The last tomato - Hiroshima told in his own words: (4)

　
(4)　Flash! Boom!, Terrible light and noise

After roll call finished, we, all pupils of 150 became a four-row length party, and began to walk to the place of house evacuation. Since I was comparatively tall, I was walking along the second row from the top.

In 200m or 300m walking, Mr. Iwasaki, a teacher of charge, called me to stop. "Takemoto , you, return from here to the watch of lunch", he said. I thought, "The watch of lunch is not interesting. It is more interesting to work going together with everybody". However, since it was a command, I had to return.

Although everybody was walking to the working place, I returned back alone to the city office with my disappointment. I did not understand why my teacher said to me "return". He might have thought that he saw the bandage in my leg and my working would be impossible.

I regretted that I had rolled the bandage exaggeratedly, though it was not a great injury. There was another reason which was known for me later. Other classes left two pupils for watching their lunches, but our class left only one. The teacher was maybe noticed of it on the way to work.

When we gathered, the sun of summer was already scorching. Our lunches and coats which they took off were placed in the thicket of the west side of the building of the city office which was protected from the sunshine.

When I returned, Mr. Yoji Saito, one of my classmates was watching lunches there. "Oh, Takemoto. Did you come back?" "Oh Saito. I came back. Let's watch our lunched by us two." I sat down beside him. We had nothing special to do, as watch of lunch was only to keep looking at lunches.

We had too much time till our classmates would come back to eat lunches here. We had to find something to spend our time. We decided to compare each other for our memory of the textbook of military training in which the imperial message was written at first. The textbook of the drill had to be surely mastered during the first two years of the middle school.

At any rate, since we thought that we would become a military man in the future, therefore, we had many things to be kept in mind. When I said, "now let's begin", terrible light and noise came with flash and boom.

It was terrible light. And,
It was terrible noise.
Furthermore, it was terrible heat.

When we had a photograph taken in a photograph store in old days, magnesium was burnt instead of the stroboscope. Even if we recognized it would shine soon from the cameraman s signal, we were surprised at flashing.

However, the strong light of 1000 times, or 10,000 times, or 100 million times shined just in front of us. At the same time, we heard terrible noise. We were wrapped by terrible hot air as soon as we felt our body swung unsteadily.

We had enough training of how to do when we suffered an air raid. The training taught us that we should thrust thumbs of the hand into our ears so that the eardrums might not be damaged, and press our eyes by the rest fingers so that our balls of eyes might not come out, and then we should lie down.

We covered our ears and eyes instinctively and threw down our body on the shade of the thicket. Though we did not know yet whether the air raid was received at that time, our body reacted against a terrible light and terrible noise reflectively.

8:15:17 a.m. It was an occurrence of an instant.

(To be continued)