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AMANO Fumiko(AMANO Fumiko) 
Gender Female  Age at time of bombing 14 
Recorded on 2011.10.18  Age at time of recording 80 
Location at time of bombing Hiroshima 
Location when exposed to the bombing  
Status at time of bombing High school or university student 
Occupational status at time of bombing Hiroshima Prefectural Kaita Girls High School 
Hall site Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims 
Dubbed in English/
With English subtitles
With English subtitles 

On the 7th of August before dawn, AMANO Fumiko went to Hiroshima to look for her family. She was fourteen years old at the time. She saw that the town of Hiroshima had died. She realized for the first time that war was equivalent to murder. She finally found her family but her older brother was in critical condition and passed away within half a month after enduring agonizing suffering from his severe injuries. AMANO Fumiko believes it is unforgivable for survivors to forget the Atomic Bombing, or to keep silent about what happened. She is determined to keep stepping forward to testify about the Atomic Bomb.
 
【The Day Before the Atomic Bomb】
My brother passed the required examination for those being conscripted into the military with the minimum pass mark because of a health problem. He received his orders and went to the military camp in the village of Hitonose in Etajima Island. However, he became seriously ill in the first month and was sent back to Hiroshima on the 1st of August because he needed an operation. It was arranged for him to have the operation at Shima Hospital. A bed was made for him in a hand cart and we were going to carry him to the hospital on the 6th of August at 7:30. On the previous night of August 5 my mother said to me "The air-raid warnings have stopped so let's go out now" and we went to the hospital. It was dark and on the way to the hospital we saw many shooting stars gliding across the sky. I said to my mother, "Mom, tonight is too quiet and something is strange". We passed the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall on the right side of the road. After the bombing eleven hours later it took on the shape it now has as the Atomic Bomb Memorial Dome. At the hospital my mother asked a young nurse, "May my son come here tomorrow morning?" and the nurse answered, "Your son can come. Everything has been arranged for him". My mother was relieved and said "thank you" to the nurse. She was about to leave the hospital when a head nurse came out of the room just as the door was about to close behind us. She said, "The doctor, Shima Kaoru, will go to his friend's hospital in the countryside tomorrow to do operations as he always does once a year. So please bring your son to the hospital on the 7th". Her words saved me from the bombing.
 
【The Situation on the A-bomb Day】
On the morning of the 6th of August, I did not really need to go work because I had taken a week off to accompany my brother to the hospital. But I went to work anyway because I thought all the other students and teachers were working and so, I should go into work as well even though there might be no work for me. I took one train later than usual. I arrived at my workplace, a factory, and I was standing under a steel framework all alone. When the Atomic Bomb was dropped, a strong blast hit me. Later we called the Atomic Bomb "Pikadon", 'but I could not tell which was the 'Pika', the flash, and which was the 'Don' the sound of the bomb. I was just hit by something and fell down.

I soon heard voices around me crying "Help me" and "I'm injured". When I opened my eyes, I was surrounded by smoke.   The teachers ordered us to assemble and they fought with the factory guards to let us evacuate to the top of a nearby mountain. But we saw that Hiroshima was burning. We thought that this is no good and we returned to the factory to be dismissed. Our teacher said that students from Hiroshima should go home. I walked along a railway track holding hands with my friend and we finally arrived at a train station. We pushed and pushed to get through a crowd. On the other side there were soldiers with bayonets on the end of long sticks. The soldiers were as frantic as everyone else. They shouted, "You idiots. Do you want to kill yourselves? Get out of here!" and we were driven off.
 
