On August 9, 1945, Nagasaki became the site of the second atomic bombing experiment conducted on human beings. The first had been in Hiroshima. This was not only an inhuman act, but also a miserable tragedy. I was 16 at the time, in my fifth year at Nagasaki City Commercial School. I had been mobilized in 1943 and from then on I worked at Mitsubishi Weapons Factory. I was feeling sick in the days leading up to the bombing, and on that day I had gone to Nagasaki University Hospital in Sakamoto-machi, which is 0.7 kilometers from the hypocenter. I was sitting in the waiting room on the third floor when a bluish light suddenly flashed outside the windows and I felt my body grow hot. This was at 11:02. The next moment everything went black, and I found myself under a chair.

I put my hand to my head and felt blood. Then I realized that my back and my left leg had been cut by broken window glass. I bandaged my wounds with my leggings, which boys always wore in those days. Then, in the darkness, I groped my way down the stairs and out of the building. I saw several people in the stairwell, some groaning and others sitting immobile, but there was nothing I could do for them. I reached the main entrance of the hospital and fled to Mt. Anakobo, behind the hospital. I looked back down on the city, but all I could see standing were the bent chimneys of Mitsubishi Steelworks and the university hospital. Everything else in the area had burned down. I didn’t come across anyone as I walked toward my house in Takenokubo-machi. The road was ablaze with fire, and I saw a mangled and scorched streetcar with a number of dead bodies in it. I couldn’t tell if they were men or women. I saw a charred horse lying on its back with its legs in the air. I also saw a mother who had died while covering her child with her body. The child was also dead. Then there was a blackened corpse sitting upright on a bicycle and holding onto the bridge rail. I heard people calling out from an air-raid shelter but I couldn’t go to them. Bodies of men, women and children were floating in the Urakami River. It was a living hell. I finally arrived at my house, only to find that it had completely burned down. During that night, enemy reconnaissance planes flew over Nagasaki and occasionally dropped flare bombs. Everything continued to burn. I spent the night at the foot of Mt. Inasa, staring off at the blazing night sky.

There were nine people in my family; my parents, my six younger brothers and sisters, and me. Fortunately, my father and two of my younger sisters (the eldest and the second eldest) were still alive, but my mother, my two younger brothers and two of my younger sisters (the third and fourth oldest) had been killed instantly by this new bomb. Father cremated their dead bodies all by himself. On August 13, the four of us who survived; my father, my oldest and second oldest sisters and me, carried their ashes in our arms and took a special evacuation train to Yoshikawa, in the Minami Arima district, where my father’s family home was. My two surviving younger sisters had been pulled out from under the debris of our house by our father, who had rushed home from work, but now they began suffering from radiation sickness. Despite our care and the way they comforted each other, they died on August 15, the day the war ended.

I lived with my father after that, but he suddenly fell ill in February of 1969 and for the next seven years he was bedridden. He died peacefully in January 1975, at the age of 76.

60 years have passed, but I still can’t get the awful and dreadful memories of that time out of my mind. I pray for the souls of those who were killed by the bomb. I also express my sympathy to those who are still under treatment and those who are bedridden because of their pain. We will continue to work together so that a peaceful world with no nuclear weapons can be established as soon as possible.