The following is a transcript of a lecture Mr. Yoshitomi gave to a group of elementary students.
 

I experienced the atomic bombing when I was sixteen, the age when students begin the first year of high school nowadays. In my case, I was a fourth year student at Imari Commercial School. I had been sent to Nagasaki to work at Mitsubishi Arms Factory in Ohashi-machi (a neighborhood only 1 kilometer from the atomic bombing hypocenter) as part of the national labor corps that had been established during World War II. The increasing severity of the war had created a labor shortage and by the time I was the age of today’s second-year junior high students I was mostly helping to build roads and dig tunnels, while only attending school two or three times a week. In the third semester of grade three I was sent to faraway Nagasaki, where I spent the next half a year apart from my mother, father and older brothers. Our meals consisted largely of mashed bean husks and radish, not the white rice we have now. Our stomachs were always empty and we grew thin, with many people suffering from diarrhea.
 
I worked at a factory that produced large bombs for warfare. (The bombs were called aerial torpedoes because they were to be loaded onto planes whose pilots would fly into battleships in order to sink them.) The factory was huge and operations continued all day and night, with workers replacing each other in shifts. I wasn’t used to that kind of work, but I tried as hard as I could.
 
  I was stationed in one of the tunnel factories that had been built into the mountainside some 700 meters away from the main factory. There were six tunnels together, each one about 200 meters long and open at both ends. All the important machinery was crammed deep inside, where it couldn’t be spotted from outside. I worked at the lathe machines, making parts that were essential for the aerial torpedoes.
 
It seemed as if the American planes were making air raids every day. Whenever an attack came, the school girls over at the main factory would stop working and hurriedly evacuate to the relative safety of our tunnel. Air-raid sirens sounded as usual on the morning of August 9, the day the atomic bomb was dropped. Large numbers of people flocked to the tunnel factory to avoid the air raid, but at a little after ten-thirty the alarm was downgraded to a warning. Just as I was wondering when the evacuees were going to go back to their own workplaces, that horrendous atomic bomb was dropped.
 
  The time of the bombing was 11:02. Suddenly the electricity in the tunnel went out, leaving us in darkness. At exactly the same time, a burst of light so bright that it seemed to pierce our eyes flashed at the tunnel entrance, 100 meters away. Then a tremendous blast wind came blowing in like a great typhoon. The people at the front of the tunnel shrieked as they were thrown against the machinery or onto the dirt floor and then lay unmoving. Somebody yelled out, “One of those new type bombs has been dropped!”
 
  I had heard rumours about the huge bomb that ravaged Hiroshima three days earlier, and as I sat in the darkness I shivered in fear at the thought that this had been some horrendous new type of weapon, although in actuality I didn’t know anything about atomic bombs. My friend and I whispered nervously to each other, saying things like “I wonder what is going to happen next.” A little while later, the girls who had evacuated to our tunnel earlier on came running back inside. They had been on their way back to their workplace when the atomic bomb fell. The light was dim, but I could still see that most of them had scorched and disheveled hair. They were frightening to look at. They looked just like ghouls, their cheeks puffed up with burn blisters and their skin scorched and torn. As everything had happened so quickly, they were unable to get any medicine or bandages and had simply wrapped hand towels around their wounds and fled back to the tunnel. There were a lot of these girls, all of whom were fifteen or sixteen years old, just a little older than those of you here today. We had no way to treat them and could only say things like, “Hold yourself together!” or “Hang in there!” It was unbearable to see them in such a pitiful state. They looked so tired and hot, so hurt and afraid.
 
  All this had happened in a matter of instants. Those of us in the tunnel had escaped injury and when our leader gave the order we were able to head off down the railroad tracks to the dormitory some twenty minutes away, our hearts aching for the wounded people we were leaving behind. It was impossible to pass along the road because the demolished building ruins had created a sea of fire, and so four or five of my friends and I walked cautiously alongside the railroad tracks, the wooden ties of which were smoking from the heat. The weather had been fine that day, without a single cloud in the sky, and the sun had been beating down relentlessly. After the atomic bombing, columns of fire and black smoke rose up into the air, blackening the afternoon sky over Nagasaki. The sun looked yellow and eerily appeared to be falling in the sky. Even the lush green plants and trees had burned to the ground. Scattered along the roadsides were piles of scorched corpses so disfigured that it was impossible to tell the men from the women.
 
The burn wounds were particularly bad because it was mid-summer and everyone had been out in minimal clothing. A huge number of people had staggered down to the river in search of water, their hands held over their scorched and dirtied faces. There were so many that you couldn’t possibly count them. Bodies floated in the water, piling up with the scorched corpses of cows and horses. People with burns and blisters clung to our legs and feet, crying out in unison, “Water, water!” There is no way to save someone who has had more than half of his or her body burned, and I knew that severely-burned would die if they drank a lot of water, even though their desperate thirst made them crave it. Sure enough, these people were saying, “All I want is some water!” and then drinking any they could find, even the oily water floating in the rivers. After that they would pass away. The sight was both fearful and sad, just like a picture of hell. At long last we reached our dormitory, but the wooden buildings had already burned to the ground, leaving only smoldering debris. The kids who had been sleeping soundly after working the night shift were either thrown out into the adjacent field wearing nothing but their underpants or else crushed to death when the building caved in. The teacher in charge then ordered those of us who were uninjured to go to the main factory and find our colleagues, after which we were to take them back to our hometown of Imari.
 
