1. Mariko Yamamoto was at home, just about to have breakfast with her elder sister, in Uchikoshi-cho when she saw that light. With the flash, the entire house came falling down. She was 18.
2. Trapped under the house, the sisters helped each other out and ran to the Ota River, where they were caught in the black rain.
3. On the morning of the 6th, I was just about to sit down to breakfast with my sister. We sat across from each other. Then the window on my left flashed.
4. We had been joking around up until then, instead of eating. I guess we should have eaten more quickly. Anyway, there was this flash of light. We had no idea. I looked toward the window.
5. It was as though the flash disbursed after that, because then it was dark. I couldn't see. And my ears. I couldn't hear a thing. It had become dark and silent.
6. The next thing I knew I was buried in roof tiles with only my head sticking out. More tiles came falling.
7. It felt as though these tiles were silently aiming only at me. Of course that's impossible, but that's how it felt.
8. They came falling and every time one hit, my blood would spew out because of the pressure. Blood pressure. Just momentarily, mind you, but after a while it felt like a blood shower.
9. I couldn't believe what was happening. My sister called to me. ""Mari - "" I could hear that. I guess that was when my ears recovered.
10. So you know how people often refer to the bomb as Pikadon with the flash and bang. Well I didn't hear the bang. I didn't hear anything. Just the flash.
11. My sister came crawling over. She was on all fours, covered in dirt. When she saw me buried in roof tiles, she cried at first.
12. ""Oh no, what shall I do? Mari, what shall I do?"" She was panicking, crawling all around me. I just said ""I'm here, I'm okay. Really I'm okay.""
13. I told her I was okay but I needed her to get the roof tiles off of me. Then she started crying again. My face was all covered in dirt.
14. The old houses, when they crumble, well they're made of wood and a lot of sand. I guess I should call it clay, but it was like sand. She was crying through the sand.
15. By then she was wailing, but she took one tile off of me at a time and threw it into the distance and it took a long time, but she finally got me out. I was completely buried.
16. Then out front, outside that window I saw the light from. It was all on a slant. We crawled out to the yard and we had a well for putting out fires. Every house had one, actually.
17. We went to the well and pumped up water to wash our faces with. I had to wash, because blood was getting in my eyes and everything I looked at was red. So I washed as hard as I could.
18. I was washing and washing when the lady next door came over and said, ""Mari, let me wash my face, too."" ""Please, please,"" I said and pumped up some water for her. She started to go like this.
19. I looked at her washing and saw that her eyes, both of them, were popped out about this far and dangling. I could see the veins in her eyeballs that were just hanging there. ""Ohhh…"" I thought.
20. She kept talking to me, asking me how Miyoko was, one thing and another, but I just couldn't stand looking at her like that. I stopped pumping and went back in the house with the slanted window.
21. My older sister always had a first aid bag with her, but it had blown away somewhere. She searched and finally found it. It was covered in sand.
22. So well my head was hit by the roof tiles and so I had cuts all down my face. Horizontal lines. So she bandaged me up somehow and I felt relieved.
23. Well you know that bleeding will stop if you apply pressure and cover it up so I was relieved that my bleeding had stopped. But then my sister noticed she was bleeding, too and sat down.
24. So I finally realized there was something wrong with her. I asked and looked and her leg, right here. She had a cut that was 10 or 15 cm wide.
25. It looked like sliced ham. You know, you could see where the meat was and the fatty part around it. Like that. ""Ohhhh…, "" I said.
26. So then I started to panic. Like my sister was doing. I crawled around her saying, ""What should I do?"" I didn't know what to do. It was bleeding.
27. ""Oh"" I thought and for a while I just fluttered about, clueless. Then I realized I should just help her the way she helped me. I found a string and tied it around her leg, here, to stop the bleeding.
28. But it didn't work as a tourniquet. Not with my strength. It just kept bleeding. Her face turned completely white and so did her lips. I was positive she was going to die. I panicked again.
29. I knew that if I didn't do anything, she would die. I had to do something about it. I couldn't let her die. So I carried her and crawled out from the slanted window and got outside.
30. [tragedy]
31. Every house in the neighborhood was on a slant or completely flattened. All sorts. And naked people. A neighbor was walking completely naked. I was thinking, why is he naked?
32. Then one after another, the people I met, most of them were naked. I could see they had pant strings or belts, but then their skin was draping from over that. Burnt skin.
33. And their hands. You'd think they were wearing gloves, because the skin was detached. And if they hung their hands low it would hurt because of the blood rushing down. So they kept them up like this.
34. I couldn't do anything for anyone. I had my sister on my back. So I just wanted to run away toward the river. To the armlet of the Ota River.
35. I tried to get up there and then I saw a hand. Someone was sticking a hand out of a crushed house. The hand was calling for help. I didn't hear a voice. It was just the hand calling.
36. I knew the woman who lived in that house by the river. I thought it must be her, but again, I had my sister on my back. There was nothing I could do. I had to save my sister first.
37. And my sister. Was she ever heavy . She was clinging to my neck, making it difficult for me to breathe. I was like this, but I had to save her. So finally I got up to the bank.
