Ms. YAMAGUCHI Yoshiko. 13 years old at the time of bombing. She was exposed to the bomb's radiation in Kami-yanagi-cho, 1.3 km from the hypocenter. Her mother and she pulled her father out from the debris. And they evacuated to the river. A tornado whirled up something like matchsticks and tissue papers all the way along the river. But she realized they were pillars, not matchsticks, and tatami-mats, not tissue papers that fell down all aflame. "The radiation risk was actually very dangerous. Lessons from A-bomb experiences have no effect on the government at all," she said.
Around the time the atomic bomb was dropped
My father was a transferee, so we stayed in Osaka for a long time, but we spent two years in Hikari in Yamaguchi Prefecture. Soon after that, on New Year’s day in 1945, we relocated to Hiroshima. A large house in Nobori-cho was vacant, which used to be a miso producer’s house with a wide earthen floor. I felt overjoyed. It was my first time to live in such a big house, located just in front of Hiroshima Central Broadcast Station. But it seemed dangerous to stay there since the U.S. planes targeted the station. And so, we moved again to Kami-yanagi-cho, a short distance from there, to make a new start. And August 6 came.
On August 6
When we moved to Kami-yanagi-cho, we evacuated our grandparents to Kaitaichi-cho, Aki-gun as it was dangerous for them to live there. We were preparing lunch to visit them with because there was no school on that day. My father was just getting dressed to go to work, in his pants and shirt, when they dropped the atomic bomb. Someone outside said, “A parachute’s dropping!” and my brother went up to the rooftop clothesline to see. I was in the kitchen and had just gotten up to look outside when I saw a flash of light. I was just thinking, "Oh, a fire bomb must’ve landed in my yard," and then I was blown away; I was a little unconscious from that point on. Later, some said the bomb made a blast, a massive thumping sound, but I hadn’t heard that.
When I awoke, it was pitch black. I found myself trapped under the house’s wreckage and things were falling, so I couldn’t get out. Struggling, I found I was lying on the paper screens and sliding doors removed and stored in the corridor for summer ventilation. Luckily, from an opening I made on these screens, I got out. I went outside, stood up, and looked around, but couldn’t touch anything, even with my hands outstretched. It was pitch black again, so I thought the whole roof had enveloped me. Yet there was only silence. What a scene. I called out, “Mom!” but no response came. I couldn’t understand what had happened. After a while, it was getting light enough to understand I was steeped in the darkness of dense dust. It was all too confusing at the time.
In a while, as it got lighter, my mother was standing in the yard, but she was really a mud doll, or rather, she was standing like a mud dumpling with eyes and a nose that I couldn't make out. My brother, first up at the balcony clothesline, was the last to fall from there, and the three of us met. Then I heard my younger sister crying. Something had been wrong with her that day and she was still sleeping under a big 6-mat mosquito net. That whole mosquito net was crushed together, and we could see her face right there, but there was nothing we could do to break the mosquito net—nothing we could do about it. She was like a fish caught in a net. The three of us worked very hard to shift the mosquito net little by little. Finally, my sister was able to escape.
I don’t know how long it took. I saw no one around us. But I heard some voices outside and asked the people there to take care of my little brother and sister. I told my siblings, “Go together with them.” No matter what, our father just didn’t appear. So, understanding that I had to find Father, I asked the people to take my brother and sister away from there to a safer place. Desperate, I called him loudly and repeatedly. Finally, his response came from somewhere underfoot. Hurriedly clearing away torn sliding doors and paper screens at my feet, I found that the top of Father’s head was visible above the debris. Removing each clay tile from around him, we exposed his upper torso, and I tried to pull him out by placing my hands under his armpits. But he cried out, “Ouch! That hurts!” We both realized that the nails of a shattered built-in cupboard were cutting deep into his back, as his back had been blown against these. We still had to pull him out forcibly and his back had long rips 5cm wide made by the nails. The blazing fire consuming our neighbor’s house was drawing nearer when we finally rescued Father.
Evacuating to the River
My father, mother, and I went to the river, and we walked to the river’s edge, where people were gathering in groups. I had seen few heavily injured people till then. From that point on, I had no sense of time at all. Gradually the strong fire started to turn, and was ebbing. The people around us were herding themselves down to the sandbar that stretched over a wide area. I recall that, after a while, I realized there were many victims who’d suffered severe burns lying there covered with straw mats. I was so scared of what I’d see that I gently offered them water without looking at them—several times. People were saying, "If you give him water, he will die," but I didn't listen to them. I brought river water to people who said they wanted it.
Also, from what I remember, the river wasn't burning and the fire was burning all around it, so that was the only place where the air pressure was low. And due to this, something tornado-like came all the way along the river, like that famous picture of a whirlwind spinning with fire. I saw burning matchsticks and tissue papers whirling up in the distant air, I assumed. But I realized they were pillars, not matchsticks, and galvanized sheets or tatami-mats, not tissue papers… …that fell down all aflame. They landed where everyone was, attaching to things around us. The tornado effect pulled a riverboat straight up in the air, and it came slamming down rumbling and rolling alongside us. That was scary.
Went to Eastern Drill Ground to Find my Little Brother and Sister
At dawn, Mother led the search for my younger siblings as small children like them could not go so far. Trying to find them, we turned corpses over and over again but we could not recognize them because some were charred. We were saying, “Little sister is so small that she might be burned to ashes. And we should go over to Eastern Drill Ground.” At that time, if anything happened, we were supposed to go there because it was spacious.
