, he managed to reach the Novitiate. He did
not think his weakness was worth mentioning to the other Jesuits.
But a couple of days later, while attempting to say mass, he had

-3-

an onset of faintness and even after three serious tries was unable to go through with his devotions, and the next morning after that the Rector, who examined Father Kleinsorge's negligible but unbealed cuts daily, asked in surprise, "What have you done to your wounds?" They had suddenly opened wider and were swollen and inflamed.

As she dressed on the morning of the 20th in the home of her brother-in-law in Kabe, not far from Nagatsuka, Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamure, a tailor's widow who had suffered no cuts or burns at all, though she had been rather nauseated all through the week which she and her children spent as guests of Father Kleinsorge and the other Jesuits at the Novitiate, began fixing her hair and noticed, after one stroke of the comb, that it carried with it a whole handful of hair; the second time the thing happened, so she stopped combing at once. But in the next three or four days her hair kept falling out of its own accord, until she was quite bald. She began living indoors, practically in hiding. On the 26th, both she and her younger daughter, Myeko woke up feeling extremely weak and tired, and they both stayed on their bedrools. Her son and other daughter, who had shared every experience with her during and after the bombing, felt fine.

At about the same time Mr. Kiyoski Tanimoto, minister of the Hiroshima Methodist Episcopal Church-- he lots track of the days, so hard was he working to set up a temporary place of worship in a private house in the outskirts-- fell suddenly ill with a general malaise, weariness and feverishness; and he, too, took to his bedroll on the floor of the half-wrecked house of a friend in the suburb of Ushida.

-4-

They did not realize it, but these three were coming down with the strange, capricious disease which came later to be known as radiation sickness.

Miss Toshiko Sasaki lay in steady pain in the Goddess of Mercy Primary School at Hatsukaichi, the third station to the west of Hiroshima on the electric train. An internal infection prevented the proper setting of a compound fracture of her lower left leg. A young man who was in the same hospital and who seemed to like her in spite of her unremittent preoccupation with her suffering, or else just pitied her because of it, loaned her a Japanese translation of De Maupassant, and she tried to read the stories but she could only concentrate for four or five minutes at a time.

The hospitals and aid stations around Hiroshima were so crowded in the first weeks after the bombing, and their staffs were so variable, depending on the unpredictable arrival of outside help, that patients had to be constantly shifted from one haven. Miss Sasaki, who had already been moved three times, twice by ship, was taken at the end of August to an engineering school, also at Hatsukaichi. Because her leg did not improve but swelled more and more, the doctors at the school bound it with crude splints and took her by car, on September 9th, to the large Red Cross Hospital in Hiroshima. This was the first chance she had had to look at the ruins of Hiroshima; the last time she had been carried through the city's streets she had been hovering on the edge of unconsciousness. Even though the wreckage had been described to her in Hatsukaichi, and though she was still in pain, the sight horrified and amazed her -- and there was something she noticed about it which particularly gave her the creeps. Over everything -- up through ruins, in gutters, along the river banks, tangled among tiles and tin roofing,

-5-

climbing on charred tree-trunks -- was a blanket of fresh, vivid, lush, optimistic green, thicker than ever before and in the queerest places: the verdance rose even from the foundations of ruined houses. Weeds hid the ashes and wild flowers were in bloom among the city's homes. Not only had the bomb evidently left the underground organs of plants intact; it must have stimulated them. Everywhere were bluets and Spanish bayonets, goosefoot, morning glories and others, day lilies, the hairy-fruited bean, purslane and clotbur and sesame and panic grass and fever-few. Especially in a circle under the very center of the explosion, sickle senna grew in extrodinary regeneration, not only standing among the charred remnants of the same plant but pushing up in new places, among bricks and in cracks and phragmites. It actually seemed as if a bag of sickle senna seed had been dropped along with the bomb.

At the Red Cross Hospital, Miss Sasaki was put under the care of a young surgeon who was her namesake but not her relative. Dr. Terafumi Sasaki had been the only uninjured doctor in the Red Cross Hospital, which was far enough from the epicenter of the explosion not to be destroyed, though it was badly rattled and cracked. For the first few days and nights in the hospital Dr. Sasaki performed a kind of cameo of death: ten thousand horribly cut and burned patients had poured into the hospital compound and lay down in the rooms and corridors, on the stairs and driveway, and he had staggered among them, touching their wounds and watching them die. Now, a month later, something like order had been established, -- which is to say that the patients who still lay in the corridors at least had mats to sleep on and the total give-out of medicines had been

-6-

inadequately repaired by contributions from other cities. Dr. Sasaki, who had had one seventeen-hour sleep at his home on the third night, had ever since then rested only about six hours a night on a mat at the hospital; he had lost twenty pounds from his very small body; he still wore some ill-fitting glasses he had bowwored from an injured nurse because his own were shattered.

Since Miss Sasaki was a woman and was so sick (and perhaps, he admits, just a little bit because she was named Sasaki), Dr. Sasaki put her in a semi-private room, which at that time had only eight people in it. He questioned her and wrote on her record card in the correct, scrunched-up German in which he kept all his records: "Mittelgrosse Patientin in gut Ernahrungszustandt. Fraktur am linken Unterschenkel knocken mit wunde; Anschwellung am linken Unterschenkelgegend. Haut und sichtbare Schleimhaute massig durchbluttet und keine Oedema...." -- noting that she was a medium-sized female patient in good general health; that she had a compound fracture of the left tibia, with swelling of the left lower leg; that her skin and visible mucous membranes were heavily spotted with petechiae-- small hæmorrhages about the size of grains of rice, or even as big as soybeans; and in addition that her head, eyes, throat, lungs and heart were apparently normal; that she had a fever. He wanted to try to clean the wound, set her fracture and put her leg in a cast, but he had run out of plaster of Paris long since, so he just stretched her out on a mat and prescribed aspirin for her fever, and glucose intravenously and diastase orally for her undernourishment (which he had not entered on her record because everyone suffered from it). She exhibited only one of the queer symptoms so many of his patients were just

then ... one spot haemorrhages.

Dr. Masakazu Fujii was pursued by bad luck, much of which seemed to be connected with rivers. He had owned a small private hospital overhanging one of the seven rivers which subdivide Hiroshima, and the blast had blown the building and him into it. He had extricated himself and climbed ashore, but the fire which raged in the city had made him go back down in the brackish river and stay there for several hours, to the discomfort of his broken collarbone and his several serious cuts and bruises. He had eventually made his way out of town to the summer house of a friend named Okuma in the village of Fukawa. This house clung to the steep banks of the Ota River. Here his injuries seemed to make good progress, and he even began to treat refugees, especially those who came to him from the neighborhood, with medical supplies he had retrieved from a cache in the suburbs. He noticed in some of his patients a curious syndrome of symptoms which cropped out in the third and fourth weeks, but he was not able to do much more than swathe cuts and burns. Early in September it began to rain, steadily and heavily. The river rose. On the 17th the downpour became a cloudburst and then a typhoon, and the water crept higher and higher up the bank. Mr. Okuma and Dr. Fujii became alarmed and acrobles up the mountain to a peasant's house. (Down in Hiroshima the flood took up where the bomb had left off -- swept away bridges that had survived blast, washed out roads, undermined foundations of buildings that still stood; ten miles to the west Ono Army Hospital, where a team of experts from Kyoto Imperial University was studying the delayed affliction of patients there, suddenly slid down a beautiful pine-dark mountainside into the

-8-

Sea and drowned most of the investigators and their mysteriously diseased patients alike.) After the storm Dr. Fujii and Mr. Okuma went down to the river and found that the host's house had been washed altogether away.

Because so many people were suddenly feeling sick nearly a month after the atomic bomb was dropped, an unpleasant rumor began to move around, and eventually it made its way to the house in Kabe where Mrs. Nakamura lay bald and ill. It was that the atomic bomb had deposited some sort of poison on Hiroshima which would give off deadly emanations for seven years; nobody could go there all that time. This especially upset Mrs. Nakamura, who remembered that in a moment of confusion on the morning of the explosion she had literally sunk her entire means of livelihood, a Sankoku sewing machine, in the small cement watertank beside her house; now no one would be able to go and fish it out. Up until this time Mrs. Nakamura and her relatives had been quite resigned and passive about the moral issue of the atomic bomb; but the seven-year rumor suddenly roused them to more hatred and resentment of America than they had felt all through the war.

Japanese physicists, who knew a great deal about atomic fission (one of them owned a cyclotron an "atom-smasher"), in fact worried about lingering radiation at Hiroshima, and not many days after President Truman's disclosure of the type of bomb, they entered the city to make investigations. The first thing they did, in mid-August, was to determine a rough epicenter by observing the direction toward which telephone poles all around the middle of town were scorched: they settled on the torii gateway of the Gokoku Shrine, right next to the parade ground of the Chugoku

-9-

The main Army Headquarters. From there they worked north and south with Lauritsen Electroscopes, which are sensitive to both beta-rays and gamma-rays. These indicated that the highest radiation, near the torii gate, was 4.2 times the average natural "Leak" of ultra-short waves for that area.

The Japanese scientists had noticed that the flash of the bomb had discolored concrete to a light reddish tint, had scaled off the surface of granite and had scorched certain types of building material, and that consequently the bomb had, in some places cast shadows. The experts found, for instance, a shadow thrown on the roof of the Chamber of Commerce Building by the structure's rectangular tower; another in the lookout post on top of the Hypothec Bank (2050 yards); a third on a window frame of the tower of the Chugoku Electric Supply Building (800 yards); another projected by the handle of a gas tank (2630 yards); and several among the granite tombstones in the Gokoku Shrine (385 yards). By triangulating these and other such shadows, the scientists determined that the exact center of the bomb's fireball had been several hundred yards in the air above a spot --"ground zero"--a hundred fifty yards south of the torii gate and a few yards southeast of the pile of ruins that had once been the Shima Hospital. (These shadows gave rise to some fantastic -- and, of course, minutely and exactly detailed-- stories which are still, a year later, in circulation in Hiroshima, mostly about silhouettes: of a man on a ladder who is said to have been monumentalized in a kind of bas relief on the stone facade of a bank building, where he was doing some painting, in a position which positively proves that he was in the act of dipping his brush into the paintcan; of a man and his cart on the bridge near the Museum of Science and Industry, almost under the center of the explosion, cast down in an embossed

-10-

shadow which makes it clear that the man was about to whip his
horse.) Starting east and west early September from the actual
center, the scientists made new measurements, and the highest
radiation they found this time was 3.9 times the natural "leak".
Since radiation of at least a thousand times the natural "leak"
would be required to cause serious effects on the human body, the
scientists announced that people could enter Hiroshima without any
per风险 at all.

As soon as this reassurance reached the household in which
Mrs. Nakamura was concealing herself, or, at any rate, within a
short time, when her hair had started growing back again, the
whole family relaxed their extreme hatred of America and Mrs.
Nakamura sent her brother-in-law to look for the sewing machine.
It was still submerged in the water reservoir, and when he brought
it home she saw, to her dismay, that it was all rusted and useless.