38. Up on the bank I saw people that made our wounds look like scratches. Their arms and legs were falling off. Some, you could see their insides popping out as they held their stomachs.
39. Women were walking with their breasts dangling, falling off. People with their earlobes dangling. It was unbelievable.
40. And what was funny was those who, well their shoji doorframes had stuck into their bodies and they were walking with these still stuck in them, like flagpoles or something.
41. And middle school kids along the river bank, completely burned. You could see where they had been wearing a hat, because they had hair to here, but the rest was gone.
42. You couldn't tell where their nose, eyes, mouth, where anything was. It was all wobbly and just holes in their faces, a lot of these kids.
43. Then black rain started to fall. Slowly at first. Big drops. Completely black. My sister's blouse had black polka-dots. Wow, and that was rain.
44. Some people were happy for the rain, thinking that it might put the fires out and some were happy thinking they could quench their thirst. They stood with their mouths wide open.
45. Oh and where we were. I forgot to tell you. I'm sure you know Yokogawa Station. Our house was very close to the station. That day, that rain fell the hardest around Yokogawa.
46. The southern part of the city didn't get that rain. It was sunny the whole day through. I asked people from Eba or Ujina and they said there was no such thing.
47. Apparently that rain was concentrated in our area, for a long time. It felt like hours. My sister and I took cover in the pine grove but the pine grove wasn't enough. We got drenched to our underwear.
48. You all know now, I'm sure, that the black rain was filled with radiation. For us, well we were victimized by it for a very long time afterwards.
49. But that night, the people in the next neighborhood came to get us and we slept outside the leader's house. We cut bamboo and put up a mosquito net.
50. And all around that mosquito net that night, there were people dying. All night, we could hear sounds of pain or people feeling cold.
51. Some children were crying for their mothers. People crying, probably middle school children. I heard their crying voices.
52. Then about three days later my mother, oh I have two younger brothers and they had evacuated to a house in the country.
53. My mother and my two brothers had gone to a place called Yasumura and from there, my mother brought a wheel-barrel to get us.
54. As soon as my mother found out about the bomb, she came to the city to look for us. She couldn't stay away. But she wasn't allowed in. Guards had put up a net and weren't allowing people in.
55. My mother was a very quiet person, but not this time. She had quite a bout with that guardsman, but it didn't work. She still wasn't allowed in. It took her three days.
56. [health conditions afterwards]
57. I figured my face must look pretty scary. And it did. It was all purple and swollen. You wouldn't want to see it.
58. It's not like those ghostly figures that only part of their face is unbearable. It was my entire face. Purple, with lines and splitting, and part of it was infected.
59. It kind of looked like you had spread marmalade all over my face. I wondered if I would have to live with it for the rest of my life.
60. Then the second round, or should I say, well this isn't pretty, but I had diarrhea. It was bleeding. And a fever of 40 Celsius. It was hard. I wasn't sure if life was worth it.
61. My mother did everything she could for me. She made all sorts of things for me. She went to the other side of the mountain to get goat's milk for me.
62. She did all she could, but I didn't want to eat. I was determined that I was going to die. I didn't eat. Of course that made my mother worry all the more.
63. So she took me to moxibustion. She took me for acupuncture. She did everything but I kept saying don't, I'm going to die anyway. I was sure I was going to die.
64. Then my temperature wouldn't go down, but after a while. Then on around the 15th or so, I started to feel much better.
65. As you know, that was the day the war ended. The 15th. I didn't get to listen to the Emperor's broadcast, though.
66. The moment he said we lost, my father, being a military man, wasn't in Hiroshima at the time. He was stationed in Hokkaido.
67. My father wasn't around, and having lost the war, I didn't know what was going to happen. I went to the headquarters on the 16th because I was curious.
68. I went there but nobody was alive. The only people who were alive were me and others who went there looking for family members. Everyone who had gone in that day. They were all dead.
69. I thought, if I had been here that day, I wouldn't be alive today. But going there was a mistake. My situation got worse because I went to headquarters.
70. It was a 2nd contamination, I suppose. Or the 2nd exposure to radiation. I got that and so my temperature went up again. I was delirious.
71. My sister, too. She had diarrhea like me and her temperature was high. But she was in better shape than me. I started to get worse after I went to the headquarters.
72. So my sister went home to Wakayama first. After a little while the army doctor told me that if I have a home in Wakayama, then I should go back there.
73. So, I didn't know what was going on, but people all around me were dying. They were suffering horribly. Spitting blood. Blood was coming out of their ears and eyes and nose, too. And mouth.
74. Blood came out of every crevice and in the end they died. I was told that staying here would do me no good, that I should go home as soon as possible.
75. So the following year, it was still cold. In February or March, I moved back to Wakayama. I was in Hiroshima until then, though.
76. [my message]
77. I think my biggest message is for everyone to value life. I go to places giving lectures to children. My title is ""Life. Nothing is More Valuable.""
78. If life is truly valuable, then don't engage in war. Really. You're only born into this world once. Spend it fully, from end to end. Each and everyone of you. And live.
79. I'm not talking about any country in particular. Not just Japan. I'm talking about all people.
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