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ITO Akira(ITO Akira) 
Gender Male  Age at time of bombing 18 
Recorded on 2005.11.14  Age at time of recording 79 
Location at time of bombing Hiroshima(Direct exposure Distance from the bombing hypocenter:2.0km) 
Location when exposed to the bombing Senda, Hiroshima City [Current Naka-ku, Hiroshima City]-Street Car 
Status at time of bombing Armed Forces member or military personnel 
Occupational status at time of bombing Supply Corps (16710th Akatsuki Unit), Ship Communications Troops, Training Ship Corps, Ship Headquarters, Army Department, Imperial Headquarters 
Hall site Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims 
Dubbed in English/
With English subtitles
With English subtitles 

Mr. ITO Akira was 18 years old at the time of the bombing. He was stationed in Hiroshima City as a naval communications soldier. When I was on a streetcar returning from Ujina-machi to Senda-machi, I was struck by  a fierce light and a deafening roar. What I saw as I fled for safety was like something from another world. To this day, the sight of hideously burned people begging for water remains burned into my memory.
 
Ujina-machi was the site of Ship Headquarters, Army Department, Imperial Headquarters. During the day there were many people there. However, at night everyone went home. Thus, there was nobody there to guard the place or to put out fires if there was an air raid. I think that's why my Officer Candidate Group was given the job of guarding the Headquarters. After spending the night at the Headquarters on August 5, I was planning to return to Ujina-machi by street car the following morning. That morning, there was no air raid alert. The street car was headed for Hiroshima Station. As the street car veered left and approached the Miyuki Bridge, I was preparing to get off. Because the train was coming to a stop and I was used to riding this line, I knew we were close to the station.
 
We were slowly approaching Senda-machi Station when suddenly I was blinded by a flash of light. At that moment, I saw a smoke-like substance coming towards me. I felt this but I didn't hear anything. Then, I couldn't see anything. The street car stopped. It was a sudden stop so everybody fell on top of each other. I sensed danger and tried to get out of the car.  Everybody was crowding the exits and pushing each other. I was among the last people to get out. I glanced at the driver seated in the front. It was summer and he was wearing a white short-sleeved shirt. His shirt was drenched in blood. I thought he had been hit by a bomb that exploded in front of the street car. The driver was on the floor. The people who had been standing toward the front of the street car were also on the floor. I jumped out of the street car. It was as dark as night and I couldn't see anything at all. I couldn't see beyond my own feet. I wondered what had happened. I wasn't injured. I was in shock trying to make sense of the situation. I stood there. I  don't know for how long.
 
Then gradually, the light returned. The electric poles had fallen and wires were drooping down. The neighborhood that was there just moments before was gone. Everything was flattened. I smelled plaster. The wet smell stuck in my nose. The neighborhood was completely flattened. There was no one there. There was not a sound. Eventually I heard an announcement to gather at the nearby Senda-machi Elementary School. It was about 200 meters from the street car tracks. The street I used every day was gone. The houses had all collapsed and the street was no longer there. I arrived at the elementary school and saw that the sturdy two-floor building was flattened. The roofing was gone and the timber poles were jutting out. The building had been destroyed in an instant. Only the school grounds remained unchanged but the collapsed building covered half of it.
 
There had been a great catastrophe and I was dumbfounded. In front of the elementary school there was a stream. Something was creeping in the stream. I went to see what it was. It was people who had fled there for safety. It was a heartbreaking sight. They didn’t have the strength to get up. They had piled on top of each other. Their entire bodies were burned black. They looked like rats. Their voices were spiritless. The little hair that remained on their heads was all frizzled. I could just barely make out their eyes and mouths. Their clothes were mostly burned off. Only rag-like remnants remained. Of course they were without shoes.  Dozens of people lay there suffering. "Soldier. Water, water," they cried in barely audible voices. It sounded like the last desperate pleas of the dying. I could not resist giving them water. There was some clean water in the school water supply. Our superiors ordered us not to. I knew they would die if I gave them water, but they would die anyway if I didn't. If that was the case, I thought I might be responding to their true wishes, as in the ritual of moistening a dying person's lips. I thought it couldn't be helped if these people died as a result of drinking water. So I did it. As I was giving them water, I saw a fire coming in our direction.
 
I think there were people still trapped under the collapsed houses but we fled anyway to Hijiyama Hill. Finally we were able to reach the foot of the hill. The barracks of the main force of the army had all collapsed. We rested a while in the wooded foothillls. There were many injured people around us. We couldn't do anything to help these people. We had no medical supplies. That night the fires made Hiroshima look like a giant furnace. All night my immediate surroundings were lit with the reddish glow of the fires. It sounds inappropriate to say this, but it resembled a beautiful sunset. The red glow lasted all night, visible even in the woods of Hijiyama Hill.
 