By the end of the first week in September Father Kleinsorge
was in bed with a fever of 102.2 F, and since he seemed to be
getting worse rather than better, his colleagues decided to send
him to the Catholic International Hospital in Tokyo. Father
Cieslik and the Rector took him as far as Kobe; a Jesuit from
that city took him on to Tokyo, with a message from a Kobe doctor
to the Mother Superior of the International Hospital: "Think twice
before you give this man blood transfusions, because with atomic
bomb patients, we aren't at all sure that if you stick needles in
them they'll stop bleeding."

When Father Kleinsorge arrived at the hospital he was terribly

-11-

pale and very shaky. He complained that the bomb had upset his digestion and given him abdominal pains. His white blood count was three thousand, he was seriously anaemic and his temperature was 104 F. A doctor who did not know much about these syndrome manifestations -- Father Kleinsorge was one of a tiny handful of atomic patients who had reached Tokyo --came to see him, and to the patient's face he was most encouraging: "You'll be out of here in two weeks," he said. But when he got out of the corridor, he said to the Mother Superior, "He'll die. All these bomb people die; you'll see. They go along for a couple of weeks and then they die."

The doctor prescribed suralimentation. Every three hours they pushed some eggs or beef juice into him, and fed him all the sugar he could stand. They gave him vitamins and iron pills and arsenic (in Fowler's solution, for his anaemia). He confounded both the doctor's predictions; he neither died nor got up in a fortnight. Despite the fact that the groundless message from Kobe deprived him of transfusions, which would have been the most useful therapy of all, his fever and his digestive troubles cleared up fairly quickly. His blood count went up for a while but then dropped again to 3,600; then, in ten days, it suddenly climbed above normal, to 8,800; and finally settled at 5,800. His ridiculous scratches baffled everyone. For a few days they would mend and then, when he moved around, they would all open up again. As soon as he began to feel well, he enjoyed himself tremendously. In Hiroshima he had been one of thousands of sufferers; in Tokyo he was a curiosity. Young American doctors came by the dozens to observe him. Japanese experts questioned him. A newspaper interviewed him. And once the pessimistic doctor came and shock

-12-

his head and said, "Baffling cases, these atomic bomb people."

Mrs. Nakamura lay indoors with Myeko. They both felt sick, and though Mrs. Nakamura vaguely senses that their trouble was connected with the bomb, she was too poor to see a doctor and so never knew exactly what the matter was. Without any treatment at all, except rest, they began gradually to feel better. Some of Myeko's hair fell out, and she had a small burn on her arm which took months to heal. The boy Toshio and the older girl Yaeko seemed well enough, though they, too, lost some hair and occasionally had bad headaches. Toshio had a series of nightmares, always about a 19 year-old electrical mechanic Hideo Osaki, a hero of his, who had been killed by the bomb.

On his back with a fever of 104 F, Mr. Tanimoto worried about all the funerals he ought to be conducting for the deceased of his church. He thought he was just over-tired from the hard work he had done since the bombing, but after the fever had persisted for a few days, he sent for a Japanese doctor. The doctor was too busy to visit him, but sent a nurse, who recognized his symptoms as those of mild radiation disease, and came back from time to time to give Mr. Tanimoto injections of vitamin B-1. A Buddhist priest with whom Mr. Tanimoto was acquainted, called on him and suggested that moxibustion might give him relief; the priest showed the pastor how to give himself the ancient Japanese treatment: by setting fire to a twist of the stimulant hōra moxa at a certain place on the wrist pulse. Mr. Tanimoto found that each moxa treatment temporarily reduced his fever by one degree. The nurse had told him to eat as much as possible, and every few days his mother-in-law brought

-13-

him vegetable and fish from Tsuzu, twenty miles away, where she
lived. He spent a month in bed, and then went ten hours by train
to his father's home in Shikoku. There he rested another month.

Dr. Sasaki and his colleagues at the Red Cross Hospital watched the unprecedented disease unfold and at last evolved a theory as to its nature. It had, they found, three stages. The first stage was all over before the doctors even knew they were dealing with a new sickness: it was the direct reaction to the bombardment of the body, at the moment when the bomb went off, by neutrons, beta rays and gamma rays. This first stage killed eighty-five per cent of the people within two thirds of a mile of the center, and many thousands who were farther away. The doctors realized in retrospect that even though most of these dead had also suffered from burns and blast effects, they had absorbed enough radiation to kill them anyhow. The rays simply destroyed body cells -- disintegrated, and their effects were so severe that the dead did not die right away. Some died with nausea, headache, diarrhea, malaise, and fever, which lasted several days. The second stage, that of the main symptoms, set in ten or fifteen days after the bombing. The first sign was falling hair. Diarrhoea and fever, which in some cases went as high as 106°F, came next. Twenty-five to thirty days after the explosion blood disorders appeared: gums bled, the white blood cell count dropped sharply, and small, purple haemorrhagic spots, called petechiae, appeared on the skin and mucous membranes. The drop in the number of white blood corpuscles reduced the patient's capacity to resist infection, so that open wounded were unusually slow in healing and many of the sick developed sores throats and mouths. Not all the patients exhibited all the main sy

-14-

and mouths. The two key symptoms, on which the doctors came to base their prognosis, were fever and the lowered white count. If fever remained steady and high, the patient's chances for survival were poor. The normal white blood corpuscle count is between five and seven thousand per cubic centimeter; in almost all who were sick, the count dropped below four thousand; a patient whose count fell below one thousand had little hope of living. Toward the end of the second stage, if the patient survived, anaemia, or a drop in the red blood count, also set in. The third stage was a reaction, when the body struggled to compensate for its ills -- when, for instance, the white blood count not only returned to normal but increased to much higher than normal levels. In this stage many patients died of complications, such as infections in the chest cavity. The course of the disease was variable, depending on the patient's constitution and the amount of radiation he received. Some recovered in a week; with others the disease dragged on for months.

As the symptoms revealed themselves, it became clear to the doctors that many of them resembled the effects of overdoses of X-ray, and they based their therapy on that likeness. They gave victims liver extract, blood transfusions and vitamins, especially B1. The shortage of supplies and instruments hampered them: Allied doctors, who came in after the surrender, found plasma and penicillin very effective. Since the blood disorders were, in the long run, the predominant factor in the disease, some of the Japanese doctors evolved a theory as to the seat of the delayed sickness. They thought that perhaps radioactive rays, entering the body at the time of the explosion, made the phosphorus in the victims' bones radioactive, so that they in turn emitted beta rays which,

-15-

though they could not penetrate far through flesh, could enter the bone marrow, where blood is manufactured, and gradually tear it down. Whatever its source, the disease had some baffling quirks. Not all the patients exhibited all the main symptoms. People who suffered flash burns were protected, to a considerable extent, from radiation sickness. Those who had lain quietly in the hours and days after the bombing were much less liable to get sick than those who had been active. Grey hair seldom fell out. And as if symbolizing the bomb's threat to future generations, the reproductive processes were affected for a time: men became sterile, women had miscarriages, menstruation stopped.

For ten days after the flood Dr. Fujii lived in the peasant's house up on the mountain above the Ota. Then he heard about a vacant private clinic in Kaitaichi, a suburb to the east of Hiroshima. He bought it at once, moved there and hung out a sign inscribed, in honor of the conquerors, in English:

M. FUJII, M.D.

Medical & Venereal

The Japanese version of these same words on the sign was fitting enough, since Hiroshima had long been famous for three synonyms of the word *kaki*: for tree *kaki*, or persimmons, sea *kaki*, or oysters, and *kasa-kaki*, or syphilis. Quite recovered from his wounds, Dr. Fujii soon built up a strong practice, and he was delighted, in the evenings, to receive members of the occupying forces, on whom he lavished whisky and practiced English.

Under a local anesthetic of procain, Dr. Sasaki made an incision

-16-

in Miss Sasaki's leg on October 23rd, to drain the infection which, ten weeks after the injury, still lingered on. In the following days so much pus formed that he had to dress the opening each morning and evening. A week later she complained of great pain, so he made another incision; he cut still a third on November 9th and enlarged it on the 26th. All this time she grew weaker and weaker, and her spirits fell low. One day the young man who had loaned her his translation of De Maupassant at Hatsukaichi came to visit her; he told her he was going to Kyushu but that when he came back he would like to see her again. She didn't care. Her leg had been so swollen and painful all along that the doctor had never even tried to set the fractures, and though an X-ray taken in November (on a machine brought from another city) showed the bones were mending, she could see under the sheet that her left leg had shrunk nearly three inches and that her left foot was turning inward. She was deformed; unreasonably, she hated herself. She thought often of the man to whom she had been engaged. Some one told her he was back from overseas. She wondered what he had heard about her injuries that made him stay away altogether.

Father Kleinsorge was discharged from the hospital on December 19th and took a train home. On the way two days later, at Yokogawa, a stop just before Hiroshima, Dr. Fujii boarded the train. It was the first time Father Kleinsorge had seen the doctor since before the bombing. The two sat together. Dr. Fujii said he was going to the annual gathering of his family on the anniversary of his father's death, and when they started talking about their experiences, the doctor was quite entertaining about how his places of residence kept falling into rivers. Then he asked Father Kleinsorge how he was,

-17-

and the Jesuit told about his stay in the hospital. "The doctors told me to be cautious," he said. "They ordered me to have a two-hour nap every afternoon."

Dr. Fujii said, "It's hard to be cautious in Hiroshima these days. Everyone seems to be so busy."

A new municipal government had gone to work at last in City Hall. Citizens who had recovered from various degrees of radiation sickness were coming back by the thousands now -- by November 1st the population, mostly crowded into the outskirts, was already 137,000, more than a third of the wartime peak -- and the government set in motion all kinds of projects to keep them busy. It hired men to clear the streets, and others to gather scrap iron, which they sorted and piled in mountains opposite City Hall. Though the returning residents were putting up their own shanties and huts, and planting small squares of winter wheat beside them, the city authorized and built four hundred one-family "barracks." Utilities were repaired: electric lights shone again, trams started running, and employees of the water works found seventy thousand leaks in mains and plumbing. A Planning Conference began to consider what sort of city the new Hiroshima should be: with a young Military Government officer, Lieutenant John D. Montgomery of Kalamazoo, as adviser, it drew charts with highways a hundred meters wide and thought seriously of preserving the half-ruined Museum of Science and Industry more or less as it was, to serve as a monument of the bombing and to be named The Institute of International Amity. Statistical workers gathered what figures they could on the effects of the bomb. They reported that there had been 78,150 killed, 13,983 missing and 37,425 wounded. No one in the city government

-18-

pretended that these figures were the least bit accurate -- though
the Americans accepted them as "official" -- and as the months went
by and more and more hundred of corpses were dug up from the ruins,
and as the number of unclaimed urns of ashes at the Zempoji Temple
in Koi rose into the thousands, they began to suggest, also
"officially", that at least 100,000 people had lost their lives
in the bombing. The statisticians' figures on physical damage were
more reliable: 62,000 out of 90,000 buildings destroyed, and 6,000
more damaged beyond repair. In the heart of the city/only five
modern buildings that could be used again without major repairs.

