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SUMIDA Toshinobu(SUMIDA Toshinobu) 
Gender Male  Age at time of bombing 5 
Recorded on 2009.10.26  Age at time of recording 69 
Location at time of bombing Hiroshima(Direct exposure Distance from the bombing hypocenter:2.5km) 
Location when exposed to the bombing Midori-machi, Hiroshima City [Current Minami-ku, Hiroshima City] 
Status at time of bombing Infant 
Occupational status at time of bombing  
Hall site Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims 
Dubbed in English/
With English subtitles
 

Mr. SUMIDA Toshinobu was 5 years old at the time of the Atomic Bombing. He was bombed at home in Midori-machi, Hiroshima City, 2.5km away from the blast center. At the moment of the bombing, he saw a brilliant flash of light and started to run to the window. He said he heard a horrible enormous sound and he was knocked down by the blast. Victims were asking for water. There was a smell from unidentifiable burning corpses. The memory of the Atomic Bombing remained a great sorrow in the heart of young Sumida.
 
【Conditions before the Atomic Bomb was dropped】
My father was a captain in a big shipping company. He spent half of the year on the ship and the other half at home. In those days my father had a public bath in Senda-machi in front of the Hiroshima Bus and Railway station. He received his conscription orders. He was conscripted to work for a shipping company that carried soldiers and supplies to South-East Asia. He had bought a house in Minami-machi that was later destroyed by the Atomic Bomb. He closed the public bath when he was conscripted and we moved to Minami-machi.
 
My oldest brother was already 16 years old. There is still a beach now behind Miyajima called Tsutsumigaura. Ammunition was stored there. My older brother was mobilized in a student corps and was sent there. In those days, my older sister was in about the 6th grade of elementary school. The school was an evacuation center in case of bombing. I had another older brother who was a second grader in elementary school. My younger sister was 3 years old.
 
【The day of the Atomic Bombing】
That day in the morning, there was an air-raid warning. I took refuge in the air-raid shelter right away. Then as it was cancelled at around 8 o'clock, my older brother said, "It's ok. I'll go to school." He went to school with his friend who had called on him. I stayed at home with my grandmother. My mother and my younger sister and I were playing on the verandah. My grandmother was in her sixties and my mother was in her thirties. As my mother was injured during her evacuation work the day before, she did not have to work that day, and so she stayed at home. It was her destiny to be saved. The Women's Society who were working at the evacuation center at that time of the bombing all died. "Nobody survived!" my mother often told me.
 
I had been playing on the verandah but I had gone to a back room to get some toys. Then, there was a flash of light "What's that?" I thought. I ran to the window to see what it was. Then, I was knocked down by a strong blast. There was a horrible sound. I can remember everything up to this moment but after that I have no recollection. I got help because I was crying, Only the framework of the house was left. The roof, the walls, everything had been blown off. The stairs were gone.
 
My grandmother thought that something had exploded in the kitchen. The warning siren did not go off. She wondered what the blast was? Afterwards, she often told me that she could not remember how she got down from second floor. When she got downstairs, she noticed I wasn't there but she could hear me crying and found me. She asked for help from a soldier from the Hiroshima Prefectural Army Mutual Relief Hospital. They carried me there. I still have some scars. Can you see them? There was a big injury on my temple, on my side, and my arm too. The cross piece of a shoji, a Japanese traditional paper door, was stuck in my arm.
 
As I was bleeding, they quickly pulled something out of my temple and stopped the bleeding. Somewhere I was still bleeding, so they took off my clothes. They saw the shoji stuck in my arm. They took it out and stopped the bleeding from the wound. I was still bleeding and they checked everywhere on my body. A piece of the shoji was stuck in my side too. It was in three places in my body. I heard this many times from my mother. The surgeon at the hospital told her, "He must have a strong will to survive." They couldn't give me a blood transfusion and there were not enough bandages for my wounds. I narrowly escaped death.
 
Two surgeons were lodging at my house as we had a big house. It was lucky for us. The surgeons that were staying with us were worried and when they had a break from their work, they came home. They wanted to see what had happened to their room, our house and our family because they knew it must be terrible. We had a relationship with them for such a long time. We were like family, and so fortunately they rushed to find us. They called soldiers too. Luckily, the fire was not yet close to my house.
 
It was burning to the north near the Hiroshima District Monopoly Bureau and at the foot of the Miyuki Bridge. The Hiroshima Gas Company narrowly escaped from the fire. The fire stopped at Minami-machi. If the fire had come 500 meters closer to Midori-machi, it might have burned us all. The evacuation work was to make a fire break to stop the fire. The order from the military was that everyone, men and women, had to work on the fire break. Many people worked on the evacuation work. I'd like to tell everyone about it. Some of the people who died in Hiroshima, were following the orders of the army doing the evacuation work. I'd like to tell everyone that.
 
【The Atomic Bombing which his oldest brother saw】
My oldest brother heard a sound in Tsutsumigaura. Then he saw a flash of light and the mushroom cloud. Information arrived from Hiroshima that a horrible new bomb had been dropped and had destroyed the city, annihilating everything. He was worried about our house and our family. He tried to come home but the ferry was not going. He was swimming and swimming across the sea along the ferry route. He arrived at Miyajimaguchi Station and walked along the Miyajima line. It was the 7th. Bodies of people, cows and horses were lying everywhere on the ground, smoldering and unrecognizable. Their flesh had melted away and none of the bodies were whole. It was impossible to cross the city without stepping on corpses.
 
