Rumi HANAGAKI, 5 years old at the time of the bombing. Exposed to the radiation, at Misasa-hon-machi 2-chome, 1.7 km away from the hypocenter. While I was playing with my mother’s handmade ｄolly, Tae-chan, the ground lifted up with a massive sound of an explosion. I was badly injured by being slammed to the edge of a chest of drawers. The dogs and cats were dead. Their legs stretched towards the air.The fear of seeing a dolly that looked like my Tae-chan burning and smoldering, made me lose my memory.
【Life Before the Bombing】
My father was a bank clerk, he had been transferred to Taiwan. Due to my mother’s pregnancy, we could not go with him and he was living apart from the family. The Kanto-region, and Tokyo where we were living was heavily attacked, and incendiary bombs were dropped, so my mother and I were called back to her parent’s home. The place we evacuated to was Hiroshima.
My grandfather was building a house for my aunt who was single throughout her life. We went to this house which was in Shinomoto-machi. It was built with bricks and was stylish. It took us 3 days to get to Hiroshima. My grandmother was also living in the house since it was closer to the hospital she went to. The two of us joined her and four of us were living together. And in the autumn of 1944, my little brother was born and he was named Yutaka. That, was our life then.
【The 6th of August, 1945】
Hearing air-raid alarms, together with my mother and with my brother on her back, we evacuated in a hurry into an air-raid shelter. After the alert was cancelled, we went back home. Perhaps because it was built by the town, the shelter was quite a sizeable one. When we were leaving the shelter, someone tripped and fell and the crowd of people was gripped by panic. And that, I remember everything clearly. After coming back home, my mother was doing the laundry beside the bathroom with my brother on her back. In those days long ago, we used a washtub for the laundry. My aunt was in the kitchen, washing the dishes or cooking. My grandmother was on the 2nd floor in bed. And I was in the next room playing with a dolly called "Tae-chan."
That kind of dolly was very common. Grandmothers or mothers would make them for their children. The doll was filled with rice husks. Some northeast areas in Japan, where buckwheat is grown, they used buck wheat instead. As Tae-chan was quite big, her feet would touch the floor if I tried to carry her on my back. And so, I heard a noise when I was playing with her. The noise wasn't loud, but it felt like it was lifting the ground. "Boom" or "bang" doesn't quite describe the noise. With the noise, the soil, the roads, the ground rose. Just as it rose, the surrounding houses were demolished.
Our house too. Some houses were partially destroyed. Back in that time, toys and other things made of celluloid were very popular. Now plastic is used. Along with celluloid things, there were other inflammables in the house too. I have heard that these caught on fire and made the flames spread at an incredible speed. In the back of the room, there was a grand chest of drawers called "Fuchu-tansu." The house had hinged windows, as it was a European-style building. The roll-up blinds and the windows were all smashed. I was thrown to the window side, then a sharp piece of bamboo, about 5 cm, from the chest of drawers pierced my head. Being caught by the window I looked up and saw my mother on the ground by the pine tree, still carrying my brother on her back.
And she gradually woke up. My grandmother, despite the broken window, wasn't hurt, because it was stopped by the wall below the window.
She was probably the only one who was unhurt. I was most hurt, and still had the wedge of bamboo stuck in my head. My aunt had injured her leg, possibly from the demolished kitchen. The fire was already starting. As we were on the second floor, we took grandmother downstairs. Then, my aunt put her into a push cart and we started to evacuate.
【The Horrifying Sights the Girl Saw】
Due to the force of the flames, we had to go around a pile of gravel that was burning. We managed to evacuate to a bamboo grove with our neighbors. When we arrived, there were mats made of straw and other things. Numerous injured people were there. We settled next to an old man who was among the injured people. I had been to the bamboo grove before. I noticed that there was this small shack, which apparently was a chicken yard. The chicken cage was broken, and the chickens were all over the place, crying. Some were dead, some had their legs and wings severed. The living chickens were picking at the body of the old man. I wanted to make the chickens stop but I couldn't, because I was afraid.
Then my mother chased them away using a stick. That scene, with my mother holding a stick, stayed in my memory. And later I said something like, "Mother, why did you hit the old man with a stick?" There is also another scene that is still with me. The bamboo grove caught on fire. Sparks started flying, as if there was a welding shop there raining sparks of fire from above. The fire also made the bamboo leaves flutter. The bamboo started expanding and bursting, making loud noises. Some bamboo were hollow inside, so there was only one burst but, some burst many times from each joint. It was very frightening. The noise echoed through the wide-open space of the bamboo grove, making it even more terrifying. As it was becoming more dangerous, we evacuated again with the others.
I was running bare-footed so, my mother found me one adult and one child clog from the rubble. I wore those but, soon after one of the clog’s strap was broken. My mother might have fixed it, but I'm not so sure if I continued wearing the broken clog. Probably not, as the rubble was too difficult to walk through in clogs. Among the people who evacuated, many died. At the time, I did not understand what death was. After I got my memory back, and I remembered the scene of my mother and other adults praying, I realized that people had died.