Scientists swarmed into the city. Some of them measured the
force that had been necessary to shift marble gravestones in various
cemeteries, to knock over twenty-two of the forty-seven railroad
cars on a siding at Hiroshima, to lift and move the main cement slab
of one of the bridges, and to perform x other noteworthy acts of
strength, and concluded that the pressure put out by the bomb varied
from 4.5 to 6.7 tons per square meter. Others found fuzed mica,
of which the melting point is 900°C, on granite gravestones three
hundred fifty meters from the epicenter; charred telephone poles of
cryptomeria japonica, of which the carbonization point is 240°C, at
four thousand meters from the center; bubbled grey clay tiles, the
surface of which dissolves at 1,300°C, at five hundred fifty meters;
and other significant ashes and melted bits -- and concluded that
the heat of the bomb at "ground zero" must have been 6,000°C. And
from further measurements of radiation, which involved, among other
things, the scraping up of fission fragments from roof-troughs and
drainpipes as far away as the suburb of Takasu, three thousand
meters from "ground zero," they learned some far more important
facts about the nature of the bomb. General MacArthur's headquarters

-19-

systematically censored all mention of the bomb from Japanese
scientific publications, but it could not censor the minds of men,
and soon the fruit of the scientists' calculations at Hiroshima
became common knowledge among Japanese physicists, doctors, chemists,
journalists, professors and, no doubt, those statesmen and military
men who were still in circulation. Long before the American public
had been told, most of the scientists and lots of non-scientists
in Japan knew -- from the calculations of Japanese nuclear physicists
-- that a uranium bomb had exploded at Hiroshima and a more powerful
one of plutonium at Nagasaki. The American public still does not
know, as they do, the exact height at which the bomb was dropped
and the approximate weight of the uranium used. The Japanese
scientists have had these and other facts which are still subject
security
to dissemination in the United States printed and mimeographed and
bound into little books; tracing them and seeing that they did not
fall into the wrong hands would oblige the Americans to set up a
police system in Japan, for this one purpose alone, which would make
the Gestapo and NKVD look like games of Cops and Robbers. Indeed,
trying to keep security on atomic fission is as fruitless as trying
to keep a blanket of secrecy on the law of gravity, and all the
senators and all the generals in America cannot suppress what
happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki any more than they can hide many
other things with presumptive military significance, such as the
Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains. The fact is that the
United States Strategic Bombing Survey, which recently issued a
report on some of its findings on the atomic bombing, and which
tiptoed around Japan in an atmosphere of absolute hugger-mugger,
derived most of its information -- even the secret, unpublished

-20-

parts -- from our recent enemies.

Late in February a friend of Miss Sasaki called on Father Kleinsorge and asked him to visit the girl in the hospital. She had been growing more and more depressed and morbid; she seemed little interested in living. Father Kleinsorge went to see her. During his first visit he kept the conversation general, formal and yet vaguely sympathetic, and he did not mention religion. Miss Sasaki herself brought it up the second time hedropped in on her. Evidently she had talked some with a Catholic; she asked bluntly: "If your God is so good and kind, how can he let people suffer like this?" She made a gesture which took in her shrunken leg, the other patients in her room and Hiroshima as a whole.

"My child, # Father Kleinsorge said, "men is not now in the condition God intended. He has fallen from grace through sin..." And he went on to explain, with Jesuitical skill and relish, all the reasons for everything.

It came to Mrs. Nakamura's attention that a carpenter in Kabe was building a number of wooden shanties in Hiroshima which he rented for fifty yen a month -- $3.16 at the fixed rate of exchange. Mrs. Nakamura had lost the certificates for her bonds and other wartime savings, but fortunately she had copied off all the numbers just a few days before the bombing and had taken the list to Kabe, and so when her hair had grown in enough to be presentable, she went into Hiroshima to the bank, and a clerk there told her that in exchange for the numbers, after checking their authenticity, the bank would give her her monty. As soon as she got it she rented one of the carpenter's shacks. It was in Nobori-cho, right near her former house, and though its floor was dirt and it was dark,

-21-

it was at least a home in Hiroshima, and she was no longer dependant
on the charity of her in-laws. During the spring she cleared away
some nearby ruins and planted a vegetable garden. She cooled with
utensils and ate off plates which she scavenged from wreckage. She
sent Myeko to the kindergarten which the Jesuits started up, and
the two older children attended Nobori-cho-Primary School, which,
for want of buildings, began offering classes out of doors. Toshio
wanted to study to be an electrical mechanic, like his hero Hideo
Osaki, who was killed by the bomb. Prices were high: by midsummer
Mrs. Nakamura's savings were gone. She sold some of her clothes to
get food. She had once had several expensive kimonos, but during
the war one had been stolen; she gave one to a sister who had been
bombed out in Tokuyama; she had lost a couple in the Hiroshima
bombing; and now she sold her last one: it only brought a hundred
yen, which did not last long. A few days ago she went to Father
Kleinsorge for advice on how to get along, and now, a year after
the disaster, she is considering the two alternatives he suggested
-- taking work as a domestic for some of the Allied occupation forces,
or borrowing from her relatives enough money -- about five hundred
yen, a bit more than $30 -- to repair her rusty sewing machine and
take up again the work of a seamstress.

When he returned from Shikoku, Mr Tanimoto draped a tent he
owned over the roof of the badly damaged house he had rented in
Ushida. The roof still leaked, but he conducted serves in the damp
living room. He began thinking about raising money to restore his
church in the city. He now became quite friendly with Father
Kleinsorge, and saw the Jesuits offen. He envied them their Church's
wealth; they seemed to be able to do anything they wanted. He had

-22-

nothing to work with except his own energy, and that was not what it had done once had been.

The Society of Jesus had been the first institution to build a relatively permanent shanty in the ruins of Hiroshima. That had been while Father Kleinsorge was in the hospital. As soon as he got back he began living in the shack and he and Father Laderman, who had joined him in the mission, arranged for the purchase of three of the standardized "barracks" which the city was issuing at seven thousand yen apiece. They put two together, end to end, and made a pretty chapel of them; they ate in the other. When materials were available, they commissioned a contractor to build a three-storied mission house exactly like the one that was lost in the bombing. On the ground of the compound carpenters cut timbers, gouged mortised, shaped tenons, whittled scores of wooden pegs, bored holes for them -- until all the parts for the entire house were in a neat pile; then, in three days, they put the whole thing together like an Oriental puzzle, without any nails at all. Father Kleinsorge was finding it hard, as Dr. Fujii had suggested he would, to be cautious and to take his naps. He went out everyday on foot to call on Christians and converts. As the months went by, he grew more and more tired. In June he read an article in the Hiroshima Chugoku warning survivors against working too hard -- but what could he do? By July he was worn out and a few days ago, almost exactly on the anniversary of the bombing, he went back to the Catholic International Hospital in Tokyo for a month's rest.

Whether or not Father Kleinsorge's answers to her questions about life were final and absolute truths, Toshiko Sasaki seemed

quite quickly and obviously to draw physical strength from them. Dr. Sasaki noticed it and congratulated Father Kleinsorge. By April 15th her temperature and white blood count were normal, and the wound was beginning to clear up. On the 20th there was almost no pus, and for the first time she jerked along a corridor on crutches. Five days later the wound had begun to heal, and on the last day of the month she was discharged.

During the early summer, as she prepared herself for conversion to Catholicism, she had ups and downs. Her depressions, when they came, were deep. She knew she would always be a cropple. Her fiance never came to see her at all. There is nothing for her to do, even now, except to read and look out, from her house on a hillside in Kōka Koi, across the depressing ruins of the city where her parents and brother died. She remains nervous, and any sudden noise makes her put her hands quickly to her throat. Her leg still hurts; she rubs it often and pats it, as if to console it.

It took six months for the Red Cross Hospital to get back to normal, and Dr. Sasaki hasn't yet. Until the city restored electric power, the Hospital had to limp along on an Army generator in its back yard. Operating tables, X-ray machines, dentist chairs -- everything complicated and essential came in a trickle of charity from other cities. Face is important even to hospitals in Japan, and long before the Red Cross Hospital was up to par on basic medical equipment its directors put up a new yellow brick veneer facade, so that the hospital is now the handsomest building in Hiroshima -- from the street. For the first four months Dr. Sasaki was the only surgeon on the staff and he never stirred from the building; then, gradually, he began to take an interest in his own life again.

-24-

He got married in March. He has gained back some of the weight he lost, but his appetite is only fair: he used to eat four rice balls at every meal, but now he can only manage two. He feels tired all the time -- "but I have to realize," he says, "that the whole community is tired."

Miss Sasaki is a cripple; Mrs. Nakamura is destitute; Father Kleinsorge is back in the hospital; Dr. Sasaki is not capable of the work he once could do; Dr. Fujii has lost the six thirty-room hospital it took him many years to acquire; Mr. Tanimoto's church is ruined and he no longer has his unusual vitality. The lives of these six people, who were among the luckiest in Hiroshima, will never be the same. What they think of their experiences and of the use of the atomic bomb is, of course, not unanimous. One feeling they do seem to share, however, is a curious kind of elated community spirit, something like that of the Londoners after their blitz; a pride in the way they and their fellow-citizens stood up to a dreadful ordeal. In a letter he sent not long ago to an American friend, Mr. Tanimoto wrote words which were characteristic of this feeling: "What a heartbreaking scene this was the first night! About midnight I landed on the riverbank at Asano Park, a large, wooded private estate. So many/people lied on the ground that I made my way by striding over them. They cried out, 'Don't step on me. Here is my head, here are my feet....' Repeating 'Excuse me' I forwarded and carried a tub of water with me and gave a cup of water to each one of them. Lying on the ground they could not drink, because there mouth swelled. They raised their upper bodies slowly and accepted a cup of water with a bow and drunk quietly and, spilling any remnant, gave back a cup with hearty expression

-25-

of their thankfulness, and said, 'I couldn't help my sister, who was
buried under the house, because I had to take care of my mother who
got a deep wound on her eye and our house soon set fire and we
hardly escaped. Look, I lost my home, my family, and at last
my-self bitterly injured. But now I have gotted my mind to dedicate
what I have and to complete the war for our country's sake.' Thus
they pledged to me, even women and children did the same. Being
entirely tired I lied down on the ground among them, but couldn't
sleep at all. Next morning I found many men and women dead, whom
I gave water last night. But, to my great surprise, I never heard
any one cried in disorder, even though they suffered in great agony.
They died in silence, with no grudge, setting their teeth to bear
it. All for the country!

"Dr. Y. Hiraiwa, professor of Hiroshima University of Literature and Science, and one of my church members, was buried by the bomb under the two storied house with his son, a student of Tokyo University. Both of them could not move an inch under tremendously heavy pressure. And the house already caught fire. His son said, 'Father, we can do nothing except make our mind up to consecrate our lives for the country. Let us give Banzai to our Emperor.' Then the father followed after his son, 'Tennoh-heika, Banzai, Banzai, Banzai!' In the result, Dr. Hiraiwa said, 'Strange to say, I felt calm and bright and peaceful spirit in my heart, when I changed Banzai to Tennoh.' Afterward his son got out and digged down and pulled out his father and thus they were saved. In thinking of their experience of that time Dr. Hiraiwa repeated, 'What a fortunate that we are Japanese! It was my first time I ever tasted such a beautiful spirit when I decided to die for our Emperor.'