The city of Nagasaki was now a sea of flames for as far as the eye could see. The huge roof of the arms factory where the aerial torpedoes were built had been crushed flat. The steel girders of the framework were twisted like strands of taffy and a giant gas tank was leaning over on its side. Up around the midpoint of the tilted smokestack a dead man’s body hung down like a circus performer. The factory was less than a kilometer from the atomic bombing hypocenter, at the place where Nagasaki University is located now. When we went there to search for our friends, we were showered in the radioactive fallout that became known as the ashes of death.
 
As evening approached, an emergency train came backing its way toward us, proceeding slowly, as if being pushed. It came to a stop close to where we were waiting, unable to continue any further because the railroad bridge that lay ahead was now demolished. That was quite a way from (present-day) Urakami Station. Some people rushed to jump on the train, but they were turned back with calls of “Let the wounded board first!” Those who couldn’t move because of injuries or burn wounds were then carried on board, either on makeshift stretchers or on the backs of others, and placed in their seats. That took a lot of effort. Those who couldn’t get on were then pushed onto freight cars.
 
We were packed in the train like sardines, without any place to step. If one person moved he would cause all the people around him to bump into each other and those with burns or open wounds would start screaming in agony. Some people who were covered in blood, their bodies pierced with fragments of glass. Others were so blackened from burns that no one would ever recognize them. Some repeatedly called out “Please kill me!” while others yelled at the top of their lungs, “Water… Give me water!” I saw people coughing up blood as they took their last breaths. Even those without injuries were affected by the conditions inside the train, becoming nauseous and throwing up when the heat and the raw smell of blood became too much for them. It was like a train from hell.
 
Those left off the train had also been exposed to radiation and heat rays, and eventually they grew weak and passed away, collapsing into piles. Our train ride was long and grueling, with people dying along the way and stops being in order to let the wounded off at stations with hospitals nearby. We rode all through the night, finally arriving at Arita Station the next morning. The war came to an end just one week later, on August 15, 1945, brought about in part by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan had been defeated.
 
Just two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed over 300,000 people and left as many as 700,000 wounded. Each year to the very present more than 6,000 bombing victims pass away.
 
 There are approximately 300,000 atomic bombing survivors across the country and their average age is over seventy. Many of them were exposed to radiation and suffer in agony, often entering the hospital because of illnesses caused by the after effects of radiation. Of the ninety students and teachers in my graduating class who experienced the atomic bombing, twelve died immediately and another thirty (about one-third of the total) lost their precious lives over time. I have also suffered from deteriorating health on countless occasions and have repeatedly been admitted and discharged from the hospital. Luckily, I seem to have regained my health these days, a trend I hope will continue. Among the people who escaped the bombings uninjured, there are many who suffer what could be called mental aftereffects, as they become overcome with anxiety every time they came down with an illness and think that it must be something caused by the bomb. In this way, the atomic bomb proved fearful even for those who survived it.
 
  At present there are some 30,000 nuclear warheads in existence around the world, with seven countries possessing arsenals. The majority of these weapons have anywhere from five to a hundred times the destructive power of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs.
 
  The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki literally created hell on earth. The heat rays released at the instant of the explosion burned people to death and the blast winds destroyed buildings within two or three kilometers of the hypocenter and left the wreckage in flames. Those who couldn’t get away in time became trapped under collapsed houses and burned to death when fires broke out. On top of all that, the atomic bombs released a huge amount of radiation which was invisible to the eye. All those who escaped the flaming inferno were bathed in this radiation. About one week after the bombing, people started losing hair, bleeding from their gums, developing purple blotches on their skin and running high fevers. In agony they died off one after another. This was acute radiation illness.
 
  That is how dreadful atomic bombs are. They are weapons of evil. This is why we atomic bombing survivors continue our efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons from the face of this earth at the earliest possible date. I hope all of you will learn from these talks about war and the atomic bombings and engrave in your hearts a fear of war and a gratitude for peace. Please pass this message on to as many people as you can. Also, enjoy your school life and do what you can to make your ideals and future dreams come true. Never resort to violence or bullying.
 
  Today we are displaying in this gymnasium an exhibition of panels entitled The Atomic Bombs and Humanity. The pictures are a mixture of those from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but in both cases the fear and cruelty of the atomic bombings is made clear. I think you will clearly understand how grateful we should be to be living in peace. Please look closely at these pictures and tell your families about them when you go home.
 
  This concludes my talk. Thank you for listening attentively until the end.