I left my dolly, Tae-chan, in the house but, I found a similar doll burning during the evacuation. Glancing at it, I thought "How’s Tae-chan?” The other doll was smoldering and leaning against the rubble. Rice husks do not make a brisk fire nor a lot of smoke, it was quietly smouldering and turning black.
I assume, as I was witnessing it, my mind was preparing to lose the memory of these events. “That burning dolly was so scary,” is what I remember. I was in a deep state of shock before that. Soon later, I saw a bird cage, crushed, and distorted. And inside the cage, a pair of birds were carbonized and laying on the ground. As the pine trees were burned, cicadas were burned to death still on the tree. The sight of dogs and cats burned to death with their legs stretched up in the air like making a “banzai” was terrifying too. As I was still young, I couldn't understand the images of death. And while I was evacuating, I did not know what I was witnessing. I found a broken water main not so far from me, that was shooting up a lot of water. And people were gathering around it.
I saw many pitch-black people who had lined up to get water but they looked like they were dead with their heads all lined up in a row. And we picked up some bowls, pots, kettles and lunch boxes, to scoop up water, and wash our faces. Then we started moving again. Remembering that scene is always agonizing. Everyone desperately wanted water and cried, "Water, water!" I guess, those who died around the water main got at least a drop of water. And that is just slightly better than those who couldn't get any water at all. Thinking of such people really hurts. And it hurts even more thinking about those who couldn't even satisfy their thirst before they died. Even more miserable is to know that there were tens of thousands of such people. After that, we evacuated toward the mountain. We reached near Mitaki-cho. There were so many such people in Mitaki-cho already. Then, my grandma started to cry over seeing my face.
My mother had been giving my younger brother a ride on her back. When I said to her “Mom, Yutaka looks like he’s in so much pain.” My mother said “Oh! I’m so sorry.” Because he had been on her back all the time, his body was soggy with sweat and mud when he was lifted down. My mother kept saying “Oh, I’m so sorry,” as she lifted him down. His skin was severely inflamed and because he had been wearing his diaper since we were in the air-raid shelter, it was soggy with poo, pee and sweat. Diaper bands used to be much heavier than that of today, and he was bound very tightly to her back with the diaper band and it made the situation worse. When we arrived, the rescue crews gave us some rice balls and tea. We got some, but we couldn’t eat them and just kept them. My mother used the tea to wet some Japanese towels or a piece of a kitchen apron and wiped Yutaka’s bottom. When she took off his diaper, his skin came off at the same time.
I feel at ease even now when I think that he could overcome the suffering and grow up safely, but he looked terrible indeed at that time.
He curled up like a pill bug and moaned with pain, “Ungh, ungh.” She said to him, “I’m so sorry it hurts, but just hang in there,” while she was wiping his bottom. She arranged his diaper with a piece of cloth which she crumpled softly. She tried to feed him, but her breast had difficulty in releasing milk, but he sucked the breast very hard, rolling his eyes. He sucked so hard that she gave a moan of pain, “It hurts!” but no milk came out probably.
Therefore, she had to chew a rice ball, which they gave her, and gave it to him mouth-to-mouth. I didn’t know if I slept or I had just fainted away, but anyway some terrible smell woke me up. I was surrounded by the terrible smell, and I looked ahead. There was something in the distance, 10 meters or less away. Those were people who had only some parts of their body left, those who had turned dark brown, and people swollen like a rubber boat They burned a pile of human arms, legs, and the bodies of those who were big and small. I had no idea what was happening, and I was just dazed by the sight when I was looking at it and smelling that terrible smell. Then, my mother held me so tightly, and said, “Don’t look at them!” and I fainted. I didn’t know how much time had gone by. I came to, but I had lost my memory. I had no memory about those experiences for 58 years.
【The Treatment of My Grandma’s Injury】
We must have gone to my mother’s parents’ home, which was located in Niho-Machi, and there I regained consciousness. But I have no memory around that period at all. After about 2 months, our relative rented us a small branch of a temple in Nara and we were sent there for recuperation. By that time, my grandma’s buttocks had become infested with maggots. Because she couldn’t eat anything and had a lack of energy, she developed bedsores, and the sores had been infested by maggots. My mother and aunt picked the maggots up by tweezers, but they seemed to be biting the skin. When there were a lot of them, I even heard the sound of them biting “Chirp, chirp.” They were as large as a 1cm udon noodle, and they had two black dots like eyes. It was like a small beetle larva.