"Miss Kayoko Nobutoki, a student of girl's high school, Hirshima

-26-

Jazabuin, and a daughter of my church member, was taking rest with her friends beside the heavy fence of the Buddhist Temple. At the moment the atomic bomb was dropped, the fence fell upon them. They could not move a bit under such a heavy fence and then smoke entered into even a crack and choked their breath. One of the girls begun to sing *Kimagayo*, national anthem, and others followed in chorus and died. Meanwhile one of them found a crack and struggled hard to get out. When she was taken in the Red Cross Hospital she told how her friends died, tracing back in her memory to singing in chorus our national anthem. They were just 13 years old.

"Yes, people of Hiroshima died manly in the atomic bombing, believing that it was for Emperor's sake."

A surprising number of the people of Hiroshima are more or less ethical, indifferent to the *mazakō* / question of the use of the bomb. Possibly they were too terrified by it to want to think about it at all. Not many of them have even bothered to find out much about the bomb (and General MacArthur's total censorship of the subject has made it extremely difficult for those who *have* bothered.) Mrs. Nakamura's conception of it -- and awe of it -- are *mazakō* typical. "The atom bomb," she told a friend not long ago, "is the size of a matchbox. The heat of it was six thousand times that of the sun. It exploded in the air. There is some radium in it. I don't know just how it works but when the radium is put together it explodes." As for the use of the bomb, she said, "It was war and we had to expect it," and then she added, "*Shikata-ganai*" -- a Japanese expression as common as, and corresponding to, the Russian word *neechevo*: "it can't be helped; oh, well; too bad." Dr. Fujii, *san第十* about the same thing, said about the use of the bomb to Father Kleinsorge one evening in his not exactly correct German, "*Da ist nichts zu machen*: there's nothing

-27-

to be done about it."

Father Kleinsorge and the other German Jesuit priests, who, as foreigners, could be expected to take a relatively detached view, discussed the ethics of using the bomb often. One of them, Father Siemes, who was out at Nagatsuka at the time of the attack, wrote in a report for the Holy See in Rome, "Some of us consider the bomb in the same category as poison gas and were against its use on a civil population. Others were of the opinion that in total war, as carried on in Japan, there was no difference between civilians and soldiers, and that the bomb itself was an effective force tending to end the bloodshed, warning Japan to surrender and thus to avoid total destruction! It seems logical that he who supports total war in principle cannot complain of a war against civilians. The crux of the matter is whether total war in its present form is justifiable, even when it serves a just purpose. Does it not have material and spiritual evil as its consequences which far exceed whatever the good might result? When will our moralists give us a clear answer to this question?"

It would be impossible to say what horrors are embedded in the minds of the children who were in Hiroshima that day; on the surface their recollections are of an exhilarating adventure. Toshio eleven, Nakamura, who is very talks perfectly freely, even gaily, about the experience, and not long ago he wrote the following matter-of-fact essay for a class at Nobori-cho Primary School: "The day before the bomb I went for a swim. In the morning I was eating peanuts. I saw a light. I was knocked to little sister's place. When we were saved I could only see as far as the tram. My mother and I started to pack our things. The neighbors were walking around burned and bleeding. Hataya-san told me to run away with her. I said I wanted

-28-

to wait for my mother. We went to the park. A whirlwind came. At night a gas tank burned and I saw the reflection in the river. We stayed in the park one night. Next day I went to Taiko Bridge and met my girl friends Kikuki and Murakami. They were looking for their mothers. But Kikuki's mother was wounded and Murakami's mother was dead."

Many citizens of Hiroshima, however, feel a hatred for American soldiers which nothing could possibly erase. Dr. Sasaki is one of the few who is not too polite to tell an American the truth. "I hear," he said to one recently, "that they are holding a trial for war criminals in Tokyo just now. I think they ought to try the men who decided to use the bomb and they should hang them all."

One day I was not long ago Mr. Tanimoto was walking along with an American flier. They had just inspected his ruined church. "It seems to me," Mr. Tanimoto said, "that transportation ought to have a tremendous future in the world."

"Yes," said the American, "aviation is certainly set to go places, what with jet propulsion and things like that."

"No," Mr. Tanimoto shook his head. "I don't mean that. I mean because of atomic energy. We hear it may be possible to use it for many purposes -- for instance, to drive ships and planes and autos. I've been talking this over with my friends. You know," he said gravely, "we in Hiroshima have reason to believe that atomic energy is very, very powerful."

August 6, 1945.

It was August 6, 1945, at about 8:15 a.m. The world's first atomic bomb had exploded in the sky above Hiroshima. But there was not one person that knew it was an atom bomb. Afterwards, I learned, however, that Dr. Shigeto, vice-president of the Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital, being much surprised by the strange flash and great destructive energy, had run down to the basement to develop a photograph film which had been left in the dark room. There, it is said, he found that the film had been exposed and realized that we had been attacked by an atomic bomb. In Hiroshima this doctor was the only person, in this respect, who was different from the others.

Although I had felt tired - for I was engaged in giving out defense instructions for the town during a raid alarm the night before at midnight - I got up at five on that morning for I had promised to haul some furniture for evacuation. During those days, I was moving out the property of my church - organ, piano, bibles, hymn-books, records, pulpit, chairs, clocks, and utensils for the Sacrament and services etc. Tremendous expense was required to rent a truck, and since there were few workers, it was not easy to get one no matter what price you offered to pay. Therefore, I had been moving out the goods in a push cart which I had borrowed and had had my wife and a few other woman evangelical workers helping me. An article such as a small organ could somehow be managed, but nothing could be done with the piano with so few hands. Therefore, I had talked the matter over with Mr. Matsuo, Mr. Kawahara, and Mr. Jaguchi, who held official posts in our community, and received some help from them.

- 1 -

All the young men of my church had been called to service in the army or military plants, and the aged had been evacuated from the city. Therefore, in order to protect the church, there was no way left except to ask for help from the neighbors who were not believers.

For breakfast I had a cereal of soy bean powder and rice bran mixed together in hot water which was seasoned with salt. Because of the critical shortage of food in those days, many pastors were bed-ridden with the malnutrition which resulted. No matter how much I ate of such meals, I never thought I had enough food for my heavy work. It was terrible, for immediately after a meal was over, I was pursued by a sense of hunger. The problem of eating was one of the most serious matters in my life, and it was also an embarrassing situation for a pastor.

Mrs. Tanimoto, during these days, realizing that Hiroshima would surely be raided, thought it better to go out to a safer area -at least for the night- so, as usual, she was out with our baby girl Koko, in the northern corner of the city in Ushita where her friend Mrs. Tada lived. Therefore I filled my stomach with soybean flour so as not to make any food troubles for my wife. I went to Mr. K. Matsuo's place a little past six.

We left Mr. Matsu's place, after borrowing a cart from a Hatada and getting rope for tying up the articles. It was already near seven.

Passing through Nobori-cho, Jeppo-cho, Hattchobori, Hon-dori,

-2-

and the front of the Hiroshima Central Post Office, we crossed the
Motoyasu Bridge and got to Nakashima-honmachi. Then, passing through
Tenma-cho, we reached Koi-machi by taking the direct road leading
to Koi. According to Japanese scientists who carried out an investi-
gation immediately after the explosion, the world's first atomic bomb
had exploded 500 meters above the south gate of the Hiroshima Central
Post Office. Fortunately we had passed that spot forty minutes be-
fore. Some people in the city had not yet opened the doors of their
houses. Most of them had just opened their shutters.

Along the streets groups of industrial workers, student bodies,
and other volunteer groups, consisting of young men and women mobi-
lized from farming and fishing villages, as well as soldiers, were
beginning their work of clearing away houses in the area. The city
then was carrying out its sixth great house clearing program. Taking
into consideration the immense air-raids on other cities, prepara-
tions were being made to meet possible, heavy B-29 raids by lining
the city in all directions with fire prevention lanes and also by
making use of the seven rivers running through the city. This was
in order to have at least a part of Hiroshima remain undestroyed
by any fire.

We had used the main road running from east to west in the city, and along this road here and there, the above mentioned fatigue workers were moving to their places in order to begin the day's work. In one place a soldier was sawing a pillar of a house, and another, wearing a helmet and using a heavy hammer, was knocking down walls and fences that interfered with the tearing down of houses. Some highschool boys and girls were vigorously pulling on ropes in or-

- 3 -

der to collapse the house. Those that came from neighboring villages
as members of the volunteer corps were pushing and tugging at timbers
from the crushed buildings in order to move them away one by one.
People were heaving and shouldering boards and pillars, and some were
pulling loaded carts towards the suburbs so that the streets became
as confused as a battle field.

We reached the resort house of the Satows, which was located
near a small hill beyond the Koi railway station, at about eight
o'clock. Mr. Satow had been the president of a rayon factory and
had died the previous year. The estate was looked after by only a
watchman. Mrs Saton was living in our community. This spot, however,
was comparatively safe, and as it had a strong, fireproof storage
place, it contained a lot of evacuated goods which belonged to many
friends.

As we placed our hands on the goods loaded in front of the
porch, Mr. Matsuo, all of a sudden, gave a fearful cry. "Oya!" He
was 20 years older than me, and somehow he must have felt ahead of
me something predicting an air-raid. I stood there, puzzled by his
cry, and lifted my head to look at the sky. Just then, a sharp
flash of light streaked out of a dim, brown cloud from the east
towards the west. Previously, in my parsonage, I had experienced
a machine-gun strafing from a plane. Feeling the same kind of fear
that I had had then, I took a few steps backward and fell, on my
belly, to the ground between two garden rocks near the porch.

At the same time a strong blast of wind filled the air. My ears
were stunned. In haste I covered my earholes with my fingers and

- 4 -

also opened my mouth. I did just what had been taught in the defense maneuvers. Small bits of shattered materials fell on my body. "Good heavens" I thought "What hard luck to suffer from an air-raid way out in a place like this." As it seemed to calm down a got up and found that the glass door in the entrance had been shattered to pieces. Some counterpanes that had been neatly piled up were in disarray. I crawled into the pile of counterpanes because I thought the planes were still soaring above, but, as everything seemed quiet, I came out. Since I couldn't see Mr. Matsuo around I cried out for him in a loud voice. He came out gradually from under the counterpanes. We both took off our shirts to find out if we had been injured, but we had no wounds.

I felt rather embarrassed for having been so much confused. Actually this place was strongly protected from the atomic bomb. The slope of the hill strechted out toward the south and stood as a screen in the direction of the center of the explosion. The estate stood in the valley, and, above it, there was a solid earthen storehouse in the way. A western style room next to the porch had also protected the spot where I was standing. This was about all I felt of the first atomic bomb used in the history of mankind.

