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| TAKEDA Kuniyasu（TAKEDA Kuniyasu） |
| Gender |
Male |
Age at time of bombing |
14 |
| Recorded on |
2004. |
Age at time of recording |
73 |
| Location at time of bombing |
Hiroshima(Direct exposure Distance from the bombing hypocenter:1.6km) |
| Location when exposed to the bombing |
Futabanosato, Hiroshima City [Current Osuga-cho, Minami-ku, Hiroshima City ] |
| Status at time of bombing |
High school or university student |
| Occupational status at time of bombing |
Second Hiroshima Prefectural Hiroshima Junior High School |
| Hall site |
Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims |
Dubbed in English/
With English subtitles |
Dubbed in English |
Kuniyasu Takeda was 14 years old when the atomic bomb fell 1.6 kilometers from the hypocenter in Futabanosato, exposing him to radiation. As he was pulling weeds on the Eastern Drill Ground with other mobilized students, his upper body was burned. He says that the effective treatment for his keloids were the bones of cremated people. Afterwards, he began working as a teacher and sharing his story with his students.
I lived in Kasumi-cho, which is now called Nishikasumi-cho. It was right next to the Hijiyama Girls' High School. All the girls were out as mobilized students, cleaning up scrap material to be repurposed. I got a part-time job which involved walking around and gathering scrap material with a cart.. After a great effort, I managed to get into middle school. At first we had classes about twice a week in the mornings, but soon we were sent out every day as part of the student mobilization program. We demolished houses around public facilities like the Prefectural Office and the City Hall. Sometimes, we went and dug air-raid shelters in the sides of the mountains near Hiroshima.
【Hiroshima Before the A-bombing】
At the time, all the houses in Hiroshima were made of wood and painted black, so I thought Hiroshima was a great, beautiful city.
【My Family at the Time】
My family consisted of my mother, older brother, younger brother and me, 4 members. I was directly affected by the bomb while working in the student mobilization program at the Eastern Drill Ground. My little brother experienced the blast from less than a kilometer away. My mother was about four kilometers away. My older brother was also in the part of the student mobilization program.
【The Situation That Morning】
We had all gathered together at just 8 o'clock. We had to line up in a row in single file. I was in the frontmost spot, and it was right around then that I heard the sound of the B29s. I wondered what it was, and looked That's when I saw the B29s flying around this area. One of them was circling lit up brilliantly by the morning sun. I noticed a stark white parachute drifting towards the ground. I didn't know at the time was that it was actually an instrument designed to measure the effects of the explosion.
【The Moment of the A-Bombin】
Its color was like nothing I'd seen before or since: a sort of yellowish, bluish flash of light. The next thing I knew, it felt like the bomb exploded over my head. I was knocked to the ground. It honestly felt like I'd been pounded down with a mallet. The force shook my body to its core. I will never forget that shock.
【The Disaster Right After the A-bombing】
Those who were burned directly, yet reported being cold even though it was summer. My little brother came home at around 3 o'clock that day. I felt bad for my brother in those conditions. Back then all we had to cool ourselves with fans, so I fanned my brother as hard as I could. But then he said he was cold and asked me to stop. Children were moaning in pain. Their parents held and comforted them as best they could. When I got back around noon, there were some people performing Buddhist chants in their yards.. I don't know anything about hell. People often say ""It was like hell,"" but I'm not so sure. A foul stench permeated the air. Each bomb victim gave off a bad smell. We put wood together, arranging it in a double cross like a campfire, and line up human bones there, and burn them. We piled up bones high all along Ohko Elementary School.
Someone said that if we ground the bones up and applied them to our burns, we would get better. I applied some of the bone medicine to myself as well. After three or four days of this maggots stopped appearing on me. When the maggots showed up in my little brother's ears, we would pick them all off one by one with chopsticks. Every day we would pick the maggots off, and they would come back. This was repeated. However, getting enough to eat was very difficult. Since we barely had enough food to go around, we gave rice porridge to my brother. He kept saying ""I don't want to die, I don't want to die.""
【Symptoms Right After the A-bombing】
Eventually we decided to leave for our mother's hometown. My mother was still in her 40s, my older brother and she carried our little brother until we reached Yamagata. Whether it was from exhaustion or the radiation, he got diarrhea. The doctor told him it was dysentery. My aunt and uncle were none too pleased with this news. They thought that it was a communicable disease, so he was made to stay in a separate room away from everyone else. He died about a week after that. He kept saying ""I don't want to die, I don't want to die.""
【Discrimination Against A-bomb Survivors】
When I talked about Hiroshima, the professor asked me, ""Were you there when the bomb hit?"" and I answered honestly ""Yes."" and was turned down almost immediately. My wife is also from Hiroshima, and her brother is an A-bomb victim as well, so that's why I continue to speak about this. Many people say that the second generation of A-bomb victims suffer genetic effects as a result of the radiation. My brother's grandchild, a third generation victim, is afflicted with a mysterious disability. The doctors have no idea what may have caused it.
【Fear of Aftereffects】
When my wife first got pregnant, we weren't able to tell anybody. I was always afraid, but not even my wife knew because I never told her.
【Aiming for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons】
We hear countries say frequently that they are working towards disarmament, but the fact is that there are over 3,000 nuclear bombs still in existence. Each of them is hundreds of times more powerful than the one we experienced. We're told the weapons are a necessary deterrent for preventing war. But we believe that the movement toward the abolition of nuclear weapons and people's wishes for peace is acting as that deterrent. Normal bombs just consist of explosive force and heat. But nuclear bombs also include radiation. This is a major difference. The explosive power of a nuclear bomb is unimaginable. Furthermore, radiation remains long after the bomb has detonated, and its effects on humans are immense. This is why I feel so strongly about nuclear weapons, and why I am calling for their ends.
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*Many more memoirs can be viewed at both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Peace Memorial Halls.
*These contents are updated periodically.
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