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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781463443368 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 12/28/2011 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 112 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
Read an Excerpt
Masako's Story
Surviving the Atomic Bombing of HiroshimaBy Kikuko Otake
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2011 Kikuko OtakeAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4634-4338-2
Chapter One
My Family
July 1945
My father took this picture less than one month before the atomic bomb was dropped. I recall that I did not want to have my picture taken on that day. As I was crying, I had a sad face. Was it because I had a presentiment that something terrible was going to happen?
Flight Path of the Enola Gay
August 6, 1945
The US B-29 bomber Enola Gay departed from Tinian Island near Guam at 1:45 a. m. on August 6 (Japan time). It dropped the atomic bomb over Hiroshima at 8:15 a. m.
1. I Can't Talk About It Today
My dear Daughter.
On that morning,
When I went out to the backyard,
I found a flower blooming on a squash vine
Which the former resident1
had planted in a small garden in the
yard.
Oh I tell you, I was so glad!
'Soon we'll have some squash to eat!'
That's what I thought that morning.
Then I saw a lady with a white parasol
Walking beside the railroad tracks.
'It's going to be another hot summer day today,' I thought,
'Best to hurry up and finish the laundry.'
So I went back into the house,
And when I started washing some clothes in the kitchen in a big
wooden tub,
It was just at that moment,
WHEN ...
The Atomic Bomb fell.
The lady flew like a doll from the railroad tracks,
And landed on her back with her parasol still in her hand,
Dead.
Ah, that moment!
Oh, that day!
How horrible it was.
Hell on earth.
.......
I don't want to think about it any more.
Sorry, not now.
I can't bring myself to tell you today.
Mushroom Cloud
August 6, 1945
(Approximately one hour after the explosion at 8:15 a. m.)
The cloud generated by the explosion rose upward on strong currents of turbulent air. As the pillar of radiation-laden soot and smoke reached the bottom of the stratosphere, it spread horizontally to a diameter of several miles, forming a giant mushroom cap.
2. Oh! I Can't Continue to Speak of It!
I lay unconscious.
How long?
I don't know.
It felt comfortable,
Like taking a nice, long shower.
Gradually ... a sound filled my ears:
— Children,
— Children screaming,
— Crying for their mother.
I freed myself by pushing off the debris ...
Our house had collapsed around us ...
And I discovered that both you and Koji had been buried
Up to your chests in the rubble,
So I crawled across the broken beams and roof tiles,
And I pulled both of you free.
The gashes on your heads ...
Like a fountain,
The blood spurted down your smudged faces.
I then looked for Shoichi and found him struggling, alone,
To free himself from the wreckage.
He was bleeding from his head and brow.
And oh!
His left eye was smashed.
'What?
Our house?
Our house has been bombed!
A bomb ... it fell directly on our house!
That's what I kept thinking at that time.
I dug through the broken roof tiles, timber, and crumbled stucco
Searching for the emergency bag I kept handy during the war.
I found it!
Then I took out the first-aid kit.
You were bleeding so badly.
I tried to stop the flow
By binding your heads — yours and your brothers' —
With the big triangular cloth bandages.
But the blood still gushed!
The blood clung to your hair
Pasting it to your skulls and streaking your faces,
So that you, daughter, looked like Oiwa-san.
The white dress you wore was filthy and tattered,
And dyed ghastly red by the blood.
I searched for more bandages.
But there were no more ...
I could do nothing ... but watch my children bleed.
It was then that I noticed,
Flowing down my forehead ...
Something ... wet.
I wiped it with my hand ...
My palm was covered in blood.
I was completely unaware until that moment
That the blast of the bomb had shattered the kitchen window;
Fragments of glass had cut the right side of my head, face and
shoulder.
I bet there was a dozen slivers of glass or more.
I pulled out as many as I could,
Later.
Just under the elbow,
My left arm was ripped open — the gash about four inches long —
Like the inside of a pomegranate.
And through the gash, a bone flashed ivory white.
Fires were breaking out everywhere ...
We had to get away.
I stood you three in a row.
"Now hold hands!" I said.
My eight-year-old Shoichi stood on one side, I on the other,
You, my five-year-old daughter, and three-year-old Koji stood in
between us.
Then I heard our next-door relative, Aunt Kazuko calling,
"Tasukete ! Tasukete kudasai !"
I could only see her hand.
She was buried in debris.
Nobody came to help us.
Fires were burning near,
So I had no time to waste.
I gathered all my strength,
And pulled ... and pulled ...
Her house was big — two stories tall —
And the thick pillars and stout timbers were like a vise.
To this day, I still don't know how I managed to pull her free
Despite my torn left arm that flapped like a fish.
The Misasa Elementary School, our official neighborhood shelter,
Was already in flames.
So I fled with you to the sandbank on the Yamate River in
Uchikoshi.
When we arrived at the sandbank,
I was horrified to see
That it was packed with
Grotesquely burned,
Gruesomely wounded,
People.
Some were completely red, with raw flesh burns.
The scorched skin slipped from their bodies,
And hung in loose strips, like paper streamers.
And their faces!