However I was greatly surprised when I stepped out of the house. From here and there, men and women, both young and old, appeared, one after another, with injured faces and limbs. In all hill and mountain sides holes were being dug by soldiers and now half naked soldiers, bleeding from injuries, were running out of these dugouts. The cement fences had been torn down, and the roof of the estate had

- 5 -

blown away. The inside of the house was chaos. All its glass windows had been broken to pieces. The houses standing on both sides of the estate were already on fire. I presumed that the bomb had hit somewhere very near. Everyone in Hiroshima thought that his own place had been hit.

One young mother had been wounded in her breast and could not find any way to stop the bleeding. She was crying out for something to be done about it, but I did not know what to do myself. So I told her that maybe the soldiers might know the methods for stopping blood. An old woman came running toward me saying, "I've been hit". She had a boy on her back. With one hand she was pressing her head where blood was trickling out. I took the boy on my back, and, taking the woman's hand, I asked, "Where is the first-aid station?" She said "In the school over there". I took her to it.

Here I was again surprised. The school grounds were covered with broken pieces of glass, and the hall and class rooms were in confusion and crowded with wounded persons. A few medical officers and nurses were running about treating the injured. While I was wondering how so many people could have been wounded at once, someone cried out "Taihi! Run for your lives!" Without a second thought I jumped into a concrete gutter which was nearby. However I came out after learning it was only a mistaken alarm. Thinking that it was useless to stay here any longer, I headed back toward the estate in a great hurry.

Along the road leading to the hill top, a long line of wounded persons was taking refuge. "How could so great a number of people

- 6 -

get injured?", I thought. Up until then Hiroshima had been bombed twice by enemy aircraft but only on a small scale. When ten 25 kilogram bombs had been dropped, much fuss was made about the great noise they had made. However, only ten persons were killed at that time. But what a large number of persons had been injured in this bombing and yet there had been no great waves of air squadrons!

Could I have been dreaming before and actually not known of an immense air-raid which had struck Hiroshima? I began questioning myself and even became doubtful of my own senses. Then thinking that I might as well take a look at the city, I went to the end of the estates' garden. This spot was about 3 kilometers from the center of Hiroshima and it offered a good birds-eye-view of the city.

And what did I see? The whole city was covered with dark clouds and conflagrations were breaking out in various directions. It was, after all, a full scale, mass air raid! Could all this have happened at once?

I was terribly afraid. It was then that black drops of rain, as big as blackberries, began to fall. Mr. Matsuo's white paulownia bureau was getting soiled with large, black blots. It was rain caused by the atomic bomb. At Tomo-Village, 8 miles north west of Hiroshima, there was a heavy black shower, and the riverlets there at once overflowed with black water carrying bits of burned paper and wood. They passed through Gion-town and ran into the main river - the Ohta.

There was no time to pay attention to the belongings. I wondered what had happened to my home and church. With a pale face I ran down the Koi highway.

- 7 -

Hiroshima is a city that is spread out on the delta of the Ohta River, and it has seven rivers; the Yamanote, Fukushima, Tenma, Ota, Motoyam, Kyobashi, and Enko rivers. To the south one could escape the Hiroshima isle, in the Inland Sea, by the boats of the Army's Sunrise Unit from Ujina Herbor; to the east was the Hijiyama Hill which could be reached after crossing the Mufuki or the Hijiyama bridge on further up the river. This hill was a park, and it had been designated as a place to take refuge. One could also run towards the Kure highway after crossing Kyo bridge and pass through Kaniya-cho and Ozu-machi. To go north one would have to head for the Geibi Railway tracks. Through Ushita or else go out to Kabe Highway passing through Yokogawa. To go west One could run along the Miyajima electric-car line and passing through Koi.

I took the last of these trunk lines - the west route - and ran in instead of out. Numerous injured persons in an endless procession were heading for the hillsides of Koi. There wasn't a single uninjured person. People were leaning on sticks and tramping along helped by their kin. Some of their bodies were covered with blood, but, strange to say, most of the people were naked. Some were completely stripped of their clothes, but some women had pieces of clothing around their waists. Eyebrows were gone, and hairs were burned off. Those who were wearing army caps were saved from burning on the parts which were covered, but the rest of their faces were burned along the border of the caps as neatly as if they had been shaved. Skin from faces and hands, arms and breasts was stripping off or hanging loose. People were running about as if they were carrying some precious

- 8 -

porcelain with both hands. All faces were pale and without expression. No one was crying nor yelling. People were coming one after another in silence! It seemed like a procession of ghosts! They must have been so shocked at the sudden change that they could utter no word. Everything was beyond their comprehension!

Most of the people of Hiroshima actually had neither seen nor heard any plane. They heard no sound of explosion. They had seen only a strange flash in open daylight, or merely felt the reflection of the flash. However, matter of fact, there happened a tremendous explosion. My wife's mother was living after her evacuation at Tsuzu, 25 miles west of Hiroshima, in a fishing village. The fishermen who lived in the same house, were out in the sea fishing and felt the warmth in his body at the instant of the flash. Then he heard a great exploding sound. The sound was much greater than that heard when Iwakuni, a town only 5 miles away from Tsuzu, was bombed by what was said to be a group of ninety B-29s. However in Hiroshima However in Hiroshima it was quiet like in a forest, and a world that had never before been seen or even imagined appeared before us in one sudden moment. It was after all an event far beyond any human sense.

Some of them did not see even the flash, but fainted away in a moment.

The parents of Mr. Konda, one of our church members, had been waiting for an electric train at Yokogiwa station, located 2 kilometers away from the center of the bomb's explosion. They sought sight of the B 29, and saw a parachute dropping through the air.

- 9 -

Before they had time to wonder at the sight, they fell unconscious.
Of course they cannot remember sensing any sound or light. When they
recovered consciousness, they found themselves lying on the ground-
burned and without any clothing. The houses all around had been crush-
ed to the ground. After getting to their feet, they ran out toward
the suburbs. Other people rushing along the Koi highway had had the
same experience as Mr. and Mrs. Konda.

After crossing Koi and Fukushima bridges I reached a place
about 1 kilometer away from the center of the explosion. From
the suburbs to this spot houses were heavily damaged but somehow
were still standing. However, the houses from here to the center of
explosion were all flat on the ground as if they had been merely toy
buildings crushed by a hammer. They were destroyed more completely
than others had been by the peoples' hammers, saws, and ropes. Pain-
ful cries of "Tasukete! Help!" could be heard from under smashed
houses which seemed to be buried in the ground. I knew full well how
great a job it would be to pull out even one log from a collapsed house,
because I had also been engaged in helping with the clearing of hou-
ses. Nothing, whatsoever, could be done, with the strength of only
one person, to help out the people buried under those houses, and
yet, there were people buried here and there - everywhere!

- 10 -

After I had stopped to do something for these people, the thought that my wife and baby and neighbors must be in the same state flashed through my mind. I was the defense head of my community and there were 120 lives entrusted to me. I had to hurry back to my post, by all means. I ran way in tears, saying to myself, "Excuse me, I'm sorry, but excuse me!" I ran like a wild man. Then I saw a bicycle in good shape which had been abandoned by someone on the road. I jumped on it and attempted to dash across the city at once. However the road was blocked and covered with roof-slates, telephone posts, and crushed houses. Then, gradually, fire and smoke surrounded me. I could not go any further, so I left the bicycle and headed back toward the road I had taken. At Fukushima bridge I met Mr. Matsuo, who came running up all out of breath. "Mr. Matsuo, please excuse me for I have responsibilities," I said, and ran on.

I turned to follow up the river banks of the Fukushima River in order to find a place where the fire was not so furious. I crossed many streets before I reached Nakahiro-machi, way up north, but all these streets were covered with fire. Then I came to Nakahiro-machi, where there were many farm fields and not so many houses.

Everywhere there were pitifully injured persons. They could no longer keep moving, so they were lying in the streets. The further I moved into the city, the more wounded I saw. Without exception everyone I met on the way was injured. I grabbed my panama hat and threw it down on the ground. In my heart I cried, "Forgive me!" because I felt no reason for myself being left uninjured and with a hat on my head. I thought my wife and baby

must be injured like these people and might be buried under the
house. I asked their forgiveness for not being able to be beside
them to rescue them.

In the meantime I came to Chuo bridge. This bridge was
broken down the middle, and there was already a fire on the other
side. I found that it was impossible to get back to the church
by passing through the center of the city, going through Tera-machi
and the Yokogawa bridge. Getting across the river near the Chuo
bridge where the fires were weak, I reached Yokogawa railway
station where I met a railway employee. He said he was on his
way to Hiroshima station as a messenger sent out from Koi station.
I told him I was headed in the same direction and asked him to
join me in dashing through the fire by following the tracks. He
agreed. There were five nice cushions lying nearby, so we each
picked one up, and soaking them in a water-tank, we covered our-
selves with them and started out. Mutually encouraged by finding
a companion who seemed strong enough to rely on, we jumped into
the fire and rushed for about five or six yards.

As the heavy smoke surrounded us, I signaled to him to avoid
the furious fire, for I could not breathe any longer in those
flames. However, I finally lost sight of him. I turned in the
direction of weaker flames and I finally lost myself in the fire.

I could not tell where I was. There was fire everywhere
except in the suburbs. There were people running toward the city
from the countryside anxious to know about their dear ones. Some
saw me and said, "Oh, he's different!" They thought that I was
an outsider because I was not injured.

13

13

"Where am I?" I asked.

They answered, "In Mitaki."

I had been running in quite the opposite direction from my
own section of Nobori-cho, so I turned toward a new direction and
hurried rapidly. Then I made a detour out to Oshiba and reached
the banks of the Ota River.

The usual way was to take the Misasa bridge and go out to
Hakushima, but the foot of the bridge and the Hakushima district
were already in flames. Fortunately, Ushita district, which was
on the other side of the river, seemed to be unscathed by fire.
If I could get past Ushita, Nobori-cho would be within a stone's
throw.

The next instant, in a determined manner, I plunged into
the river. It was not that I had confidence in my swimming abili-
ty, but rather that I thought there was no other means of reaching
my goal. The Ota River varies in water level according to the tides.
Then it was ebb-tide, so there was not much water, but the stream
was swift. Naturally, I lost control of my limbs. I had already
run continuously for about an hour and was dead tired. Besides,
I was poor in running and swimming, for I had despised music and
physical training lessons ever since my grammar school days. I had
grown up until that day thinking how happy I would have been if
only I had not had any music and physical training. I began to
swallow water, which ran into my nose and mouth, my body became
heavy, and my head started to sink. My garters became loose and
danged about my legs. One of my shoes came off before I knew it.
I imagined I was drowning. I would not have resented being killed
by American arms, but it seemed regrettable to be drowned. With

this thought in mind I prayed while sinking, "Oh, God, do help me.
Protect my body till I can save my wife and child and my neighbors."
Then I calmed myself and became lighter by taking off my gaiters,
coat, and the other shoe. With all my remaining energy I stroked
through the water.