Afterwards, we went to the Ship Training Division next to Ujina-machi's Ship Headquarters. Soldiers were being treated there. They were soldiers associated with our group of officer candidates. They were all half-dead. There were endless rows of such soldiers. The days were hot but I thought that these injured soldiers no longer felt such ordinary sensations. They were no longer in a human state where they could feel either pain or relief. Their skin and muscles had melted away. The neutrons of the atomic bombing radiation destroys human tissue. These people were still breathing but their muscles had melted away. A terrible stench of rotting meat and death drifted around that place. It wasn't just one or two people. There were endless rows of injured people. We didn't have medicine to treat them. We applied merbromin to their wounds and that was it.
 
At first we dressed their wounds. But the bandages would soon become bloated with pus, blood and bodily fluids. Their remaining muscle tissue was rotting. There were little things moving about on their bodies. They were maggots. Maggots were on their faces and in their eyes and noses. They were on every part of their bodies that had been burned. The maggots were tiny at first but after about a week they would become this big. They moved constantly. At first we picked them out but there were just too many. Those maggots were truly frightening. Their mouths, eyes, and noses were bloated to about twice their original size. They couldn't speak or see. We couldn't make out their original faces at all. Even if we asked their names, they couldn't answer. Only those whose name tags happened to remain could be identified. They couldn't talk. Their lips were bloated to about twice their original size. Each body was a sea of maggots, blood and pus. Of course, everyone suffered from high fevers. Our job in treating them was to fill buckets with water and put wet rags on the people's foreheads. It wasn't effective at all. It was just for consolation. The seriously injured could only say, "water, water." They wanted water.
 
But our superiors ordered us, "Do not give them water under any circumstances." We would wet rags with water from buckets on the floor by their pillows and place the wet rags on their foreheads. The water in the buckets soon became filthy. The people with enough energy would crawl at night to the buckets, stick their heads in, and drink the water. We couldn't tell them not to do it. We just pretended not to notice. By the following morning or a little later, they would all be dead. The people were close to death anyway. I didn't see the point of denying them water.
 
Every morning, there were more deaths. There was plenty of wood because the houses had collapsed. We gathered the wood, lined up the bodies and placed names on them, then performed the cremations. Like many others in Hiroshima at that time, I cremated bodies for the first time in my life. We burned the dead until they turned completely to ash. As we were cremating bodies, we were ordered to assemble for a radio broadcast. I didn't know what the broadcast was going to be, but I went at noon and listened to it. There was a lot of static and it was very difficult to hear. But I heard the Emperor's voice for the first time in my life. From the mood of the broadcast, I understood that the war had ended.
 
On September 10, I boarded an open wagon of a cargo train on the present-day Sanyo Line. I rode the whole day, getting blackened by soot, and finally arrived at Ogaki Station. From there I went to the Kintetsu Line's Kuwana Station and went to the place my family had evacuated to. My family never imagined that they would ever see me again. They had heard that Hiroshima had been totally destroyed. They thought it was certain I had been killed.They were very surprised to see me.
 
My message
First of all, we should not wage war. In the future there will be wars of science. In our times, wars used "human bullets."  If we look further back to the Edo period, wars were based on one to one combat. Canons were used in the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars. Then came machine guns, airplanes, and finally the atomic bomb. The weapons have grown more and more powerful. They are now weapons of mass destruction. It is now possible to kill hundreds of thousands of people with one atomic bomb. It is not possible to kill this many people with machine guns. With weapons of mass destruction, it is no longer possible to wage war and survive. If any country launches a nuclear-armed plane to attack another nation, there will be retaliation in kind. If there is a massive nuclear-bomb exchange of attacks, human beings will perish. No one will survive. Even if people are not affected immediately by the bomb, there will be radioactive rain. The water and the soil will be contaminated. If the food chain is contaminated under such circumstances, no one will survive. I believe that in the future war should cease to be a viable option to solve disagreements. I think that if we do not use our existing economic power and technology for military purposes and instead direct these resources completely towards benefitting human life, this Earth will become a utopia.
 
Translation: Students of the class "Nuclear Issues through the Translation of Hibakusha Accounts" (Yokohama National University, Fall 2014)
Translation Supervision: Kenji Hasegawa, Craig Smith
Translation Coordination: NET-GTAS(Network of Translators for the Globalization of the Testimonies of Atomic Bomb Survivors) "
 
 
 

*Many more memoirs can be viewed at both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Peace Memorial Halls.
*These contents are updated periodically.
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