ITO Miyoko was 16 years old at time of the bombing. Her father was a serviceman in the Japanese Navy and she was born in Kure. She moved to Yamaguchi where her grandmother lived and attended Yamaguchi School of Education. When she was a 2nd year student of the prelimanary course of the school, she was mobilized to work at the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries aircraft factories in Nagoya but air raid attacks became more violent and she was moved to a factory in Toyama prefecture. Air raid attacks were, however, severe in Toyama as well and they had to go back to their hometown Yamaguchi.
They left Toyama on the morning of August 6th and when they changed trains in Osaka in the evening, an escorting teacher said "we don't know how far the train we ride will take us. Hiroshima has been devastated just by a new type bomb. They headed for their hometown Yamaguchi through Hiroshima in which victims of the atomic bomb were screaming in agony. They could view the faraway sea because Hiroshima was rubble.
Ms Ito, who taught at junior high schools for a long time, worries about the current state of the world in which there are some students who say "I like wars" or "it is interesting," and she says "I have to tell them what I have experienced as much as I can."
Life before the Atomic Bombing
My father was a sailor in the Japanese Navy and I was born in Kure in which there was one of the naval main bases. There were some hometown servicemen in every regions and they could shoot guns to some extent as qualification of soldiers. And my father said "why dont' we go back to our hometown?" because air raids were less severe in rural areas than in the city. We were in Niho (their hometown Niho Son, Yoshiki Gun, Yamaguchi Prefecture). Adults were my grandfather, grandmother, father and mother, and I was the oldest among my sisters. There were 8 persons altogether. We were sisters.
There were a School of Education in each prefecture and Yamaguchi had one in Murozumi, Hikari City. When I was a 2nd year student of Preliminary Course, we were mobilized to go to Nagoya and I was very delighted. There was a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries aircraft factory to make airplanes in Minatoku, Nagoya, and a dormitory was also provided for us. I had never seen such a big city and was overjoyed but I was soon dissapointed and couldn't sleep well because of the air raid warnings everyday. We had to run away immidiately as soon as a siren went off even if it was in the morning and we were washing our faces. Air-raid shelters were destroyed everywhere by bombs and our dormitory was also burnt down; we were in a hopeless situation.
We, students of preliminary course of Yamaguchi Shool of Education, then had to move from Nagoya to Toyama. There was a station at Daimon on the Hokuriku line in Toyama Prefecture and a weaving factory near the sea side of the station. As for food, we had small rice balls when we were in Nagoya, but we were given two well-made rice balls for each and delighted, saying "It's great."
When we went to the weaving factory, we found two airplanes which were not so big. We were told, "you are going to assemble these airplanes." We were excited, as this was the first time in our lives we were inside an airplane playing with the steering wheel for fun during our rest periods. A thin plate made of duralumin was put between a wing and the fuselage, and highly skilled workers who came from the Korean Peninsula did the job of attaching the wings to the fuselage and putting the plates between them. We helped them; they said something like "Pass me an air hammer," or "a rivet, please," "Hold here." Those were our jobs.
But of course we were air raided a few months after our arrival. We were in the situation that the cities were completely destroyed in one night even in Toyama Prefecture and it was not a safe place anymore. One day we were told "You have done enough here. You are supposed to be school teachers one day. Ever since you entered the School of Education, you have been to many places because of the war and that is not good. Go back to your hometown and study hard." We were very glad to hear that in our hearts because we wanted to go home desperately. We expected that we could eat more when we got home. We, just 40 persons among many people there, ended up going back to our hometown.
August 6th
It was in the morning of August 6th when we left Daimon station. We knew nothing and arrived in Osaka in the evening of 6th on the way to Yamaguchi. When we got into the train, there was an announcement which said "we still don't know how far this train will go." "A new type bomb was dropped in Hiroshima today and there is a possibility that we will have to get off the train." These were not announcements over the train's PA system but from our escorting teacher. "It's just impossible. Just one bomb cannot do such a thing," we thought. We had gotten used to bombs.
Into Hiroshima
We were heading for our hometown and my heart beat with expectation, only thinking "I want to arrive there as soon as possible." We got off the train in the early morning, thinking it was Hiroshima but actually it was not Hiroshima but Kaitaichi-cho. The station was on a hill, to my recollection, there was nothing around us.