Later I touched shallow water about my height and was saved.
When I got to the bank I could not move any longer and rested for
some time with my head on the ground. After I regained some
strength, I got on my feet and started walking towards Ushita.
I was completely undressed and only differed from others by having
no scars from burns.

Suddenly somebody cried out from behind, "Mr. Tanimoto!"

When I turned I saw Mrs. Oda. "Oh, Mrs. Oda! Are you safe?"
I called, and she said, "Reverend, your funeral service articles
are at my place. What shall I do with them?" Two days before
a memorial service had been held in Kusatsu for Rev. Oda, her brother-in-law, and the articles used for the service had been taken home
by her. I shouted, "That's nothing. Run away, quick!" Then I
walked a few steps, but I suddenly reminded myself of the instructions received from the headquarters of the church body stating,
"Organize a volunteer corps and perform services for the bodies of
the dead when there are mass air raids." At such times the dead are
likely to be, in general, disposed of in a poor manner. Since funeral services are the duty of the pastor, I went back and said,
"Mrs. Oda, I'll take them with me." The house was heavily damaged,
the roof was off, and its windows blown away. There was no way to
step inside, but I pulled the Bundland out from under the ruins.

It contained the cross, alter cloth, brass flower pot, and the hymnals. I started off again with the bundle on my back and was soon out of sight of Mrs. Oda.

As the treasurer of my church lived nearby I went to his house and saw that it was also crushed and deserted. Praying for his safety, I passed through Ushita. I saw no residents and thought that everybody must have escaped by now. This place was about six kilometers away from the center of explosion, and the houses were still standing, although heavily damaged.

When I reached the Tshuped banks, I again encountered a long line of refugees. As Mrs. Tada's house, where my wife usually stayed overnight, was nearby, I thought of dropping in. Although she used to be back home by half past six or seven, I thought she might have stayed till nine or ten that morning at Mrs. Tada's place and thus have been saved. In prayer I took a few steps toward the house, and, to my surprise, I found her carrying Koko in her arms, in the line of refugees. She was in a blood-stained chemise, her hair was hanging about her shoulders, and she had a ghostlike appearance.

"Oi," I called out to her. She turned around, looked at me, and stood quietly with tears in her eyes. I looked away and asked, "What happened to you?"

She said, "Just as I reached home, Mrs. Takaki came for a visit. We were both talking at the door when we were buried."
I could not listen to all her explanation, so I impatiently in-terrupted her talk by asking, "And what happened to Mrs. Takaki?"

With a miserable expression, she said, "I don't know."

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"You don't know!" I managed to gulp down my words so as not to shout at her. Seeing her injured, pale, and trembling, I thought I should not shout to scold her. With mixed feelings I threw down my bundle and was about to leave the place.

"Please, wait!" she cried, and ran into Mrs. Tada's house. She exchanged a few loud words with Mrs. Tada, and then brought out a blouse and an air-raid hood belonging to the latter.

In silence I took the things away from her and ran away like a mad man. I was a short man wearing a woman's blouse while dashing through the flames of the city. If it had been in ordinary times, my appearance would have been amusing, but then it was really serious.

I had not had the slightest pleasure upon seeing my wife and child safe, but rather was filled with indignation. It was unpar-donable that a church member who was paying a visit to the parson - age should be killed during a raid and the family of the pastor still be saved. Should not the wife of the pastor have died to-gether with the church member? I was filled with feelings of ac-cusation against my wife.

Afterwards I learned that she was actually buried under the house in an instant and was nearly crushed under the increasing pressure of the heavy wood. She could not breathe for awhile and began to fall unconscious. However, she was brought to by the screaming and screeching of Koko, who was still in her arms. She struggled with all her strength in order to save her baby. Calm-ing herself she noticed a small hole in the attic which was press-ing on her head in the pitch black darkness. Both of her arms

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were strongly pinned in the ruins, but she could move a bit and
finally managed to stretch out one arm. She gradually made the
small hole wider. Every time she struggled, broken pieces of roof-
ing came dropping down on her head. Koko still continued to cry
loudly. Struggling again with all her strength, she enlarged the
hole and was finally able to push Koko out. Then she did every-
thing she could to free herself and somehow managed to get out.

By then the house next door was on fire and smoke was ris-
ing from it. She staggered along the alley with Koko in her
arms. She thought of getting someone to help Mrs. Takaki, but
every house in sight was smashed and already deserted. The fire
was spreading and the smoke was getting thick. With the baby in
her arms she could not return to our house. Finally she reached
the Sentei gardens after being pursued by the fire and smoke.
However, her thoughts were still back with her neighbor.

I went out to the Nigitsu shrine by going through the crowd
of refugees. On the railway bridge near Tokiwa bridge derailed
trains were fiercely burning on the tracks. The roads leading
back to Nobori-cho by crossing Tokiwa bridge or by passing through
Osuga-machi were completely blocked by flames. The only way left
to get to the Higashi Military Training grounds of the 2nd G.H.Q.
was to cross the Enko bridge from the Hiroshima Railway Station
and then get to Nobori-cho by crossing the Kyo Bridge. When I
got to the Higoshi Military Training Grounds, the Hiroshima Sta-
tion was also burning fiercely. Finally, I found that it was also
impossible to use this road.

When I was on my way back, passing by a bamboo grove near

18

the Army Monument, I saw a soldier with terrible burns lying there and crying out in agony, "Give me water! Get me water!" I looked and spotted some clean water, so I looked some more and found a cellubid wash basin. I filled it with clean water and then found an empty can, which I used to give him a drink. The soldier lying on his back took a few swallows and despite his painful burns thanked me heartily. I could see that the injured were thirsty. Soon the soliders and civilians lying about the place began to cry out for water. Happy enough to find my services being of some consolation to them, I walked around and gave everyone a drink.

Suddenly I thought of the parsonage and decided not to waste any more time, so I left, after saying, "Excuse me."

As there was no possible road available, I waded into the river by the Nigitsu Shrine. The river was filled with injured. Finding that I was carrying water in a basin they all started asking for water. I was puzzled as to why they should ask for water, for they could easily have drunk water from the river if they had wished to, because all of them were lying on the bank or in the river bed. I couldn't find any reasons, but thought that most of them were afraid to have their scorched limbs touched by water. I went out into the deeper water to get clean water in my basin every time it was emptied and give drinks to all the people as I walked along. Then I remembered that it was not good to give water to the injured so I measured the quantity carefully according to the extent of their wounds and gave small amounts to the more serious cases. Although they must have wanted more, they accepted my instructions meekly and acted very moderately.

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19

Here, again, I thought of the parsonage and stopped my work.
A man was ferrying people across the river in a small rowboat.
After talking to him I went across to Sentei Gardens. The Sentei
Gardens were the gardens of Lord Asano of the Hiroshima Castle.
During the Russo-Japanese war, at the time when the Imperial
Headquarters was located in the Hiroshima Castle, the Emperor
Meiji had frequently visited this place to rest. They were
also noted as the best gardens in Hiroshima. As I had always
instructed the neighbors in my community to take refuge in this
garden in case of a raid, I believed that they could be found
here.

The river banks of Sentei were crowded with numerous people.
Most of them were strangers to me, but I found among them the
group headed by Mr. Kozakai. Someone called out, "Tanimoto-san!"
I looked back and saw Miki-san, who was a teacher in the Sanyo
High school. His wife was a member of our church. "How's your
wife?" I asked. He told me that Mrs. Miki had been injured but
seemed to be in good condition. Finding him unexpectedly strong,
I handed him the celluloid basin and said to him, "The injured
are very thirsty. Please, give them some water--but not too much
or it will make them worse."

Then I went to see how my parsonage was. The once beautiful
gardens were in a distressing condition and large trees had been
knocked down. I made my way through the gardens by stumbling
over the fallen trees and reached Nobori-cho. I passed through
the backyard of one of the Procurator's official residence
houses which stood next to the garden. The great mansion was

on fire. I went to a pump there, and getting myself well soaked
with water, I walked on the walls and rushed into the town.

All the houses in Nobori-cho were burning fiercely. A
terrible hot blast of wind, forming a whirlwind, took everything
up in the air.

Red hot iron sheets and burning boards were spiralling in
the air. This whirlwind, which avoided the furious fires, caught
me walking on the walls. I was carried seven or eight feet, just
as if I were swimming, into the air, and then fell down on a huge
pine tree which was lying on the ground. For a moment I could
not breathe. The whole city seemed to be one big conflagration.
Occasionally great explosions could be heard. In reality gasoline
tanks were exploding, but I thought they must be time bombs.

I found myself in great danger. Realizing that to force
on further would mean only probable suicide, I entrusted the
fate of Mrs. Takaki to God. After saying a silent prayer I left
this spot.

As I had done as much as I could, I felt somewhat relieved.
Next I turned back toward the river banks in order to help the
neighbors. I began meeting acquaintances one by one. Neighbor-
hood committeemen such as Mr. Nakashima, Mr. Taguchi, Mr. Aoyama,
and Mr. Imanishi, chairman of the neighborhood association, were
all seriously injured. Most of the residents were injured, so
I gathered them in one place near the center of the bank in order
that they could act collectively and with some degree of control.

As I was gathering the people together, I was very glad to
find Mrs. Takaki, resting in the shade of some bushes. She had
been rescued by Miss Kusama, a Bible woman, who lived next door

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to the parsonage. Miss Kusama was also buried underneath her house, but she had been encouraged by the crying of Koko, and had finally crawled out of the ruins. Reaching the parsonage, she cried out "Koko-chan, Koko-chan!" However she was answered only by Mrs. Takaki, and after pulling out the latter, they had both fled from the ruins. Now, as they asked, "What has become of your wife and Koko-chan?" I merely answered, "They're all right," and ran away. I did this because my wife had run away without first checking on the condition of these women. Even thought my wife at that time had been a helpless victim of circumstances, she later apologized in tears when she met Mrs. Takaki, by saying, "Please forgive me for that occasion." I have still not spoken to Mrs. Takaki about this because I had not made a proper apology and had thought it better to wait till we would be able to talk about this horrible experience in a more detached manner.

Mrs. Kuwahara stopped me next. She always used to help with community affairs. She said, "My husband has come with me to the entrance of Sentei, but he is lying there because he can't move any farther. Please help me." Running over, I saw that his face and shoulders were burned, but he was lying there without making any sound of pain. He had been upstairs in his own house when the bomb exploded. I carried him along on my back, but since he was a much taller man than I, his feet dragged on the ground. After staggering under his weight, I managed, however, to get him to the gathering place. The seriously injured all put their heads under the bushes and tried to avoid the direct rays of the

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hot sun. However, their efforts were in vain, and there was no shade from the trees because they had all been knocked down.

