HAMA Kyoko, then 19. Exposed to the atomic bomb in Kami Nagarekawa, one kilometer from the hypocenter. A flash came through the window; suddenly she was trapped under her house. When she got out, nothing was left standing, as far as she could see. Smoke started rising from smoldering material; ghost-like victims surged toward her. She had no idea what had happened. She suffered serious injury, a hole in her back; she was saved by a blood transfusion from her uncle.
【Life during the War】
My father got sick and died when I was 11 months old. I was raised by my mother. We lived in Kita Horie, Nishi Ward, Osaka. At that time, a signpost indicating the center of Osaka stood between the area called Shinsaibashi and Sogo Department Store. Our house was a 30-minute walk from that sign. Osaka was a town of commerce but a peaceful, easy place to live. I attended kindergarten nearby, then elementary school and a girls junior high in Osaka.
The girls school was also near our house, and we had drills. We had to extinguish a fire by bucket brigade. When I think back now, it was ridiculous to think we could put out a big fire like that. I learned women's judo, naginata (with swords) and other martial arts in that school.
Meager food rations were delivered to the head of the neighborhood association. He got all the food for ten households, and I remember going to his house to receive our share. My company served us dumpling soup. I had my doubts about the ingredients in those odd dumplings but I was lucky to have something to eat.
【Going to Hiroshima after the Osaka Air Raid】
Normally, a yellow alert would sound first. Then, enemy planes flew into our sky, and finally an air-raid warning would sound. On March 13th I heard the yellow alert and saw enemy planes overhead. As I recall, it was reported that there were 274 planes. It was a major air attack.
First, they dropped incendiary bombs in the south to create a sea of fire. Seeing the sky burning red, my mother and I ran out of the house. After looking around, we ran back into the house to get our belongings. We were in such a panic we forgot to take the emergency bag we had prepared. My mother was dragging a big kotatsu futon. I stuck two pieces of bread into a coat pocket and we rushed out.
We crossed a streetcar track repeatedly, going back and forth to avoid the fire. Running this way and that, the two of us found ourselves all alone and surrounded by a sea of fire. We saw a fiery whirlwind in the middle of an intersection burning with a roar. The cistern on the corner was filled with dirty water. We ran to it and soaked ourselves. We soaked the kotatsu futon and put it over our heads to ward off sparks.
The fire burned until noon the next day, until everything combustible was burned up. When the flames were down to the height of my knees, I finally felt I would make it. We noticed a stone storehouse in front of us. Osaka is a merchant city, and rich merchants have stone storehouses. Seeing that stone storehouse totally crumbled, its roof blown off, was horrifying.
The fire had died down by noon so we talked about what to do. We decided to flee to Hiroshima, where we had relatives. On the way to Osaka Station, I saw things that looked like dead bodies. But I was so shocked I had no feelings of pity or horror. My mind was numb. We kept walking in silence and arrived at Osaka Station. We threw our futon in and, as victims of the air raid, we rode the train to Hiroshima for free. I was happy to receive the rice balls we were given on the train.
【Moving around Evacuation Sites】
We knocked at the door of a relative's house and woke them in the middle of night on March 15. We told them our situation and asked to stay. Hiroshima had a strong military force called the Fifth Division, and nearby Kure had a major naval base. I was afraid. I didn't know when we would be targeted, so I asked my relatives "Is there some safe place we can go?”They told me about my aunt's cousin, who was head priest in a shrine deep in the mountains of Shimane Prefecture. So we decided to rely on him. My aunt went ahead of us to negotiate with him. She came back in April and said he would accept us. We all worked to throw away things we didn't need. We left some valuables in the care of nearby relatives. We left for Shimane Prefecture on April 20th. Our destination was Hinui Village in Shimane Prefecture. The village had a good harvest of rice. I went with some of my relatives. My mother and grandmother stayed in Hiroshima.
After a while, I heard that carrier-based planes were starting to bomb. They shot at people just walking along. Hearing that made me worry about my mother and grandmother in Hiroshima. I asked my relatives if I could go get my mother and grandmother. They said they would accept them, so I went to Hiroshima at the end of July. I went to City Hall to complete the necessary procedure for evacuation. They said if I left the house empty, no one could extinguish the fire if the house was bombed. I had to find someone who would stay in our house. We used to do bucket brigade drills to put out fires, but later I came to the painful understanding that such drills were far from what we should have been doing. I found a person to move into our house. I went to Kami Nagarekawa in Hiroshima to meet my mother and grandmother.
