On August 6, 1945, I was running and walking, hurrying as fast as I could with my classmates over the approximately 80 kilometers from my mobilization site to my home in Yoshijima-hagoromo-cho, Hiroshima. As we approached the city we started hearing the groaning voices of the injured. We saw a horse with its abdomen bright red and swollen up like a balloon. I also saw dead bodies lying pitifully. The more we saw such things, the more worried we became about our families.

In the morning of the 7th, I finally arrived at the place I thought, based on the river and the roads, my house must have stood. I just stood there stunned, forgetting all about the passage of time. I have no idea how long I stood there. I met someone from the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries housing complex where we lived. He told me my whole family had died. However, I had previously heard that my mother had been badly injured and was carried away on a stretcher.

That person from our housing complex somehow produced a large urn. Lifting up the light tiles as if they were piled on pure cotton, I ignored the smoldering and the odor to pick up the ashes of my sisters and put them into the urn. I picked up some bones that still had shape, and others that collapsed into dust when I touched them. As I did, the faces of my little sisters floated before me. I called their names and could do nothing to stop the endless tears. Then, when the urn was filled with bone and ash, I held it and sat there for a long time.

It was twilight. Again the person from our housing complex came and said that those from Mitsubishi Housing who survived were all taking refuge at the factory in Eba. He took me there. Our neighbors said, ""It's so sad about the Nishiokas. It was all we could do to escape. There was nothing we could do."" All they did was cry and cry. In fact, having been blown through the air and slammed to the ground, conscious only of being alive, their first priority was to run away with the others who could. However, I couldn't do anything but worry about my mother. She might have been dug out, but was unconscious and badly injured.

The next day and the day after that I went to the burned ruins. I searched for my mother but was never able to find her. My other sister, who was just younger than me, was mobilized and working near the hypocenter. I heard that her entire group was killed.

My father was working at the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries plant in Kumamoto. I think it was August 11. I was about to go to Kumamoto with another family from the housing complex, so I had gone with them to get a disaster certificate. I was still worried about my mother, but I left for Kumamoto from Koi Station to visit my father. I still vividly recall that near Koi Station my eyes were stinging from the smoke of countless corpses being burned in an open space. Nearly a week later, I heard red swollen bodies were floating with the current near the beach. Even my child's mind could see what a tragic thing it was. I came to a painful understanding of the horror of war.