Mrs. Kamai, a young mother who lived next door to us, called out and stopped me. In her arms she firmly held her baby, which had already stopped breathing. She said, "I was buried under the house with my baby and managed to get out after a great struggle. My baby was choking so I hurriedly put my finger into her mouth. It was filled with dirt. When I took it out, she began to breathe again. I was so glad she was saved and that I had escaped. However, she finally died. Her father is in the 2nd Unit. He was so fond of her. Please try to contact him for I wish he could see her once more." I had seen many soldiers moving about with terrible burns. The 2nd Unit was located near the center of the city, and it was evident that he could not be safe. Besides, in this terrific conflagration, no one could get to the barracks. However, seeing her eyes in tears, I could not say anything. She was a young mother--only twenty-four years old. Finally I said, "Yes, yes...I'm sure your husband is quite safe...." and parted with a gentle manner.

I met a group of German fathers from the Catholic church in Nobori-cho. Father LaSalle seemed to be seriously injured; Father Kleinsorge and Father Cheslik were also wounded, and all were lying on the ground. I felt deep sympathy for these foreigners who had been injured for the sake of Japan.

As I succeeded in concentrating the people in one place, I thought of taking them across the river, so I went to the river-side. Looking around, I found one boat lying on the rocks. The

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boat was left on the rocks after the tide had ebbed, for it had
been tied to the banks during full tide. In it were lying the
dead bodies of five sturdy men. They were already cold. I
dragged them out of the boat, one by one. Although I felt sorry
to leave them lying along the edge of the river, it could not be
helped in this case. Facing toward the bodies I folded my hands
and gave a silent prayer. While I was trying with all my strength
to pull the boat into the water from the rocks, an injured man who
happened to be watching my work came along and offered to help.
With the strength of both we got the boat to float in the water
but only after a great struggle.

Before beginning my ferry work, I first carried three mem-
bers of the co-operating man's family and three other seriously
injured persons across the river. Meanwhile, another man started
to help me. This man also wanted the few members of his family
to be carried across. After taking a few trips, I decided to
take the people of Nobori-cho across. First of all, I selected
thirty or forty people who wished to take refuge in Gion-machi,
which was five miles north in the suburbs. It was a designated
area for the Nobori-cho residents, I made four round trips
across the river. With Mr. Aoyama as head of the group, I made them
start for Gion. The upper half of Mr. Aoyama's body was burned,
and his face was partly covered by a cloth, which also covered his
head. His face was ugly because the skin was peeling off. My
church members, Mrs. Takaki, Miss Kusama, and the Takano mother
and daughter, were sent to the Tomita and Yokoyama homes in Ushita.
Their residents were also members of the church. All the rest

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stayed on the bank because they were unable to walk.

I took, without any discrimination, all persons who wanted to go across. In the river, fishes burned on the head and colored white on their backs were swimming weakly near the surface. People who had died in the water, where they first thought of avoiding the flames, were floating along the stream still clad in air-defense clothing. I had no more human feelings. Slowly pushing aside the dead, I propelled my boat.

While I was ferrying, a commotion began somewhere near the borders of Sentei and Hakushima-cho at the upper part of the river. I was so engrossed in my work that I did not notice it. I found out later that Tokiko, wife of Dr. Matsumoto, president of the Hiroshima Jogakuin Methodist college for women, had been drowned at this time. The fires were spread from Hakushima toward Sentei and had begun to scorch the crowds of refugees. The terrified people gradually began pushing toward the river bank. Mrs. Matsumoto was then standing at the edge of the bank, waiting to be carried across, but she was pushed into the water, as there was no way for her to avoid the crowd. Those who were around the spot were all injured and there was no one who could help others. I was only several hundred yards away from the spot, but, to my great regret, I had not the slightest knowledge of the incident. Perhaps it was because I could not see the spot from where I stood on account of the bank's curve or maybe because I had to concentrate all my attention on propelling the boat with the aid of a long bamboo pole. Very often I had to stopping and scoop out the water that leaked into this old boat.

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24

While I was still in the river, the people shouted out furiously at me, "Tanimoto-san! Come and stop the fire. It's spreading into the Sentei!" I stopped my work and rushed to the spot. I saw a huge tree ablaze. As I knew that even green plants would burn in mountain fires, I feared that most of the seriously injured who were lying under the shrubs, would be burned to death if the Sentei should catch on fire. I cried out, "All who are only slightly wounded come here!" About twenty persons responded to my call.

I had them search for persons who carried buckets. In those days it was a custom to come outdoors with buckets. Therefore, a very few faithful citizens had run out of their houses with them as the only instruments with which to fight against the fire, even at the time of the atomic bomb. Within a short time the number of buckets necessary for my fire fighting group had been collected. I lined up the nearby people and had them relay the buckets, filled with water from the garden lake, to the spot where the large tree was burning. I stood at the end of the line and splashed the water over the flames. No matter how much water I threw on, the old tree continued to blaze with even greater fury. It was growing at an angle so that its top was about level with the top of the slanting river bank. I jumped on top of it where the flame had not reached and poured a lot of water into the hollow hole in its core.

The injured Father Kleinsorge was also taking part in the fight. All fought bravely against the fire in good spirits. Sometime

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after the fire had weakened, Mr. Matsuo showed up and repeatedly called me, "Tanimoto-san, Tanimoto-san." "What is it?" I asked.

"Come here a minute!" he said, and took me away. After I got down from the tree and went to a place where nobody could see us, he said, "Eat this," and gave me three rice balls. Having eaten nothing since morning. I shoved them desperately into my mouth. I imagine it was the first and last time that rice balls tasted so good.

By the time the fire in Sentei stopped, the conflagration in the city also seemed to die down. Most of the people here had to spend the night outdoors. I began worrying about their meals. Mrs. Mitsui, who was nearby, told me, "If you can reach my home, there is enough food in my airraid shelter to supply this many people. I'm sure that the shelter is not damaged."
I started for the ruins with Mrs. Mitsui and a few other slightly injured persons.

Having no watch, I had no way of knowing the right time, but it must have been around five or six o'clock. The great fire was now burning only here and there. I could not see very far because the smoke was lifting, but wherever my eyes could reach I saw only burned fields of ashes. The asphalt had melted and smoke was puffing out.

The Mitsuis had a large garden adjoining the parsonage. In the center of the garden there was an underground air-raid shelter made of steel-reinforced concrete. The interior was completely preserved without the slightest sign of a burn. Following Mrs. Mitsui's instructions, we took out the food--any kind we could lay our hands on. Although injured, the five men had

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26

carried out as much rice, soybeans, and soybean sauce as they
could carry.

I saw then that Mrs. Mitsui was scratching and poking at
something with a piece of stick. Approaching her I found it to
be a mass of human bones. When Mr. and Mrs. Mitsui were both
buried underneath the house, she managed somehow to crawl out, but
her husband had already been killed when struck by a cross beam
from the roof. She had been compelled to leave her husband's
body lying there and escape. Mrs. Mitsui, however, did not shed
even one tear during that terrible period. We all joined to-
gether to observe a quiet prayer and left the spot, after bowing
solemnly to the ashes of Mr. Mitsui.

In our neighborhood, there lived an old man named Mr. Konishi.
He was a greedy man and had never co-operated in the air defense
maneuvers held in the town. He was now busily engaged in pouring
water over the ruins of his own house with buckets of water taken
from a well. A red hot place, which he thought was his underground
shelter, was fuming from the heat. The storehouses of rice and soy-
beans were burning continuously for days and gave off an awful smell.
Those people who had greedily purchased stocks of food and clothing
were now being served right. The old man was not injured, but
after three days he succumbed suddenly.

The Catholic priests went to the ruins of their Mission House
to seek food and, bringing with them pumpkins which were raised
in their gardens, joined our group. The fathers handed one to
us, saying, "The pumpkin is cooked pretty good." We humbly accepted
it and broke it open. It was steaming and had a rich yellow color.

A

After one bite I exclaimed, "Well, this tastes good. You take a bit." Each one took two or three bites. Someone made a hilarious cry, saying, "Um, better than chestnuts, these pumpkins," and everyone laughed heartily. This group of men upon reaching the bank handed over all the food to the slightly injured women who decided to make it into rice-balls. Pots and pans were easily found and charcoal was lying everywhere.

As I had done everything I could for the time being, I rested for a short time. Suddenly I remembered Mr. Kanzo Fukai, who had been mentioned in the conversation I had had with the priests on the way back with the food stuffs. Mr. Fukai was a Japanese father of the Catholic Church and had been very close to me. The first person who had come to mind when I saw the group of priests was Father Fukai, but until then I had no chance to ask about him.

Father Kelinsorge replied, in answer to my query, "We went together to Sakae bridge, but as the other side was on fire we gave up the idea of crossing the bridge and took refuge in the Sentei gardens at the end of the bridge. It was then that we lost sight of Fukai-Sensei." Therefore, I immediately started out for Sakae bridge. On the bridge hanging on to the railing I saw about twenty or thirty people. Since all were face down, I bent over and looked into each face. All had been scorched to death. The faces could not be identified, but there was no one there who resembled him in bodily appearance.

Quite awhile later I learned, by accumulating his friends' stories, that Mr. Fukai was in his southwest corner upstairs room when he received a terrific blow directly from the front. He was badly injured and was told to leave the place, but he did not

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obey. Then he had been forcefully taken by the priests to Sakae bridge, but he had run way while no one was watching. He went back along the road he had come and said farewell forever to this world.

People say that he went crazy, but I do not think so. Mr. Fukai was one of the people who had been extremely worried over the nation's destiny. I had taken him to the war plant called Sanyo Seira Co. He had worked more enthusiastically than me in this plant with all his heart could give. Meanwhile, he had acknowledged the actual state of military corruption and the vices lurking among the upper classes of our country. He used to exclaim, "Japan is now dying, but I shall die with my country."

Without doubt he had perished with his country, being aware of the arrival of the nation's entire collapse. He had loved his country so much that he had to die for it, just as Paul had died out, "For I could wish that I myself were anathema from Christ for my brethren's sake, my kinsmen according to the flesh."

I walked back and forth from the center of the Sentei to Sakae bridge. Along the way there was a Moso bamboo grove, and the bamboo shoots were all broken near their roots. The Moso Bamboo had never been beaten down, even though large trees had fallen in great windstorms. In this bombing, however, they were neatly knocked over and the cracked spots were crushed to bits. Among the bamboo lay some seriously injured persons. I discovered among the crowd Mrs. Matsushita and her daughter Aiko. They were members of my church. I asked them, "Shall I take you across the river?" Aiko replied, "Mother is badly injured so we'll stay here." Looking at Mrs. Matsushita I found that she was lying quietly,

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and covering half of her face with a towel stained with blood.

At that time a message was circulating saying, "A medical center has been established in East Parade grounds so the wounded can receive medical treatment." I began to start ferrying again in order to carrying across the river persons who wished to get to the other side. It was near dusk. Those who had suffered from the heat of the sun during the day became a little stronger so there were quite a few people who desired to get across the river.

"Some of them whispered to me, "I went to the East Parade grounds to get myself treated, but the center was only for soldiers. They attended to the service first and I couldn't get treated and came back disappointed."

"What great difference is there between a soldier and a civilian after a mass air raid like this? Ridiculous!" I cried out in my heart, but no one would dare say this openly.

31.

The military authorities were dreadfully feared by the people.

