My Experience as a Victim of the Atomic Bombing (by harto )

　
The following is a reprint of my article contributed to Volume 22 of the miscellany of experiences of atomic bombing entitled Burned by flash of bomb. It describes all the terrible things that happed on that day---the things I feel so painful to just remember or talk about. As an old saying goes, I have escaped death by a hairbreadth in a number of occasions and the atomic bombing was certainly one of such occasion.

I was born in Tabusa-mura? (now Souryou-cho) in Hiroshima Prefecture. As my farther died when I was a young child, my mother and I moved to the city of Hiroshima where her relatives lived. We then moved to Kure when my mother got married again. When I was 6 years old, I was adopted as a son of my uncle who had four daughters and wanted a boy in his family. My uncles family consisted of 7 members; his wife (my aunt), an elder cousin, two younger cousins (one died just after I was adopted) myself and a boy who was born 3 years after I joined the family. The family lived in Minami-Sanjou-cho (now Hosuiro?) in Hiroshima City. The uncle was running an old-clothes shop and other businesses and was living a relatively wealthy life.

When the atomic bomb dropped, I was 12 years old and in the sixth grade of Sanjo National School. An air raid warning was put out at 0:25 a.m. (cancelled at 2:10 a.m.) on that fateful day of August 6. When I woke up with sleepy eyes in the morning, it was very fine with fleckless sky and extremely hot. An air raid siren wailed again throughout the town when I was about to leave for school. Just as I was hesitating to leave home, Mr. Aritomo Nishie (?), a friend of mine living next door, came to visit me and so both of us went to school together. As we arrived late for school, the morning assembly had already started and we got in our class room through a rear gate and were just sitting there. In the hallway a senior student on weekly duty was walking with an arm band so we sat and kept low to make sure we will not be detected. Mr. Nishie (BaejaeMun) was in the rear seat as he was taller and I was somewhat in the front on the window side. All of a sudden, a fierce and blinding flash went off, followed by ominous booming roar which generated tremors running into the ground. Instantaneously, I knew by instinct it was some kind of bomb and I threw myself under the desk with my eyes and ears covered by hands and with my mouth open. After a few moments, which was seemingly only a couple of minutes, I lifted my head realizing that I should not stay like that any longer. I saw, amid the darkness outside, a house in front of the school engulfed in flames just like a fire in the nighttime.

(To be continued)

(A Newspaper Article on the day of the A-Bomb dropped on Hiroshima from Asahi Newpaper Co. on August 8th, 1945)

　
Our classroom was on the first floor and facing the playground (with the statute of Ninomiya Kinjiro near by). Nishie, lets get out of here! I yelled out and we jumped out of the window. I still clearly remember the scene of the fellow students crying and running around in all directions. We went to the West rear gate where the students living in Sanjo-cho were supposed to gather at the time of aerial attacks of the enemy. As nobody was there, we went out of the gate and started running in the direction of our houses. Having crossed the suburban railway (Geibi Line) and passed underneath a railway bridge via a trail in bamboo thicket near Mitaki (?) Military Hospital, we got close to Aki Girls School when we began to see the things around and human figures in the semi-darkness that looked just like the break of day. As the collapsed building of Aki Girls School blocked up the road in front, we went a long way round and passed through a field. I just could not recall how we managed to arrive there running through such dark roads.

Mr. Nishie shouted from behind, Look at my face!, and I turned around to find his blooded face with pieces of broken glass sticking out. I thought I had similarly been injured but no external wound was found. Instead, I felt some pain in my right shoulder as if I was beaten by a stick-like object.
　
When we came near my house, Nishies father kindly said to me, Your family went to the river bank. I desperately run to the small hut near the river bank which my uncle had built so that everybody could get together in case the family got separated for some reason. I managed to meet my family in the hut but I fell unconscious as soon as I got in there. I dont remember for how long I remain unconscious but it was raining heavily like a shower when I regained consciousness. I realized that somebody was lying beside me. It was my uncle who had returned there while I was unconscious. His clothes were ragged and the skin of his body was torn; he really looked naked. His hair was burnt down, the skin of his chest and arms were peeling off and his face was stained black as coal. It turned out that he had encountered the bombing on his way to Shin-Tenchi where he had some business on that day.

At around 4:00 p.m., we learned from somebody that emergency medical treatments were being provided in Koi National School and we carried the uncle to the school on a stretcher. As so many patients were brought there at a time, there was literally no space to accommodate them and we spent the night on the stairway leading to the second floor. My uncle passed away at around 3:00 the following morning. In the afternoon of August 7, his body was cremated in the school yard and I and his family returned to the hut with his remains.

