1. Chizuko Kawakami, then 12 years old, was gathering at her school along with her younger sister and her friends to perform labour services.
2. Blinded by a sudden flash, when she regained her sight she saw a strange cloud in the sky.
3. Right in front of her, people were dying left and right. It was a horrible thing to witness for a young girl who was just beginning to come of age.
4. Though we called it ""school"", we didn't have summer vacations or even classes. As ""students"", all we did was cut grass and worked to turn it into fertilizer as a labor force. We worked every day.
5. We had one ""teacher"" called Mr. Katayama, an old man who would sometimes come down to check on us and show us what to do next in his notebook. I still remember it well.
6. There weren't enough textbooks to go around for everybody, so a bunch of us would all share a single book and copy its contents by hand. That was the extent of our student life.
7. I would usually wake up around 6:00. My father would hear the noise in the kitchen and wake up too. I got up quite early.
8. I had to leave my house early to get to school on time, as it took 30 minutes to get there. I would take my sister. We would all line up by our respective villages and go to school together.
9. When I became the oldest, I led them to school. The younger students didn't go to school much, so on the day the bomb hit, it was just the older students that were there.
10. On the previous day, we went to school to work like usual carrying baskets on our backs. Once there we cut the grass, piled it up in a single spot, then left it there. We were able to go home by noon.
11. I would carry a sickle from my house. Then, once I got to school, we would all gather in the grounds without ever setting foot in a classroom. The bomb went off at that time.
12. Someone said two B29s flying, so I looked up at the sky. At that moment, something flashed and made a cloud of dust so thick I couldn't see a thing. I hurriedly lay on straw piled up in the halls.
13. After that, our teacher lined us up by village again and sent us all home. Once I got back, I found that everything inside our house, even the ceiling and glassware, had been blown away.
14. My little sister happened to not be feeling well that day, so she had stayed home from school.
15. About 30 minutes after that, people following the railway tracks that ran right next to our house started showing up, some were carrying a bicycle, and some were taking their children.
16. Their feet often hurt from walking along the railway tracks, so they would often come by and ask for spare sandals or water. Many of them were badly burned.
17. I didn't know what to make of the cloud. Back then the only bombs we knew of were incendiary bombs. A child like me had no way of knowing what had just happened.
18. I had heard all kinds of stories about incendiary bombs before, but I had no idea what kind of bomb could produce that sort of cloud.
19. I remember only learning about how scary nuclear bombs were long after it was dropped.
20. Later I would go back and see people living in scorched tram cars in the middle of burnt-down fields, or in barracks.
21. When I went to school the next day, there were lots of victims. From then on, I started going to school to help care for them every day. One of the reasons I did that was because I would be fed lunch.
22. They had a little wheat in them, but they were still the thing I looked forward to most every day. However, because this was summer the onigiri didn't smell so good.
23. We didn't have any bandages. Everyone brought their own yukatas from home and used them instead. We didn't have any medicine either. We painted oil and talcum powder.
24. When we took off the makeshift bandages, there would often be tiny maggots underneath. ""That must be why it stinks here"" I would think as I pulled them off.
25. If I asked one of the men ""Where does it hurt, Mr. Soldier?"" after the war had ended, they would say ""We're not soldiers anymore, so you can just call me 'mister'.""
26. Every day, they would post the names who had passed away at the front of the classroom. We had a small mountain at the back of the school, so we would take them there and burn them all at once.
27. It created a strong smell. Our fathers went there too, and we would go back later to pick up their bones, but I was never sure which bones belonged to whom.
28. We didn't separate the bones according to people, after all. Every day that I went there, there were always new people that had passed away. Each of the four classrooms were always full.
29. We weren't using the new campus, but there was a big embankment to the side of the athletic field on the old campus. The campus on that field was all full of victims.
30. My sister was three years younger than me. Only the students of advanced department were volunteering then, so my sister stayed at home.
31. Sometimes I think they would have radio gymnastics. I think she participated in them now and then.
32. This is more or less how things were until September rolled around. Those who had gone to the city, or my classmates who had gone on to higher education were missing.
33. Our fathers went out every day to search for missing people. I'm afraid I simply don't have the words to communicate the tragedy of the situation.
34. ""Tonight we can finally use electricity while we sleep. I'm so happy."" That was the first thing I said, as up until then, we hadn't been able to use electricity at all.
35. From then on, because my father had such good handwriting, the village would ask him to write down important things, which he would then receive something for in exchange, like rice.
36. At that time, we were also receiving aid, which all together barely allowed us to scrape by. Once I graduated from an advanced department of an elementary school, I immediately started working.
37. Around 1947, my father's big toe began to swell purple, as if he had frostbite, and he became unable to walk. Now I think that it was probably a type of illness caused by the bomb.
38. Bit by bit, it started to rot away until he lost all feeling. About a year later, he became bedridden, and his body had swelled up purple all the way to here.
39. A doctor from Tsukiyama Hospital, which was near the water source in Hesaka, would come to treat him, but he never got any better. We didn't have antibiotics or the things we take for granted now.
40. In his final days, he once told me ""Sister, I want to eat rice gruel."" As long as he eats, but if he didn't that would be the end of it. In the end, there was nothing to be done but make it.
41. My father said he wanted to use the bathroom. As I helped him to his feet and tried to help him, he suddenly collapsed and died on the spot. He never even got to eat the rice gruel I made for him.
42. I thought ""I wish I had been nicer about making the gruel for him."" He would call me ""Sister, Sisiter.""
43. He raised me and my sister all on his own, without ever remarrying. The poverty is one of the greatest memories in my life.
44. A-bombs must never be used again. We need to recognize how precious and blessing peace is, and to appreciate it. I've said this many many times, but it's still true.
45. Not even a hundredth of the true atrocity of Hiroshima can be expressed unless you were there to experience it. We had nothing to eat, nothing to wear.
46. We kept military supplies, like salt, in our village and stored them in farmers' huts. I say salt, but it was rock salt and pitch-black. Even so, I still remember eating some, just to have something.
47. When I look at everything we have now, and how you can buy anything in the world as long as you have money, it's something I never could have imagined in that time when we literally had nothing.
48. I don't want anybody to go through what I did again. I correspond with Dr. Yoshida fighting for nuclear disarmament in Mutsu. My wish is that all nuclear weapons may one day be abandoned for good.
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