Hiroshima Page #4

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I think that was the reason

why such a large number died,

and could not be found afterwards.

On the drill grounds, thousands of soldiers

were doing their early morning exercises.

Dr Hida had spent the night

at a farm outside Hiroshima,

looking after the girl with heat stroke.

It was just after 8 o'clock when I woke up.

I was already late.

I had to go back to the hospital.

I got myself ready,

took the child's pulse,

and then examined her chest

with a stethoscope.

Sixteen-year-old Teruko Fujii

had enlisted as a tram driver,

to support the war effort.

The men were sent to the Front,

with the army.

Because their numbers

gradually declined,

they wanted students

to drive the trams.

Clerk Akiko Takakura and her friend

were the first to arrive

at the bank in central Hiroshima.

Just 260 metres from the aiming point,

the T-shaped bridge.

At the bank,

I stamped the arrival book.

You would stamp next to

your name when you arrived,

so I stamped the book.

In those days, female staff were supposed

to arrive 30 minutes before the men,

to do the cleaning.

That sort of thing

would be unthinkable now!

Kinuko Doi was working as a nurse

at the communications hospital,

also near the centre of the city.

My first job of the day was

to sterilise the hospital tools,

and prepare the patients for surgery.

The weather was beautiful.

The sky was clear blue,

not a cloud in sight.

In another part of the city,

eight-year-old Takashi Tanemori

was on his way to school.

Every morning, as soon as we get to school,

we went and played a game of hide and seek.

Then we stand,

picking who's going to be It.

And so we ran to the main gate,

and I was to become It that morning.

Shigai Hiratsuka died in 2002,

but her extraordinary story

is taken from her written account.

It had just gone past 8 in the morning,

we had finished breakfast.

Our two children

were playing beside us.

My husband was reading the newspaper.

Paul, Tom, Deke

and I were all three up there,

confirming, yes, this was the target,

yes that was bridge,

yes that was the aiming point.

You might say we were having

a convention in the nose of the plane.

Okay, we're about

to start the bomb run!

Put on your goggles!

We were on that bomb run for three,

three and a half minutes. Tom and I are talking!

Christ, Dutch! We never sat on a bomb

run this long over Germany!

They'd have blasted us out the sky!

He said nothing there!

No opposition, no nothing.

Just, going to bomb the target.

I saw an aircraft,

like a tiny silver drop,

entering the sky above Hiroshima.

I instantly recognised it

as an American plane,

as no Japanese aircraft

could fly at that altitude at the time.

It was just one plane,

so I assumed that

it was passing by, as usual.

I was counting.

I was wiping the desktop:

that was when the bomb was dropped.

Bomb away!

It took about 45 seconds from the time

the bomb left the airplane, until it exploded.

And I think there wasn't a man in the airplane

that wasn't either timing it with his watch,

or counting, or doing something.

I was sure the bomb was a dud.

I was sure it wasn't going to work.

After falling for 43 seconds,

the time and barometric triggers

started the firing mechanism.

A uranium bullet, fired down the barrel,

into a uranium target.

Together they started

a nuclear chain reaction.

Solid matter began to come apart,

releasing untold quantities of energy.

There was a white light in the window.

A flash, white like magnesium.

The bomb delivered

its destruction in stages.

The flash came from

a giant fireball 300 metres wide.

I was astonished.

It was a startling light.

Even if you had your back turned to it,

you felt the shock go through,

right to the centre of your brain.

At the same time, any area of skin

that was exposed became very hot.

Heat. Heat. Such burning heat.

Temperatures directly below the fireball

were 4,000 degree Celsius.

The heat rays left shadows.

Ladders, railings, even people,

left their outlines on stone and metal.

Anyone in the open air

was either vaporised,

or turned to carbon, in an instant.

At the same time, the flash sent out

powerful infrared radiation and gamma rays.

These could penetrate walls,

and attack the cells in human bodies.

Then I slowly opened my eyes,

and for the first time,

looked in the direction of the light.

Just at that moment,

a mushroom cloud appeared.

People who saw this in Hiroshima

are nearly all dead by now.

There is barely anyone left now,

who can say they actually saw it happen.

A fraction of a second later

came a powerful shockwave,

which moved at the speed of sound.

It turned everyday windows

and walls into shrapnel.

As soon as the blast hit,

I was thrown across the room.

My body was flung from wall to wall,

and from the ceiling to the floor.

My body was thrown around

like it was a ball.

Ajet black belt of cloud

came towards me.

It came from there,

over the lip of the mountain.

The black cloud

spread between the mountains,

and came rolling in my direction,

swirling like this.

Just like that, my body was scooped up!

It was the blast.

It sent me flying through the house.

The flash was very brilliant,

and it only lasted

a very short period of time.

It was over in a few short seconds.

We didn't see any bodies down there,

or anything of that type.

You didn't see any buildings collapsing,

you can't really

distinguish things like that.

And even if we had been able to,

we couldn't do it, anyhow,

because there was just a, it was all covered

with smoke and dust, and everything.

I'm not emotional.

I would have first goddamn thought,

and I'd have told you what it was.

I did the job, but I was so relieved that

it was successful, you can't understand that.

Seeing the fires on the ground,

and the cloud coming up,

then you get pretty distressed

that there's such havoc down there,

and people are suffering.

There are no exact figures

for the number

who died in the instant of the explosion,

but tens of thousands of people

in the open near the fireball,

vanished in a fraction of a second.

For the survivors,

the ordeal was just beginning.

Thousand of people

were injured and terribly burned.

Many were trapped in the rubble.

Just 260 metres from the bomb,

the two girls in the bank

had been sheltered

from the worst of the explosion

by the earthquake-proof building.

When the girls struggled outside,

they found a vision of hell.

The morning sunshine was gone,

the whole city was dark,

and shrouded with smoke.

The streets were full of corpses.

The words, City of Death, came to mind.

There were only dead people.

We were the only living souls.

It had been the morning commuting hour,

8:
15 in the morning.

People that had been walking

the streets were doubled up dead

over each other for

as far as we could see.

They had died immediately,

naked, burnt.

I just asked myself, why?

And could not find any words.

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