(To be continued)

　
My aunt was bombed when she happened to be watching the B-29 bomber and some glittering objects coming down. As she was covering over her eyes with her right hand when she looked up, the right side of her Chogori (Korean Jacket) was lifted and the right side of her body was burned. The wound didnt heal for a long time. She gave birth to a baby boy (a bomb victim in mothers womb) right after she returned to Korea. She suffered from pain in the chest and breathing trouble for 9 years before she died. One of the cousins who were born in Hiroshima and bombed there grew up despite suffering from pain in the knees and somehow survived until he was 19 years old. He agonized over chest pain and threw up bloodstained sputum when he died

After the bombing. I saw many people burning dead bodies of their family to ashes in the holes they dug on vacant lots. Near the Koi Bridge, there were dead bodies lined up and covered with straw mats, attracting flies. At first, it was very difficult for me to just take a look at dead people, lot alone see the smoke or smell the burning. Gradually, I became unconcerned.

About 10 days or so after the bombing, I visited Sanjo National School just to see how the school looked like. I could not enter the inside because the main gate was closed. From outside was seen a large open space with just some cornerstones left behind; the school building disappeared. According to the commemorative publication of the Schools 100th anniversary, which I received when I had a chance to visit Hiroshima 37 years later, the school building caught fire while attacked by the bomb blast and falling down. Therefore, I made a miraculous escape from death by getting out of the building minutes before it fell down, without being buried under the wooden structure which was located only 1.7 kilometers away from the hypocenter. In the downtown area of the city near Yokokawa-cho, I saw nothing that looked like a house, except the chunks of concrete here and there
　
At the beginning of September, we decided to travel back to Korea but failed to take into consideration that it was the stormy month. We started on a voyage from the port of Kure, Hiroshima Prefecture, in a unlicensed boat, and stayed over night at a port in Northern Kyushu. Next morning, we took off but had to stop over in the island of Ohshima due to a severe storm. There were many boats in harbor knocking each other amid the storm and our boat was finally destroyed. We ended up staying in Ohshima for about one month until a new boat was found. We then sailed to Tsushima Island and from there headed for Pusan. On the way, the boat had an engine trouble and drifted for about three days before we finally arrived at an island which is faraway from Masan.

(to be continued)

　
I am now very thankful for the fact that I am still alive. I could have died long time ago but it is nothing less than miraculous that I am surviving somehow. Having gone through all the agonies of life, I came to enjoy peace of mind by believing in Jesus Christ. I just hope that I will be able to continue to do things desirable according to the teaching of Christ until my second life is exhausted.

Why do atomic bomb victims have to talk about their experiences now? Why do people have to listen to them? I would like to close my narrative by presenting my answers to those questions.

Hiroshima is the first atomic-bombed city in the world. No other place than Hiroshima should suffer from the tragic history of atomic bombing. We do not want another Hiroshima anywhere in the world. While there are such slogans as denuclearization of the world or the 21st century free of nuclear weapons, I believe that world peace is everyones peace. To achieve peace, people in the world should be informed of horrible nature of nuclear weapons and awfulness of atomic holocaust. We the survivors of the atomic bombing, as well as the citizens of Hiroshima, have some advantage in performing such mission.

Hiroshima and the atomic bomb are so closely connected each other and inseparable and so is the relation between the citizens of Hiroshima and the history of atomic bomb sufferings. Citizens of Hiroshima, no matter where they go in the world, would be asked about the atomic bombing. I would like to urge everyone (in Hiroshima) to gain better knowledge about the atomic bombing and talk about it, even if he or she is not a victim of the bombing.

From August 1998 through October 2002, I taught the doctrine of Christianity and ancient Greek at a Bulgarian reformist seminary in Sophia, Bulgaria. Bulgaria is one of the neighboring countries of Yugoslavia; the border was only 45 minutes away by car and you could reach Kosovo within 1.5 hours by car. Since from March 1999, every time the situation in Kosovo got worse, I heard Bulgarian people talk about the wars when they get together. My students used to ask me to talk about my experience of atomic bombing. Since May 2004, I have been teaching the doctrine of Christianity at Immanuel Bible College in Budplus (?) of South Africa. There too, at the students requests for my story about atomic bomb experience, I talked about the terrible facts regarding the damage caused by the atomic bomb as well as the horrors of war.
　
I feel so sorry to hear about the nuclear tests recently conducted by the North Korea.

(End)