Mr. Shinataro Tanaka came over to see me. "Tanimoto-san, I got burned while walking in front of the broadcasting station. Please help me" he said. He was badly hurt above his neck and on both hands. Mr. Tanaka was formerly the chairman of our neighborhood association and also held office as the chairman of the associated neighborhood associations. Because of his short temper and waywardness, he was thought of as a tyrant. He was also noted by many people for his social services of twenty or thirty years. He believed that anyone he asked would look after him. I took this old man across the river. He was helped in walking by his daughter at his side. Returning after a few hours he said, "All the doctors I visited were injured and I don't know where they are". On such an occasion the town boss was not worthy of attention. He was quite depressed as he mentioned that his old wife and three grandchildren were missing.

While I was still carrying on with the ferrying, a motor boat came gallantly up the river. A man holding a megaphone yelled out, "A Navy hospital ship'll soon be coming! Be patient and strong!" Unexpected cheers arose from the bank. I jumped in joy upon hearing the message and cried out, "Folks, keep patience for a while. The hospital boat 'll soon be coming." Most of the people then decided to wait for the hospital boat so my ferry work had temporarily ended.

I went over to the bank and ate some rice balls prepared by the ladies. During the meal I remembered the Matsushita Mother and daughter so I visited the two and took them some rice balls. A son, Masaharn, was with them. At their home in Nobori-cho, Kazuko, who was a student at the Tokyo Women's College had been with them. When I asked them about her, they both suddenly broke into tears.

The house in which they were staying was about 1.2 kilometers away from the bomb explosion. It had been the mansion built by a Mr. Kumura. The

32.

main house was made of steel-reinforced concrete and the house attached to it was made of wood in the Japanese style. Aiko had been playing her piano in a western style room. Kazuko was reading in a Japanese style room. In a moment's time, the house collapsed, but Aiko was saved by the strong concrete walls.

She ran out of the house worrying about Kazuko. The two-story Japanese house was crushed to the ground and the huge timbers were broken and piled all over each other. "Kazu-chan, Kazu-chan" she called out. "Sis, I'm over here" was the reply. With staggering feet, Aiko looked for her sister by pushing aside the wood but the latter was at the bottom of the pile of large timbers as she had been downstairs when the house was crushed. Aiko ran around poking here and there with a long stick saying, "Kazu-chan, where are you?" She could hear her sister answering "I'm here, I can't move because there is a heavy stone pressed upon me." But she could not reach her sister at the bottom of the immense pile of wood.

The neighboring houses were already on fire. Aiko was bewildered. Then she heard the moaning voice of her mother coming from what she thought was the water closet of the western style room. "Kazu-chan. Mother is... . Please wait a moment" she said and ran to the spot where her mother was. Mrs. Matsushita had received deep cuts from shattered pieces of glass on her face between her eye and cheek. She was lying there covered with blood. Aiko carried her mother from the ruins.

She intended to seek help from her neighbors but they were all terribly wounded and were running away. She called for help but no one came. By the time she left her mother on the road and went back to rescue Kazuko, the dreadful fire had reached her house. "Oh, Kazu-chan" she cried and was about to throw herself into the fire when a passer-by took her by the arms saying "Say! That's dangerous. Run away! Run!" Carrying her mother, she was pushed on with the escaping crowd and went to the Sentei gardens.

33.

While I had been cooling myself off on the river bank, I had heard a slight buzzing of an airplane. "Enemy or ally?" I wondered. Someone yelled out, "Enemy planes! Take refuge!" In great fear the injured stuck their heads in the shrubs. We were afraid of being strafed by the plane. However, after a short time, it went on. Perhaps it had come to find out the result of the raid. Much relieved, we had gradually started to talk.

In Heaven's name what kind of raid could this have been anyhow? Some one would say that he had seen only one plane while another would say he had seen three. There were still others who said that there were hundreds. They said, "After we had crawled out of our destroyed houses, soon after their destruction, the city was so dark that we couldn't see any planes, but we could hear the sound of a few hundred planes."

I could not figure out which expnanation was correct. Among the most reasonable explanation made, I thought, were those made by the fathers of the Catholic Church. "It was an uranium bomb. Similar ones have been studied in Germany. A powerful explosion can be produced by dropping a special bomb in the midst of the sprinkled powder of a mineral called uranium". We listened in surprise, thinking how intelligent the Germans were to know of such things.

Eventually, I began to take over the ferrying for the third time. The sun had already set, and the faces of the people could not be recognized. After taking a few trips across the river near the west end of Sentei where the river bent---the spot where Mrs. Matsumoto had died---I heard a woman's voice repeatedly, but weakly, calling for help "Heitai-san, Tasukete Kudasai, soldier, help me" as if she were praying to God.

I neared her in my empty boat. There was a large tree which had been partly sunk in the river after it had fallen from the bank. One young lady was holding an old woman and was hanging on to the tree trunk with one arm. The tide was now on the flow.

Peering into the dark, I saw that there were more than ten people

34.

clinging to the rocky bank. The water was reaching their mouths, and they were about to drown. After taking the young lady and old woman aboard, I attempted to get them into the boat and I was quite surprised that they were shaky, as if under the influence of alcohol, and could only cling to the degrees of the boat with their hands. They were unable to climb in by themselves so I had to help them.

With one hand I shoved the boat against the bank using a pole as a substitute for an oar. With my other hand I pulled on the hand of one of my passengers. What a surprise I received when the skin of his hand slipped off as if it were a glove. When I had laid my hands on the back of another man, who had one leg in the boat and was trying to climb out, the skin of his back had come off. His body had been burned all over. I finally managed to take across about thirteen people. No one seemed able to get off the boat even though it had reached the other shore. They were resting their bodies against each other with all their strength gone. They had no energy to crawl out of the boat. But I needed it because I had heard a girl's voice crying out for help "Tasukete kudasai" a little way from the place I had just left. As I had thought these men were soldiers from the appearance of their strongly built bodies, I shouted at them, "Come on, pull yourselves up. We've reached shore so get off the boat!" Shouting at them occasionally, I dragged out some people who were lying flat in the boat. They all lay languidly on the sand.

I turned my boat back immediately, and after going to the spot where my neighbors were concentrated, I cried out loudly, "Miki-san! Is Miki-san here? If he isn't here, will some one come and help me out? There are some people drowning!" In response, the Catholic priests and three seminary students came to the boat. The seminary students had come here from the Monastery in Nagatsuka to rescue the priests.

We went over to see the girls who had been crying out for help.

35.

There were two girl students and one old man sitting on the stone landing steps that led up the bank. At the top of the steps was a wooden lid. At ebb tide they must have thought the steps to be the safest place, but the tide had risen now, and they were forced up to the top gradually and had no way of escaping. We were just in time to rescue these three, and we took them to the concentration area for the Nobori-cho people.

As the strong seminary students had brought a stretcher with them they had left the place carrying the three injured priests. They were heading for the monastery in Nagatsuka. I made two trips for them and we parted. With this as my last ferry work, I got to the bank again. I was completely worn out for it required a great deal of energy to handle a boat to which I was not accustomed. Moreover I had to use a pole to paddle and push the boat along the water, for it had no oars.

After a short rest, I decided to pass out drinking water to the seriously injured. I went to a water pipe which I had noticed before and filled up a bucket from its spouting cut. I found a good sized bowl and walked among the injured passing out water. Most of them were seriously injured and could not move.

I had run in all directions in the Sentei and had seen that every available lane was crowded with injured persons. Sometimes I would accidentally step on people. In pitch black darkness someone cried, "Ach'. Itai"- Ouch, it hurts". I must have stepped on his wounded foot. A woman's voice said, "My head is here so don't kick it." I repeated the words, "Gomen nasai,- Excuse me" and made my way carefully among the injured people. Almost every one wanted water.

The people were lying on the ground. Their whole faces, especially their eyes and lips were swollen. One person could not be told from another. All were in a similar condition. Their faces were swollen up to about twice the size of normal faces. When I had seen injured

36.

persons along the Koi highway, they all looked as if their faces had been
painted yellow. By noon they had turned red, and in the evening they be-
gain to swell gradually and the surfaces became suppurated. Although
they would take the bowl of water in their hands, they could not drink
the water while lying down for their lips were too swollen. They would
manage to sit up and raise the upper part of their bodies after much
trouble and take the bowl which was handed to them, with both hands.
Their palms were terribly swollen and their fingers could not bend.
Raising the bowl in front of their faces, they would raise it slowly to
their lips after making a graceful bow. After drinking they would empty
the remains politely and return the bowl. From the bottom of their hearts
they would say, "I thank you".

Few people said anything resentful. Their behavior was really calm
and worthy of applause. One young lady took the water I offered and cried
out, "I feel revived at last. I feel sorry for the negative life I have
led up till today. I've lost my home, parents, and brothers and myself
injured. But I will fight through this war to its very end. I am deter-
mined to have revenge."

By now, it must have been around midnight. I was so tired that I
could not move any more. The injured still wanted water, but as I was un-
able to move about, I lay down among them. The sky was dim and cloudy.
One of the girl students who had been lying right beside me, began trembling
and asked for water. Strange to say the injured were all feeling cold.
She called for her mother, crying, "Okaachan, samniyo, Okaachan samniyo,
Mother, I'm cold, Mother I'm cold." She had been taken out for labor ser-
vice with her school, which was in the country and had been injured while
she was helping to tear down houses. With severe burns she had come all
the way here. Mrs. Mitsui lent her a blanket she had brought from her
shelter. The girl covered herself with it and while trembling hard, she
kept on crying for her mother during the night.

37.

Although it was summer, my body was terribly cold and I could not go to sleep. As I had fallen into the river so often, I was still wet. My brain became clearer. Explosions from far off could still be heard at times. The surroundings were quiet, almost too quiet to be true.

The following morning, I found that those who were very near to me—Mr. Tazuchi and Mr. Kuwahara and also the two girl students—were dead. All suring the night I did not doze off, but still I had not heard the slightest moaning. Of course people must have been enduring pain, but died for their country's sake with clenched teeth!

The atomic bomb was a terrifying weapon, but it was man's fighting spirit that made the war more terrible. Despite the great blow, unprecedented in all history, which they had suffered, the people of Hiroshima had never said a word about giving up. The greater the amount of sacrifice, the stronger they determined to avenge themselves. Herein lies the delusion of war and the unsolved problem of cruelty.
August 7 (Tuesday).

I turned my eyes from the bank to the surface of the river and was shocked. The river was now at full tide and sand could be seen nowhere. About ten people that I had rescued, after much effort, were lying unable to move, and I had thought they were in a safety zone! Now, I could see numerous swollen bodies floating down stream.

I was responsible for the hundreds of badly injured people who were lying on the banks. Thinking of giving them breakfast, I went to the ruins again with Mrs. Mitsui and a few other people. The night before we had seen a large amount of sugar, and about six large bottles of apricot wine in one *sho* bottles, and also a large quantity of rice still left in the air raid shelter of her house, but this morning it was all gone. Someone had taken everything.

Mr. Imanishi, chairman of our neighborhood association, had thrown a willow bag, packed with silk clothing, into his air raid shelter, but