1. Koko Mizuno was 14 at the time. She experienced the bombing in Katafuchi Town, 2.8 kilometers from the hypocenter.
2. She can't forget the gloomy sun, the crowds of victims, the life in refuge in the back hills and valley bottoms.
3. After the bombing, though she suffers from poor health and discrimination, she continues to help bombing survivors.
4. I was very hungry. My parents were struggling as hard as they could too. They would boil potato shoots for me, or if we had some mochi rice cakes, they would mix in with the rice in my boxed lunch.
5. Whenever there were nuts, sweet acorns, growing, I'd always eat them. When there were silverberries growing I'd pick some and eat them. But I was still always hungry.
6. I was a female school student at the time. Our school buildings were made of wood. In the gymnasium there were lathe working machines lined up.
7. We were learning drafting on the lathe, but we were under a warning, so about 50 of us were on the second floor on standby.
8. And then there was this incredible flash from the window, and it hit my eyes. The flash was just scary or just the violence of it made me go out into the 2nd floor corridor without thinking.
9. Right as I started running down the stairs the explosions started. And it threw me into the dance hall which was there. I had fainted.
10. And surrounding us about a meter away was a large mirror one square meter in size and it just shattered to pieces in front of us. If that had struck us, then I wouldn't be here talking to you now.
11. When I came to, only the glass and the mirrors were broken. We looked all around us in about a 1-meter radius and we thought ""we're safe."" We didn't go down, but rather went up.
12. When we went to the classroom there was a sea of blood. Kinoshita was like Tange Sazen. And She had an artery of her leg cut, the blood was spouting out.
13. And far from being able to get out the first aid kit, I didn't even know where anything was, so I called out ""Teacher, teacher,"" and then the teacher came running.
14. The teacher told me, ""you look fine, so go to the medical office."" The two of us said, since there were people with serious injuries, ""let's just clean up the glass around the beds,"" and we did.
15. I took her with me, that underclassman. And she said, ""Call my mom in."" The blood on her head was awful. And in the meantime, the teacher said ""people who are fine go home.""
16. The people all headed toward the mountains. It had been judged that a bomb had fallen in the neighborhood.
17. When I got to my house, all the tatami mats were tossed and standing up. There was an air-raid shelter in our yard, and my mother, older sister, older brother and my younger sister came out.
18. My father was at the Nagasaki naval command in Nishiyama. He said he was just a split-second away from having been crushed by the library door.
19. After I got back, there were bombing victims crawling up to the front of our house in a hideous state. Coming up like this from the city center.
20. The area around was all bombed. So although it was daytime it looked like the evening.
21. My mother hugged me and said ""I'm glad."" And at the same time outside, five or six people who had been completely burnt were being loaded up onto a two-wheeled cart.
22. So for three days and nights I stayed in the valley. Sometimes my friends and I could see it just kept burning outside. I recall the image of Ōmura army squad breaking the houses down at night.
23. He said, ""they've come to assist us."" And he said, ""I hope the flames don't come this far.""
24. It was a feeling like praying, but my thoughts about those people inside the flames, which I understand more and more afterwards, but at that time it was important to take care of ourselves.
25. Five children, including my mother and I stayed in the valley. And then the enemy dropped flares right down. I was wandering ""What are they investigating?""
26. Right about 10 years after, at age 24, I got married. I lived in Nagasaki for the 10 years after the war.
27. The Atomic Bomb? That was just terrible. ""You too, huh?"" ""Yes, I was also here at that time."" It went like that, like that sensation, all the people there were bombing survivors.
28. The following spring of 1946, a professor from Nagasaki Medical University said ""with these food shortages, no plants will grow for 75 years."" But look, in about half a year, the grass grew.
29. At the sports field now under the Urakami Cathedral, we've cultivated potatoes and sweet potatoes.
30. It became autumn. The potatoes that grew were big like this. Only about two would fit in a bucket. The radioactivity had soaked into the ground.
31. Saying, ""This is great, a record crop."" Dr. Ogino was also unashamedly proud. It was 1946, he said, ""Let's eat them here too and go home with full stomachs.""
32. When I had my first child, the family came to check. They wondered if I would have a healthy baby.
33. And then, the birth was a little later than the due date. It probably is not due to the effect of the bombing, is what I heard them saying.
34. It was like that, and even for us, it made me shudder to hear about how I had been drinking that water, the source water from Nishiyama which had had radiation, for 20 years.
35. My body tired easily. I was never the type able to do hard jobs.
36. I was able to give birth to 3 healthy children. My births went past their due dates.
37. And once when they did, they said bitingly ""Isn't it because of the bombing?"" But I would have been happy no matter what kind of children they were.
38. I also came to Toyama Prefecture in 1961 because of my husband's job. At that time all of the Toyama bombing survivors were bleak.
39. Of course in Nagasaki, it was expected that you were a bombing survivor. We lived in a kind of optimistic way.
40. Toyama A-bomb survivors are silent. They are from Nagasaki and Akatsukibutai soldiers. They're not as inclined to talk because they're men. Even when there was a gathering everyone was silent.
41. It was horrible, horrible, loading dead bodies and wounded up on the corrugated iron sheets. They always go on and on about how horrible it was. Whatever the sickness, they try to keep it a secret.
42. It was like an aspect that they absolutely wouln't divulge anything about to the world. I thought about just how far a place I had come to.
43. 40 years after, children born after the war along with their parents get thyroid cancer. The grandchildren are born handicapped with birth abnormalities.
44. ""The people who experienced hell are now vegetables."" And I said, ""Do you understand hell?""
45. Children who were conceived during the wartime are all fine, and the children hit while gestating are fine, but why do the younger children have to be ravaged by cancer like this?
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