【August 6th】
Grandmother went out to get her haircut. Mother went out to give notice of evacuation to the police. But both of them came back because of a yellow alert. Just when they got back, we saw a bright magnesium flash. It was a bluish white light… I saw a dazzling flash coming through the window. At the same time, our two story structure creaked and crumbled. Over my head and everywhere around me things were falling. Some hit me hard, and I found myself trapped under them.
I wondered what had happened. I was stunned. I had been standing in a corridor. My mother had been taking some luggage down from the second floor. The three of us had been near each other. When the house collapsed all three of us were instantly trapped. My mother called my name, “Kyoko," and I replied. I called grandma, and she replied. We confirmed we were all alive. We knew we had to get out as soon as possible because the fire would spread quickly, like it did in Osaka.
I don't know how I got out. I was crushed under so much debris. Then, my leg fell down through the floor, so I crawled out despite being pressed under the house. I struggled to get to a place that seemed to be the yard. From the yard, I went out a passage that crossed the border to the next house. Finally, I emerged onto a main street. From there, I saw that all the houses as far as I could see were just gone. The fire was already starting; smoke rising up.
Out on the street, people who looked like creatures of another world were walking toward me. I had no idea what had happened. Their skin was peeling. Their clothes were burned off. Even their skin was burned off and was hanging from their fingertips. I feel bad about describing them this way, but they looked like a crowd of ghosts wobbling along. When I turned and looked back, similar people surged in. I wondered what could possibly have happened.
A beam had fallen on me and made a big hole in my back on the side opposite from my heart. Blood gushed out. I didn't feel pain and didn't notice the injury at all. When I breathed in, I heard the sound of bone scraping on bone in my back. I think my bone was cracked when the beam fell on me. I kept bleeding.
As we were walking away, we saw a woman helping her grandfather in front of us. Her grandfather fell down and just died. After watching that, my mother suddenly noticed that I was bleeding. She bit off a sleeve of her shirt with her teeth, She tore it, folded it and put on my wound. She tore my grandmother's kimono, and used that as a bandage. She tied it tight around my chest to stop the bleeding. I regained my senses, and we started walking again. I put my arms on my mother's and grandmother's shoulders to hold myself up.
We didn't know what was going on but we knew we wanted to get to a river. We had experienced a sea of fire in Osaka so we knew it was best to be near a river. But we didn’t know our location. We didn't know which way the river was. We walked crazily until we reached the grounds of Nigitsu Shrine. On the way, a person whose family members were trapped under a house was shouting, "Please help me! Five of us are buried here!" But we were injured and all three of us were female. We had no way of doing anything to help.
【Fleeing to Nigitsu Shrine】
When we arrived on the grounds of Nigitsu Shrine, a huge pine tree was broken but not burned. And yet, smoke was rising sporadically from its root. It seemed so strange. We went down to the riverbed below Nigitsu Shrine and sat down. It was already filled with people taking refuge there. In the river, people who had dived in to avoid the heat quickly turned into corpses floating on the surface. Many were carried away.
I saw what I thought was a military man. His uniform was totally burned off. He had burns all over his body but his legs were covered by long military boots. He seemed to be a high ranking officer. He kept saying, "Water, water." We had been told, “Never give water to badly burned people.” A boy was naked and burned from his waist up. He was crying, "It hurts, it hurts." Someone tried to pull him onto a truck but he was in too much pain and it was too hard to grasp his body. It was so pitiful. People like him were loaded on trucks and carried away. Some injured were taken to an island somewhere, and I heard that “all the people taken there are dying.” My mother was strong and brave. She had me sit and wait while she went off. She found a rug to lay on the ground. She found four pieces of wood to use as pillars and a tin sheet to use for a roof. She went here and there collecting what we needed. Finally she went to a field and picked some squash, eggplant and cucumber, which she brought back in a bucket. I had a very high fever and no desire to eat anything. Mother ate ravenously, I think her eating led to internal exposure. She contracted a thyroid disorder, while I didn’t. The four pieces of wood were held up by my mother, who held two, and grandma, who held the other two. They covered me with the tin roofing and had me lie under it. Thanks to them, I wasn't hit by the black rain. Mother kept her neck and head in the shelter, but her body got wet. That, too, was bad for her because the rain was full of radiation.