【Searching for Her Family】
I was looking at the red burning fires in the city center. I was supposed to be there that morning. I could not bear imagining myself burning and dying in the fire at that moment. At that time I had no idea that Shima Hospital was ground zero but I thought the fire was burning the sky itself. The hospital was going to completely burn down. I definitely would have died. No one was running away from the fire anymore. It was around 3 or 4 am and the fire was gradually burning out. It was a hazy summer morning and small fires were burning over the haze. I thought the fires had burned out enough and I walked towards the city from the station. My house was close to a bridge near the station. Everywhere there were dead bodies. Some bodies had already been covered by a mat or a galvanized iron sheet from a roof. I walked around looking at the dead bodies checking to see whether they were my mother or my brother. I did not want to see them dead but I had to find them. As I passed the dead I put my hands together to pray for them. Soon, I could not bear it anymore and sat down. I could not continue walking. I thought I heard my mother's voice calling me as she always did, "Fumi-chan! You safely survived today too". I thought "My mom is alive" and I looked up in surprise but my mother was not there. A woman with a clean face and eyes wide open with her arms crossed on her chest was lying on the ground facing towards me. I saw one more face like that at the Shukkeien Garden gate. At the gate of the Hiroshima Court of Appeal, I saw two dead people with clean bodies. I did not know why they were dead but their eyes were open. I looked into their eyes and I stood up instantly in surprise. I felt like those eyes gave me a withering look. For the first time I looked around the city. I could see the Fukuya Department Store and the Chugoku Newspaper office building. There seemed to be no one but me who had survived and was standing there. It was really frightening. I was the only person living and standing there in the city. For the first time I thought "What? War is murder. A war for the peace of the East was a lie". So, that day for me is the day of the end of the war and the day I knew for the first time what war was.         
 
【Reunion with Her Family】
A woman with a black face asked me, "You are Fumi-chan, right?"  She was my neighbor. She said, "Your father and mother ran to the bamboo forest. Go to the bamboo forest. They may be alive". I thought "Oh!" When I had walked five or six steps forward I saw my father coming towards me. His headband was smeared with blood but he looked like he was alright. He said, "Oh, Fumiko, you are alive". I tightly held my father's hand. I could not walk without my father. My parents were miraculously alive. My mother said, "Let's go home because I have no idea where your brother Hideso spent the night. Let's go home as soon as possible".   After a short while, we saw a barefoot man with a blackened face and a sling around his arm who looked like a living wooden sword walking towards us supporting himself with a broken bamboo stick. He noticed us and slowly made his way to us. He could not hold up his hand but he kept walking toward us holding the stick in his right hand. It was my older brother. I approached him and said "Brother?"  He replied "Yes". My parents and I were amazed and at a loss for words. We could not say anything.           
 
【The Devastation Around Us】
In Shukkeien Garden there were dead bodies of people killed by the Atomic Bomb blast everywhere. I saw a litter carried by with something that looked like a wooden stick in it. When I looked at it more carefully, I realized that it was a dead body so badly burned, it had become like wood. Dead bodies like this were carried in one after another, and they were piled up at the devastated pine forest in front of the garden. There was a tall mountain of dead bodies. The body of the housekeeper of the presiding judge of the court was laid on top. She had always given us tomatoes when we went to the food distribution station. She said, "I got these tomatoes from my own garden". I was very shocked to see her. I was absolutely terrified that amiable young lady was one of the dead. So, I tried to pull the judge's housekeeper off the pile of dead bodies. The burned bodies were all stuck together. I struggled to pull her out. An adult said to me, "Don't do that. They are all dead".        
 
In the late afternoon, I carried our belongings that we needed on my back, such as a rice kettle, and went to Sakae Bridge with my father who was carrying  my mother on his back. My brother and five women were with us.  The women wanted to go to the countryside because their husbands had not returned home. When I looked at the town of Hiroshima from the bridge, purple smoke caused by the burning of dead bodies was rising everywhere. My mother put her hands together and chanted Buddhist sutra "Namandabu-Namandabu. Namandabu-Namandabu". Since then whenever I am alone in the evening, I always remember that scene. The memories are really painful.
 
The next day, we went to Kotachi-cho by train. So many people came to help us at Kotachi station. My brother was taken by truck to a school and was wrapped in bandages. After that, we went to our grandparents' house.  
 
