The last tomato - Hiroshima told in his own words (12)

　
(12) The cruelest thing

Although people died, of course, there was no coffin etc. We made the coffin with ready trees. We dedicated the elder sister's body into the coffin and only covered it with white cloth. It was shouldered to the mountain with all the family. The hole was dug in the mountain, firewood was placed into the hole, the coffin was put on the firewood, and the body in the coffin was cremated. There was almost no family who had no victim in the town. Though any family was in a similar situation, I suppose how regretful it was that the father had to burn his child by his own hand.

I made and brought up my own child later. When I imagine the feeling of my father at that time, I am very sad and regretful as if my breast were got blocked. There were many, many cruel things in the atomic bomb and in the war. However, it seemed the cruelest thing to me that there were people like my father who had to burn their children by their own hand. I begin to think that my elder sister might have been more fortunate, because she could return to her house, received the allowance, and passed away with watch of the blood relation. Tens of thousands of people died without meeting anybody of their relatives.

I attended the memorial service of my mother school, the Hiroshima Shudo middle school in summer of Heisei 7 (1995, 50 years later after the atomic bombing). There was a big natural stone on the surface of which was written a letter IREI (memorial). On the back face of the stone were written 136 names of the teachers and pupils who passed away by the atomic bomb. Following and reading every person's name with my finger, I remember the faces of my teachers and the faces of my friends of 50 years before on the reverse side of my eyelid clearly. However, most ashes of these people have not been found yet. And I think that they will never be found also in the future. Where they were dead will never be known.

The town of Hirosima continued burning for about two weeks. When I saw the sky of the city from my house, it changed to a crimson sky at night. I entered inside the Hiroshima city repeatedly after the atomic bomb. There were bodies rolling across the town. There were also those who were dead sitting down in the fire prevention tank, those who were dead entering half into the tank and those who are dead upside-down in the tank. When there was a river, people asked for the river, and they asked for the water of the tank, when they could not find a river in the neighborhood.

Not only men but also horses fell and cows were upset. Bellies of the horses swelled extremely. Cars and street cars had been also upset. Since it was midsummer, decomposition of bodies also progressed. There was a terrible smell, as they began to rot. Without taking care of it, everybody was searching in quest of his family and acquaintance.
In the town, I saw the figure of the mother who was searching in quest of her child everyday. It is partial insanity wholly. When she saw the body which was floating in the fire prevention tank, she turned over it to see whether it was her child or not. Every river was full of bodies who were floating in proneness, and of pieces of woods which burned. With the flow of tide, they were flowing upstream and downstream the river. And they were remaining for two or three weeks as they were. If the body was seen from on the bridge, people went into the river, and turned the prone body inside out and checked it. The form of the face of the body was already deleted as several days had passed after the death, so it was difficult to recognize whether he was their blood relation or not. But they could not do but turning inside out and confirming the body. Who can do such a thing but his parents?

When the day broke, they asked and walked along the concentration camps yesterday and today also, and they said, "I found nothing today. I found nothing today again" for five or six days, and although they checked most of the concentration camps, they were still asking and walking there. There is the word "battlefield psychology." At present time we will think that we feel fearful only by seeing a man break down from a traffic accident. Hiroshima after atomic bombing was the same as the battlefield, and even if they looked at a body, they used to feel nothing to the body at all, while they were continuing to walk along inside many bodies laid for many and many days. Though it is terrible, man has such a strange character.

Thus, many people passed away without meeting their blood relation. There was no method to do but that those bodies were accumulated like a mountain and were burnt by gasoline. Since, even if bodies were burnt, there was no place where ashes could be buried, they were put into air-raid shelters. However, the air-raid shelters became full of ashes soon. Of course, there were many ashes whose names could not be recognized. I thought repeatedly and repeatedly that such a tragedy was not allowed to happen, and that such a hell was not allowed to exist. Moreover, having considered such a thing, I thought that my elder sister was still more fortunate.

We shall not repeat the evil.

I went to the Atomic Bomb Commemoration Hospital in Hiroshima a long time after the war. The map of the Hiroshima city was stuck in the hospital. The point that this map differed from the ordinary one was that small needles of red and yellow were stuck everywhere on the map. The countless small needles were stuck. A red needle was the person who passed away and a yellow one was the person who did a big injury. The closer to the center of the explosion, the more the number of needles. Inside the circle of a 1km radius where I was contaminated were almost only red needles. However, I was unhurt and saved inside there. The doctor of the hospital told me that I was a very rare case with probability of one to hundred. Data show that 96.5% of people died inside a 500m radius of the explosion and 83% died inside 1km.

In Hiroshima about a hundred and several tens of thousands lives were removed at the moment of atomic bombing. 65% of them were children, old persons, and women. After then, the people who suffered from illness caused by atomic-bomb radiation passed away one after another. But, why was I saved though I was in the place of only 1km from the center of the explosion? I did not have even a burn and did not suffer from illness caused by A-bomb radiation with which many people were troubled a long time after that.

I think that one of my luckiness was that I changed the direction on the way and escaped toward the south of the city. I did not necessarily think that the south was safe. I was interfered by the rubble which became like a mountain, and could not advance any more, and the direction of my escaping was changed. Black Rain (rain which was written in Mr. Masuji Ibuse's novel "Black Rain" and became well known) fell down to the city region of about 2/3 around the half of the north of the city after atomic bombing. Since this rain included very high-concentration radioactivity, most of people who were struck by the Black Rain were dead. In the south half where I escaped, the Black Rain did not fall down fortunately.

Another fortune was that I adhered to the surface of the wall of the building of the city office at the moment of dropping. The atomic bomb was exploded 570m above on the sky. I would be burnt in my whole body, and be blown and thrown away to somewhere by the direct heat rays, if I were not in the shade of the building. It was lucky that I was in the west side of the building with avoiding the strong sunshine from the morning. Probably I would have moved to the place where I would receive direct rays of light, if it were afternoon.

(To be continued)