A relief team from Yamaguchi Prefecture arrived in the middle of the night and announced that a relief station would be set up the next day in the park. They went from place to place suggesting that the injured go there for treatment. They gave us some rice balls, but because of my high fever, I couldn't eat at all.
【To a Relief Station】
I arrived at the relief station, supported under both shoulders by my mother and grandmother. The place was already full of people. In the heat of summer, the burned survivors smelled terrible. Flies swarmed everywhere, and maggots infested the wounds. A baby died. Its mother was calling its name and shaking it. I got choked up looking at them.
My turn came to be examined, but all I remember is them pulling a glass fragment from the back of my neck. I have no memory of taking medicine or getting a shot. In the park, a man on the relief team saw my situation. He took off his shirt and put it on me. He also took off his socks and had me put them on. I was so grateful I began crying.
【My Life Barely Saved】
There was a railway station called Yaga in Hiroshima. I believe we took a train from Yaga. We changed to another train on the Sanko Line from Gotsu. There was a station named Kawado on the Sanko Line. We got off the train at Kawado to go to a relative's house. These days they have a bus to that relative's house, but in those days there was no bus or anything else. We had no choice but to get a ride on a straw bag in the truck of a charcoal maker. No truck was going that day, so we stayed at a small inn in Kawado. I was very happy when the landlady of that inn saw us and offered us fresh new bathwater saying, “We can’t let bacteria get into your wounds." We were all dirty and in very bad condition, so we were especially grateful for her kindness.
And that night it seems we were moaning because of bad dreams. A young lady from Osaka was in the next room. The next morning she said, "You were moaning and groaning so much. What happened to you?" We told her everything. My mother had a younger brother working for the Central Telegraph Bureau in Osaka. We asked the young lady to let him know our situation. The young lady went back to Osaka and told my uncle about us. My uncle immediately came running to see us.
On the day my uncle arrived, we learned that a surgeon from that village had been practicing in Kobe, but had returned to the village because of the war. That doctor gave me a transfusion of my uncle's blood. That somehow kept me alive. I could hardly move my body before the transfusion. Until my uncle's blood mixed with mine, I felt itchy all over. It was an added burden on my heart, which was beating too fast, but when the new blood settled in, I found new vigor.
The wound from a glass fragment in my arm was closed. After I evacuated to the village in Shimane, I felt pain every time I bent my elbow to read a book. I felt my elbow. My skin was covering a triangular piece of glass. I don't know if I'm right because I couldn’t see them, but it seemed to me when I touched my elbow and the back of my thigh that my skin was covering a number of small fragments.
【Life after the War】
After a year, we moved to Hamada. My mother got a license as a hairdresser and opened a beauty salon there. I took a government exam in Shimane and also got a license to be a hairdresser. I lived there for a year. I missed Osaka so much I desperately wanted to go back. I went to Osaka telling my mother, “I’m going to see Grandma.” I went to see a friend who worked in the Sumitomo Metal Industries head office where I had worked. My former boss, who had transferred to Tokyo, happened to be there. He saw me and asked, ”How are you doing?" I answered, "I'm looking for a job." He said, "Why don't you come back?" He told me to wait for a while and went to the personnel section. I was surprised when he came back and said, "Come on in tomorrow." When I went to the office, I was assigned to be a secretary to the president. I served as secretary until I left the company because of my marriage.
【My Message】
No such thing should ever happen again. I tell people my experience to have them understand this. I tell my story because I believe we should make ours a country of peace not war.
I spoke at an elementary school in Yao, Osaka. When I finished my story and was leaving for home, as I walked through the middle of the school ground, a sixth grader ran up to me and gave me a bunch of folded paper frogs. I thought he must have heard my message. I will pass on my experience in my own way and let people know the horror of the atomic bomb. Nations must learn to get along.
Once a war breaks out, everything of value is destroyed, including our precious lives. We must never allow a war to break out again. In fact, I hope students will learn to solve the problems of daily life by discussion, not by fighting or taking a life.
Translation: Steve Leeper
Supervision: Miwako Sawada
Coordinator: NET-GTAS (Network of Translators for the Globalization of the Testimonies of Atomic Bomb Survivors)
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