【The Death of My Brother】
On the morning of August 16th, my younger brother came back home and said, "Oh sister, Japan lost the war". Right away I went to the room where my older brother was sleeping. I thought that I could not say that Japan had lost the war to my brother who was in such a weak condition. So I said, "Brother, the war has ended. Japan won!" I don't know if he believed my words after a bomb like that had been dropped on Japan.

He was so weak that he wasn't able to say anything. He was in horrible condition. His wound became infested with maggots everyday. He couldn't eat anything, and we couldn't give him any medical treatment. The red part of his wound was spreading everyday. In places it was inky-black and brown in color, the color of iron. It was the 19th when that red part reached below his chest to his stomach. At one o'clock on the 19th, he moved like he wanted me to help him to get up. It is true that people want to get up before they die. When I helped him, I heard him say in a small voice "It hurts".
             
Since I started giving my testimony, I've felt pain because of the "hurt" of people all over Japan, of course, and the pain of the Asian people killed in the Japanese invasion, and the people who suffered after the war overlaps with my brother's "hurt". I didn't tell my brother the truth that Japan had lost. I think that I should have at least told the truth to my dying brother. However, I was a militarist girl after all, I guess. What I realized that moment of the morning of the 7th, and the fact that I couldn't tell my brother the truth on the 16th, and his words "It hurts" just before his death are the fragile center of my being. It is wistful thinking but I believe that I have to move ahead with making sense of these experiences until I die.
 
【What I Want to Tell You】
Tanaka Terumi, the Secretary General of the Nihon Hidankyo(Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations), brought me a report and said, "Please take this and attend the Special Session on Disarmament of the General Assembly of the United Nations". I replied that I didn't want to go to the United States. Then, Mr.Tanaka said,  "You're Christian, aren't you? If you visit the U.S., you will see church women who are taking a lead in the peace movement". "You're a mother and the principal of a kindergarten, aren't you?", he said. However, I didn't reply at that moment but I read that report all night long. On the last page of the report, there is a sentence that says, "To live, or to forget". This sentence means that if you live and keep silent, it is equal to forgetting. I thought that survivors should not be allowed to "forget" and, of course, not be allowed to "keep silent". The next morning, right before I started to explain my opinion to my husband, he said, "I have been saving money in order to visit the Holy City of Jerusalem, you know? Why don't you use that money and go to the U.S.?"
 
So, I started giving my testimony in the U.S. On reflection, that experience gave me a feeling of great comfort. People with sympathetic minds understood what I told them. They cried with me and said "Let's fight together in order to achieve the abolition of nuclear weapons". These words cross sectarian lines. I was a member of a religious NGO but other Japanese people, such as Buddhists, helped me no matter which religion they believed in.            
 
My travel to give A-bomb testimony was also for atonement. In short, I was encouraged by the sentence "To live, or to forget". I started thinking that survivors must not keep quiet. And also, I found that we can learn about our history from meeting with many people through giving testimony of our experiences. This means that I can learn not only about past history but also all the history which has led to today and to the future. I can take my first step towards reconciliation through this process. Isn't it too easy just to say "Sorry"? That war cost so many people's lives. Even though I was a young girl who didn't know anything, I think that I have responsibility for what happened as a person who lived in that generation. A lot of young children became victimized through the 'comfort women' problem and also by being moved forcibly from Korea. Those children, their own children, and their parents are all victims like me because all our lives are connected.
 
I was supposed to die at Ground-Zero, the center of the explosion. So, my last message is from Ground Zero to Article 9 of the Constitution of Japan. When I visited Malaysia, I was told that Japan's pacifist constitution is not only yours. That constitution was made with the blood of 20 million Asian people. So please protect it very carefully. Therefore, we have to take advantage of the constitution to keep the world peaceful. I will keep my eyes open to problems happening these days. I will talk about these problems as long as I live. I want to work for peace with everyone.
 
Translated by Atsumi Mizuno and Risa Otsu
Translation Supervision: Craig Smith and Kishio Sakamoto 
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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