We didn't understand the situation well but it was still in the early morning twilight when we got off the train. We wanted to move from the platform of the station to the waiting room. 40 of us went to the entrance of the waiting room. The person who went first opened the door and drew her foot back, saying "Ah!" Everyone asked her, "What's the matter?" and we found many people inside but we didn't know if they were dead or alive. Some people were shedding blood and others were just moaning, their faces unrecognizable. There was a pile of dead bodies inside. We were so schocked at the sight that we couldn't go in.
We asked a station attendant what the situation of Hiroshima was and he replied that a new type bomb was dropped there the day before, but it was just the day before that the bomb was dropped and he knew nothing more. He couldn't say if we could go on there today. He was the only station attendant.
The Terrible Sight of the A-bombed Area
We decided we would head for Hiroshima station (on foot) anyway and we went down diagonally from the hill. When we were walking on the hill from which we could see the town of Hiroshima, the science teacher shed tears, saying "Ah!" "What's the matter with him?" we thought, and he said "I can see the sea." I wondered "Why does he have to shed tears just because he can see the sea? Hiroshima is close to the sea." It wasn't what I thought as he then said "There were many buildings here and I could not see the sea when they had been here." He studied at Hiroshima Higher School of Education and seemed to like mountains and hike around there. We said "Is that so?" but didn't understand the siutation well because there were no such collapsed buildings around here. I thought at that moment that he felt something that the new type bomb had an immense power to some extent. I later heard that the bomb had such a power.
We walked toward Hiroshima station but we didn't know at all which way to go. As we went down from Kaitaichi, it started to smell awful. I didn't know whether the smell was from rubber or something else. It came from somewhere but I wondered what it was; I had never smelled such odor before. We could only discern the tracks and what we could do was just to follow along the lines, and when we walked along the railway, we found various street signs blown onto the tracks as well as dead people.
What struck me most were connected passenger cars which were turned over. We all turned deathly pale at the scene, saying "Ah!" I thought if we had come on an earlier train, we would have been in one of those cars.
We walked toward the station of Hiroshima, crossing iron bridges, and found a pile of dead bodies underneath. I found more and more dead bodies everywhere on the roads. The iron bridges in Hiroshima were rather high over rivers in my memory. We had to crawl on some of those bridges that were not so warped (due to the heat of the bomb). As the sun was rising higher, the railings became hot and we could not touch them anymore. If you drew back your hands, you would fall. It was horrifying. It was high and you couldn't touch the river. I am still traumatized by this. When I have a fever or something, I sometimes have a nightmare where I am trapped on a high bridge crawling on iron rails.
As we approached a rural area, we found a school: Half of the buildings were destroyed but some others still remained. We decided to take a rest there for a while. I wondered if a door of a classroom would open; it was not locked and I opened the door to enter the classroom and found that there were so many dead bodies of babies inside. In some other classrooms, the dead were separated by age, and adults were separated according to sex; there were so many places like that. I saw so many such sites for a while saying "ah" but in the end I didn't want to see this anymore. We were starving and seeing such scenes. Some animals were dead and there was a dead old man on the tracks; we proceeded seeing various things.
Some schools were helpful for us because they were not completely destroyed and most of them could provide water. I thought water was so precious. Most of the schools were made of wood at that time and we didn't know when they would collapse. We searched for water through those partially destroyed buildings.
We did things like this and walked along the railroad and then reached Koi Station which was far from Hiroshima Station. The most delighted one was our escorting teacher. "Oh, I feel relieved. I hear that trains run smoothly from here," said he and we were all delighted, saying "I'm glad to hear that." On August 7th, we walked to Koi and when we got there, it became evening.
Return to Yamaguchi
We reached to Ogori; it was still before dawn but could see dim light. We could get on a freight train which carried charcoal; it was still early in the morning and there were no passenger cars running yet. We could get off the train at Ogori Station, Yamaguchi station, or Yuda. Some of my friends got off the train one by one already. I walked from Yamaguchi Station. I was told to walk on Nihoji street and went on and on through a desolete mountain valley.
I arrived at my home at half past five or six, I think. When a group moved, it was prohibited at that time to tell anyone your plans. So I could never tell my whereabouts to my family. That's why my family never thought I would come back from Toyama but I knocked on the door, saying "It's me, Miyoko," and my father and mother woke up finally and all of them came to the entrance.
My father later said to me"I tried to find your feet first." "Miyoko must be in Toyama and should never be here. It's still early in the morning and this could be a ghost; Miyoko must be dead," he thought. When he saw my feet, I had feet and my sisters started to cry and me as well, saying "Ah, she is Miyoko." "Welcome home. You look good. It's good, it's good" everyone said. My grandmother liked to talk to others so our neighbors got together gradually to see me, and I'm here now. What I was most delighted about was that I was alive.