There were a lot of them, and my mother and aunt were trying so hard to get rid of them with tweezers. My grandma cried out “Please, please stop it, it hurts,” but they said, “but they will lay eggs and keep growing until we get rid of them, so let’s get them all now.” I suppose they wiped her buttocks with boiled gauze, and disinfected the sores with diluted whiskey. We had a relative who was a doctor, so we asked him to give us some medicine. The situation was terrible in the town, so there was no medicine there. Our uncle’s house had suffered in the Atomic Bombing, so he didn’t have enough medicine for us. However, my grandma’s buttocks’ injuries healed as the days passed. Her buttocks were a little hollow, but new skin seemed to form on the surface.
【Symptoms after the Atomic Bombing】
I went to Nara for recuperation. My wet-nurse who helped me with some personal matters, and I went to Nara for recuperation together. My mother went back to Yokohama with my younger brother. She came to Nara with my younger brother on her back, and brought me a lot of presents once a month. When we had to leave the house in Yokohama, and we were looking for somewhere else to live, one of our uncles who lived in Kyoto invited us “Why don’t you come here?” and he looked for a house for us. I was in the 2nd term of the second year of junior high school when we moved to Kyoto. The first thing my mother did was to find a hospital on the way to school. She said to me, “You should see a doctor before you go to school every morning.” I was a sickly girl, and I often fainted from anemia. I had to walk so long to school. She said, “If the doctor agrees, you can go after the check-up.” A neighborhood girl stayed with me always, and we went to the hospital together. He often said, “You shouldn’t go today,” but even though the doctor said “No,” I went to school after telling the doctor “OK!”
I was fine on the way to school, but I often fainted because of anemia on the way home. I fainted about 10 times in one year and one term.
When my children were born, all 3 of my children were born prematurely, but they were born safely at last. However, the first one was about to die because of excessive bleeding, so they seemed to feed him a kind of blood-forming medicine instead of giving him a blood transfusion.
【The Lost Memories Come Back】
The trigger of the memories beginning to come back was at the age of 63, after 58 years had passed. Every year, we had been asked to go to the Memorial Ceremony by a cooperative association. I went to Hiroshima that year for the first time with my grandchildren. We had to turn in a report to the Cooperative Association, so I was thinking about the floating lantern ceremony. When I was wondering if that ceremony had been done at the time of the bombing and if the lanterns floated away safely I remembered that it was muddy when I did it, the rocks were almost crumbled. “What? Who did it?” Suddenly I remembered the image that I had floated a lantern before. “That river bank was so muddy and squelchy at that time, but why?” and I remembered those kinds of images one after another. “That floating lantern was for Toyohiko-chan who was found dead on the river bank.”
Toyohiko-chan was in the 1st year of elementary school and one of my cousins. He had not been found on the day of the bombing after he went to school, and it took 3 days to find him on the river bank. When I remember him, I was thinking that “Oh, it was a lantern for Toyohiko-chan,” and “Why was it that muddy?” I wondered. A lot of my memories came back in a flash. I could see the scene of a lot of people hanging down from the sides of a bridge. “My grandma cried at that time,” “Why did she cry then?” “Yutaka-chan was so pitiful.” I gradually remembered things that had happened one by one. However, when I was remembering, I started to cry and I couldn’t continue to write the report.
【No Kataribe – “People who Tell Stories of the Past” – Will Be Needed in the Future】
It was so hard to continue to tell my story that I wanted to stop, and I didn’t want to be a Kataribe, people who keep telling their own stories, anymore. If possible, I felt that I didn’t want to tell anyone my story. However, I need to continue to tell my story in order that other people do not become Kataribe. We must stop war happening again. We must stop using Nuclear Weapons. That desire makes me continue to tell my story now. I want to abolish Nuclear Weapons, abolish Nuclear Weapons from all over the world, so I’m being patient and continuing to tell my story. I never want anyone to become a new generation of Kataribe in the future.
【My Last Message】
I want you to start with things close to you. My mother said to me “Whenever something happens, spread your arms wide at once. And join together to help each other by making a group of people whom you can reach.” I have lived in such a way always. I wonder if it’s because of the story of after the Atomic Bombing. What she meant was “spread your arms to make a group of the people who touch your hands when you reach out. And help each other to evacuate safely, and to take some action.” I think that’s what she wanted to tell me. When you say “peace,” it tends to seem vague, sometimes it is too vague. Peace means the peace of anything, such as peace in a family. The life of any small living thing like an insect is a kind of peace.
All lives are important not only human life. I’d like to be against any war in order to save the lives of all living things on the earth. I do want young people to know how happy they are that they haven’t experienced life in a war. They have no idea about war and that’s why I really want them to listen to my story. I will continue to tell my story from now on, hoping that you can live your life happily without any war. That’s my wish.
The witness – Rumi HANAGAKI
(75 years old at the time of recording)
Planning and Writing: Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims
Translation: Masaharu KANDA, Takahiro ABIRU
Translation Supervision: Craig Smith
Translation Coordination: ＮＥＴ-ＧＴＡＳ (Network of Translators for the Globalization of the Testimonies of Atomic Bomb Survivors)
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