Hiroshima Page #7

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and took his test first.

When they had taken

enough blood for the sample,

they withdrew the needle.

But the blood wouldn't stop.

Nothing worked, whatever they did.

Even when they applied pressure,

he carried on bleeding.

During this time, purple spots began

breaking out all over my husband's body.

He then vomited

a large amount of brown liquid.

Afterwards he went limp,

and died an hour later.

He had managed to survive that far,

but then even he was taken away from me.

Her husband was one of thousands

who would die from

this new and untreatable condition.

They were rotting.

It was necrosis.

There were no white blood cells,

so the blood had no power

to fight against infection,

and so, suddenly, the rotting set in.

In the end, the hair would start to fall out.

When you put your hand

on the patient's head,

tufts of hair would come away in your hand.

It emerged that those

who were worst affected

had been close to the hyper centre,

or had swallowed radioactive material,

like the people

who drank the black rain.

In hindsight, we realised

that it was radiation,

but at that time,

we didn't know what it was.

Radiation sickness has become the single

most disturbing legacy of the bomb.

American scientist had always known

the bomb would produce radiation,

but the scale of the after effects

came as a shocking surprise.

Today Hiroshima is a thriving city

of over a million people.

Japan, too, has been transformed

into a prosperous country

that has renounced the use of war entirely.

Although no one has used

a nuclear weapon since,

arguments continue as to the

morality of dropping the bomb.

Was it really necessary?

Could it have been avoided?

The nation had no rice to eat,

people had not eaten

white rice for a whole year.

How could such a country go to battle?

The Americans knew that, very well,

and still dropped the atomic bomb. Why?

It was an experiment!

They knew that the bomb

had enormous explosive power.

What they did not know was

how much damage the radiation would cause.

Some scientists thought they knew,

but they had not tested it,

so they made an experiment, to find out,

by testing it on human beings.

The final decision that resulted in

the two bombs, Hiroshima and Nagasaki,

was not made in Potsdam,

it wasn't made by Truman,

it was made by the Japanese militarists

when they rejected any opportunity

to surrenderjust their armed forces,

and save further massive loss of life.

Today there are just a few places that

bear the scars of August 6th 1945.

There are burn marks on trees,

the shadow of a vaporised man, left on stone.

First hand memories are fading too.

Akiko Takakura, the bank clerk,

who had been just 260 metres

from the hyper centre,

is one of the last witnesses

to the full horror of the bomb.

There is a department store called Sogo,

in Hiroshima,

where I stop sometimes for tea.

From the tearoom,

I can see the road from the bank

to the drill ground, where we escaped.

I see old people

walking happily down the street.

Young people holding hands,

and enjoying each other's conversation.

Children holding their parents' hands,

and looking happy.

And I think about those awful scenes

that I experienced, many years ago,

now, and all the people

that lost their lives.

I think to myself, what was all that?

Did it really happen?

Every year, on 6th August,

there are ceremonies

to recall what took place on that day,

to make sure that

these events are never forgotten,

or repeated.

At sunset, tens of thousands of candles

are released on the river in Hiroshima,

each candle

representing the soul of one of the dead.

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