Return to Shool
I returned to school soon. I don't remember when I returned there but I received a summons from school in a few days. And what our teacher first said was "Don't tell what happened in Hiroshima to anyone." We didn't know it was an atomic bomb in the wartime and were ordered not to talk about that. But we were gradually accustomed to it. One day, we were gathered at the gymnasium. We gathered at the gymnasium during a class because the emperor would tell us something from now.
(Our teachers said)"We lost the war but we don't know at all what will happen." "Anyhow we lost the war and we don't know if it's good or not to leave you here in Murozumi." "If something wrong happens, we don't want you to undergo anything bad." The occupation forces would be coming and the teachers didn't know what they would do; this is a women's garden, that is why, I think they were worried about that. We were all sent home. We were told "go home once and come to school again if you hear from the school."
Until I left school, I would ask a teacher over and over again, "Teacher, what will happen to the school, what will happen to the school?" "I don't know. I hope that everyone can study at this school again in the future, I don't know because it's beyond our abilities anymore," he said.
The textbook we used at that time was different from the ones you now use. In our text book, we had such an expressition as "Brutal America and Britain," a slander against US. They would use such words as America and Britain were like demons or beasts all the time. We were told, "If you think a textbook is no good you can burn it, hide it somewhere, paint it with ink, or do all sorts of such things." We went back to our room and said, "Let's keep this out with care" and "Let's keep the books of self-discipline carefully." "This book is dangerous because it has a bad word about America, so let's hide it behind the ceiling." We all did that kind of cleanup for about two days. In the meantime, I thought to myself, "It's hard and troublesome to go up to the ceiling. I wonder if I burn them," and I actually try to burn them. But the incinerator was full. I missed something, and I didn't know where I should bring them to, so I ended up taking them home.
Life after the War
What made me feel happy most was that there were a lot of things that were regulated until the end of the war; for example, now the electricity is on day and night. At night, we always put a cover on the light, so that the light wouldn't emit light and we would turn it off as early as possible. It took me about a year to really understand that I was going to be liberated from those kind of things one by one. The best thing was that everything was free. If I wanted to go to Yuda, I was free to go to Yuda, and then I was free to talk to the person next to me.
Fear of Discrimination
First of all, we held a reunion just because we could return safe to our homes. At that time, everyone said something like, "That was good," "There was something like that," "There were people like that," and "There were people like this from the Korean Peninsula." At that time, someone said, "we now get together here, but in fact we were exposed to radiation from our heads." And then the voices of everyone who said they were "worried about that" gradually spread. "Let's not get together anymore," someone said.
The reason for that was, "some people have sweethearts and others are going to get married soon; we were exposed to radiation and that would be a very negative condition." We decided "So let's stop this gathering." And I said, "Why don't we keep this on the record," but they objected to putting this on the record. We were thrown into confusion over how to have the reunion, and in the end, the reunion was ended, saying "Let's stop it for a while.".
Impact on Marriage
There was a hindrance to marriage. Even if a man wants to get married, when he gets home, his family members say, "The person isn't good." I also had a person whom I loved, but I couldn't get married and I thought it would be okay not to have such a troublesome thing. My father's biggest worry was, "I don't care if I have a son-in-law or not, but it's not good to have family members who have radiation depending on your decision. You can get married. In an emergency, I can help you in any way I can. Even if you stay at home and live, I will not let your child be an heir." He said something like that from early on. I thought, "I don't care about that, it doesn't matter what happens to my house."
With a Sense of Mission to Convey Her Experience I think it should be kept. I'm worried that even Earth or space could break down.
Anyway, now little kids like wars. They say it's interesting. That's what worries me the most. Bang, kaboom, clang, red and black dirt or something like blood rises up. That's interesting. And then it's funny to see how everybody falls down on the ground with a bang, by something like machine guns.
I'm not talking about the atomic bombing, but when I say, "I signed a petition against the war." I often go talk in kindergartens and one day a kindergarten student said, "Damn." I asked, "What's wrong?" and he replied, "I love wars. Damn! Don't be against them" But there are many such children like him. I'm very worried about what parents in today's society think.
What I'm doing may be a small lamp, but I think we have to expand the light So no matter how old I become, I have to keep talking about it even it's just a little.
Translators: Students of Graduation Research Seminar in 2022 of Kyoto Women's University
Supervising Editors: SHONAKA Takayuki, Paul Scott
Translation Coodination: NET-GTAS （Network of Translators for the Globalization of the Testimonies of Atomic Bomb Survivors)
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