When crossing a bridge to the ground, we three saw many people with severe burns on their forearms, walking with us. I didn’t know yet that strips of their skin were drooping down, but the people were ghostly, plodding along with their forearms sticking out like this. “Humans can take ghost-like postures,” I thought to myself, heading for the Eastern Drill Ground. Then, from a distance ahead, a neighbor shouted, “Your brother and sister are here!” My younger brother seemed to have a slight burn on his right arm, the neighbor was just combing her hair.She had camellia oil, which she put on the wound. Then she pressed over it a sheet of tissue. Brother looked neat, wearing clean pants. My sister got a cute dress, and looked adorable. She came toward us saying, “So happy to be back together again!” My mother was so happy to see them alive because she almost believed they had died. All five of my family members got together finally. My A-bomb day was over.
Effects of Radiation
After the war, we didn’t wear padded air raid hoods any more. When students who were indirectly A-bombed started coming to school, they wore the air-raid hoods again. They didn’t want anyone to see it if their hair began falling out. After a while, some said they had a fever, and others, bleeding gums. They’d stop coming to school. I heard some of them had died. I thought I would surely die too, because those students were only indirectly affected by the bombing. They hadn’t been exposed to radiation for two whole days as I had been, but they’d died anyway. My post-war days began when I started to feel the horror of A-bomb radiation effects.
Once airstrikes ended, all of my friends wanted to avoid talking about what they experienced. But I’d believed the airstrikes in Tokyo and Osaka had caused as much suffering as we had felt in Hiroshima. But my true post-war story started soon after I realized how dangerous the radiation risk actually was.
Nothing about my family outwardly gave the impression that they were A-bomb survivors. However, Mother had not been feeling well for a long time. But no doctor would say it was due to A-bomb aftereffects. But afterwards she was constantly sick for almost 20 years, when at last she killed herself. She swallowed all the medicines given to her at once and then she was gone. I feel very sorry for her. Newspapers began to report that A-bomb survivors were in poor health and so male survivors could not find jobs. It was also reported that women survivors should neither get married nor give birth. Many of the survivors were trying to conceal their experiences.
Marriage
Until I was about 35 years old, I was always worried that my health would deteriorate. But when I was about 35, I didn't feel sick anywhere at all. Then, I began thinking that living alone at the age of 80 and 90 might be difficult. I thought that if this happened, even if I’d live to be 70 years old, I’d be fine since half of my life had already passed. So I decided to have an arranged marriage and quickly get married. I didn’t hide that I was an A-bomb survivor. My partner understood it and accepted me. We had children. I felt worried about what might happen concerning their health.
Anxiety about Tomorrow
Thinking in retrospect of what I have done, I haven’t been self-driven at all. I have done things according to someone’s requests. I can't stop what I'm asked to do in the middle of a project, so my tasks have been connected for 5 or 10 years now. I sometimes wonder if this is the reason why I am still doing so many things. One thing I am really embarrassed by is not sending New Year’s cards on time. They are sold in November. By December, it's like "get ‘em out of here," but I didn't feel like I had a month longer to live. So, I reasoned to myself that New Year's greeting cards should be written on New Year's Day, to say, "I'm doing well this year, too!” I never write New Year's cards till New Year's Day arrives. I still can't stop doing that. Every year I think, "This is the year I will write and ‘submit my report’ at the end of the year," but I am too busy at the end of the year to do so. And at New Year's, I write New Year's cards as my New Year's ‘work,’ which is like my most outward rebellion.
I simply don’t believe “tomorrow is another day” because so many people died even by indirect exposure to the A-bomb. That’s why to me, living a meaningful life is to get on with the tasks of others’ requests. I have lived a rather serious life, or so I think to myself. I am a little tired because I have been living with the idea that there really is no tomorrow.
Lessons from A-bomb Experiences
It can't be helped that the war caused this situation, but the Japanese government did nothing to clean up their own mess afterwards. I am feeling the same for sufferers of pollution-related diseases. When I was involved in the Association of A-bomb Survivors, I found many people here in Kanagawa Prefecture who never talked about the bombing and never married because they didn’t want it known they once were Hiroshima residents. There are many who die alone, after saving up money as hard as they can and asking a niece or nephew to take care of the rest. When I see such people, I think I am living a rather happy life, but still have to think about such things.
For 10 years they kept us in the dark about A-bomb related matters. The hospital of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission only took data of the radiological consequences from in-utero A-bomb survivors. Patients were not even treated, just given candy, we later learned. I have known all these things but I couldn’t have done anything about it. I knew I couldn’t accomplish anything by myself. So, I feel sorry for sufferers of the Fukushima nuclear accident. They were discriminated against when they drove cars with Fukushima number plates because radiation’s effects are transmissible. But A-bomb survivors’ wanton sufferings have no effect on the government at all. We have often told ourselves, “We are human guinea pigs.” But we are not even useful that way. It’s humiliating.
The government has built many nuclear plants and they allowed dilapidated nuclear fuel transporting trucks to run without any speed limit. As a member of Association of A-bomb Survivors, I went to the bus stop of Kawasaki in Kanagawa Prefecture because I believed “Transporting nuclear fuel that way can cause a serious accident.” We warned them by brandishing a banner which said, “We are monitoring nuclear fuel shipments.” I don't think it's a good time to tell you that that didn't help. But I feel rather happy to see anti-nuclear power demonstrations going on every week. I’m not energetic like before but I hope they’ll keep protesting against the government.
Translation: Sakamoto Kishio and his 2022 seminar students of Kyoto University of Foreign Studies.
Supervision of translations: Stewart Wachs, Sakamoto Kishio.
Translation coordination: NET-GTAS (Network of Translators for the Globalization of the Testimonies of Atomic Bomb Survivors).
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