The bridge had collapsed and he had to go around it. He had to cross the river. He wondered how he get across with corpses floating everywhere in the river. He avoided the corpses and crossed the river. He managed to get home but he had to step on some corpses. After he crossed the bridge, he didn't notice the dead any more, but instead, he saw Atomic Bomb survivors who looked like ghosts dragging themselves along to the Hiroshima Prefectural Hospital and the Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital.
 
【The Atomic Bombing my second brother witnessed】
My second brother was exposed to the Atomic Bombing on his way to school. He said that there were five of his friends on the Miyuki Bridge with him. A tremendous flash of light appeared for a moment in the sky above. At that time, he didn't know what had happened. When he recovered consciousness and got up, he realized that he had been blown from the center to the foot of the bridge. He looked around for his five friends. He wasn't aware of his own injuries. He could not find any of his friends. Maybe they had been blown into the river or had been melted away. When he started to notice his surroundings, he saw a street car burning. He could not move in the dark and he wondered why it was dark in the morning.
 
Gradually it became light and he could see where he was. He ran for his life and raced home. Later my mother and grandmother often told me that they could not recognize my brother at all when he arrived home because his entire body was burned and his skin was covered in blisters that looked like peeled tomatoes. He didn't know how seriously he was injured. Somehow he had walked and walked until he got home. "Didn't you feel any pain?" I later asked my brother. "I don't remember if I felt any pain then," he said.
 
His name was Kazuyuki. When he came home my mother and my grandmother asked him over and over again, "Are you really Kazuyuki?" Finally they realized that it was their son and grandson and he came in the house. Then, thanks to the army doctors I mentioned before, my brother was given special priority for medical treatment. And so, he managed to survive. At that time his hair had been burned and he had no hair at all on his head. Because he was bald, he was often teased. People called out to him, "Baldy, baldy!"
 
【The situation in Minami-machi after exposure to the Atomic Bombing】
As I was just a child, I wandered around the town for several days after the Atomic Bombing. I still remember that every place in town was very crowded with many many Atomic Bomb victims. I couldn't be sure who was alive and who was dead because I was just a child. Besides, the smell was awful. Soldiers went through the town with two-wheeled hand carts day after day. They piled mountains of bodies on the carts and carried them to the river bank which was a stone's throw from the hospital. The bodies were cremated there. Day after day they kept the fires burning and continued to cremate the bodies. My house was down wind and the smell was terrible. We could not protect ourselves from the smell even though we closed the windows. There was no way to keep out the terrible smell.
 
The smell was so disgusting we could not eat because the burning of the bodies continued all day and all night long, 24 hours a day. A sound like ‘busbus’ came from the burning bodies. We could not protect ourselves from the smell even though we closed the windows. There was no way to keep out the terrible smell. We could see burning phosphorous. I didn't know what it was. I said, "What’s that, Grandma?" She replied, "They're fireballs, will of the wisps. It's the people who died going to heaven." So, whenever I remember those days My heart breaks and I shed tears. How many people were there? How many people were not identified, I wonder? As a child, I remembered the disastrous scenes of those days. I did not know the situation of the Atomic Bomb victims in the town – who was dead and who was alive.
 
Sometimes injured people begged me, "Young boy, give me water, give me water." My parents told me not to give them water because it was said that if we gave water to them, they would soon die. But they could not eat any food and they wanted to drink water So I brought bowls of water from home. I didn't care if I was scolded and I gave them water. I don't remember how many suffering people I gave water to. I only gave a bowl of water to the suffering people who said, "Give me water." I don't remember if they suddenly died afterwards or not. But I remember clearly how they loved to sip the water.
 
【Anxiety as an Atomic Bomb survivor】
I was not discriminated against as an Atomic Bomb survivor when I was in elementary school and in junior high school. But when I was in senior high school, people often said, "Oh, you are an Atomic Bomb survivor!" and "You will infect us with the disease!" At the time of my marriage my fiancee's family first refused to allow us to marry because I was an Atomic Bomb survivor. Our go-between who was arranging the marriage was not an Atomic Bomb survivor himself. He was a nice person. He had correct information about Atomic Bomb survivors. He convinced my fiancee's parents that I was all right he persuaded them not to discriminate against Atomic Bomb survivors. With his support, I could get married and I have been married ever since. I have two children and grandchildren. In the bottom of my heart, I have always had anxiety about after-effects from the radiation.
 
【My wish for peace】
We definitely have to make the Three Non-Nuclear Principles (non-production, non-possession and non-introduction) an official law. I want young people to protect these principles: Don't make, don't bring into Japan, and don't use nuclear weapons. The fact that Japan has been keeping these principles is the best way to appeal for peace to our neighbor countries and to the whole world. It is not too much to say that Japan holds the key to making world peace. I hope that the Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims will be able to make a program of Atomic Bomb survivors' testimonies on video a part of junior high school compulsory education.  It will help the children of the next generations understand the horrors of the Atomic Bombs and of Nuclear War and that even peaceful uses of nuclear power are very dangerous and destructive if misused. I want a large-scale effort to help the young generation understand the horror of nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Do not be prejudiced. Have correct information about the Atomic Bombs. As long as I live, I have a duty to convey my story about the actual situation of being an Atomic Bomb victim to as many people as possible.
 
Translation: Hiroko Hori
Translation Supervision: Craig Smith, Ryoko Yamaguchi
Translation Coordination: NET-GTAS(Network of Translators for the Globalization of the Testimonies of Atomic Bomb Survivors)         
 

*Many more memoirs can be viewed at both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Peace Memorial Halls.
*These contents are updated periodically.
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