Eyes, noses, mouths, ears had all melted down.
And the hair ... the hair ...
Had burned away from the scalps.
A man's arms and legs ... were almost torn away ...
We saw his bones protruding like bloody skewers.
And One ...
Had a gaping hole in his chest ... his ribs were exposed.
And One ...
His belly was split open,
And oh, he was holding his bowels in place!
And One ...
His skull was smashed open ...
One eye dangled down on his cheek.
And Another ...
His head was split so badly ...
I couldn't tell which side his face was on.
All were streaked with blood and dirt.
The lucky ones still wore shreds of pants,
Scorched and tattered though they were.
But most wore no clothes at all.
Their garments were shorn away
Or burned off by the bomb's searing blast.
I saw masses of naked, bloodied, burned flesh, gasping faces so
disfigured
That I could not tell the men from the women.
This one ... that one ...
I had never seen such horror!
Were they truly human beings?
I once saw a painting of hell.
But I swear this sight was more nightmarish than that.
Your Dad's oldest brother, Uncle Koichi, had fled
To the sandbank, where we were ...
I saw that his entire body was scalded ...
He was dressed in what I thought was shredded cloth,
But which turned out to be strips of his own flayed skin.
His chest was a garden of burned flesh.
The skin from his cheeks and chin hung down,
A shredded mask instead of a face.
His eyes were barely open.
And the raw flesh of his nose had fused with his swollen upper lip,
Which had peeled back to expose his teeth.
He was burned bald.
He held his hands out in front of him, like a ghost.
And from each tip of each finger,
The skin hung down in glove-like pieces.
I asked him, "You are Koichi, right?"
He nodded,
And then knelt and died.
The day turned as dark as night.
I had no idea what time it was.
But even with those dreadful injuries and burns, no disorder
reigned.
The crowd moved in a strange silence.
Everyone was dazed, in shock,
And lay, crouched, or stood, like ghosts on that sandbank.
Because your clothing was shredded, dirty and bloody,
You needed new things to wear.
But our house was already in flames,
And I couldn't go back for more clothes.
So, after taking off my monpe top,
And draping it over you and your two brothers,
I decided I'd go to Aunt Harada's house in Yamamoto
To get some spare garments that were stored there.
Leaving you and your brothers on the sandbank,
I set out alone on foot.
On the way to Yamamoto,
I walked with hundreds of men, women and children who were
maimed and badly burned.
The burned ones looked just like Uncle Koichi.
Their faces were red or purple and swollen,
And they held their arms up in front of them,
Their skin hanging like tattered cloth.
Some were lucky enough to still have hair,
Though their hair was in a wild nest, covered in dust, and ashen
from burns.
Hardly anyone was uninjured.
Streaming with blood, with their heads bowed and silent,
They lurched on towards the suburbs,
And away from the threatening flames and black smoke
That wreathed the shattered city.
Here and there, the injured and the burned
Collapsed to the ground,
And dyed the ground dark red with their blood.
Those who were walking,
Those who were dead,
They all looked the same:
Ghosts, goblins, and monsters marching to hell.
Thinking back,
I must have looked exactly like they did.
I arrived at Yamamoto and looked for Aunt Harada's house,
But somehow I couldn't find it.
Suddenly I felt a sharp pain in my foot.
"Ouch!"
I must have stepped on a nail or something.
For the first time since the bombing,
I felt the sensation of physical pain.
I was surprised to notice that I had been barefoot all along.
All the roads were scattered with the debris of flattened houses;
Broken roof tiles, shattered glass, nails, timbers, crumbled stucco,
and huge splinters were everywhere.
Roads were blocked by fallen utility poles and trees,
Charred by the intense flash heat of the bomb.
Power lines hung down overhead, and some lay tangled on the road.
Then my thoughts turned to you three children.
'Would you be able to withstand such horrible sights?'
I berated myself for leaving you alone,
And resolved to go back to you immediately.
But when I came back to the Uchikoshi sandbank,
I was horrified to find that
You children weren't there.
I searched frantically for you.
I was afraid you might have tried to go back home.
But someone said,
"Don't go back home! It's an inferno!"
"Don't go back to search for your kids!"
I felt as if I would go mad
From my frustration and fear.
Then a badly injured lady in her sixties
Who was too weak to flee said,
"I saw three little children crying for their mother:
'Mommy! Mommy!'
They had a monpe top over their heads.
The pattern of that top was the same as that on your monpe pants.
I wonder if they might be your little ones."
She also added that many evacuees had moved to a nearby bamboo
grove.
So I went to the thicket by the Yamate River that she pointed out
to me,
But could find no sight of you.
Other survivors, however, told me
That a group of people had taken refuge under a bridge
Because of the rain.
That rain is what we now call "black rain," isn't it?
'Which bridge could it be,' I thought to myself.
'How would I ever find you and your two brothers?'
I panicked.
But then, luckily, I came upon all three of you
Huddled together under the first small bridge I checked.
All of you were crying, "Okaa-chan! Okaa-chan!"
Oh. I can't tell you how happy I was to find you!
Thinking back, we were really lucky.
If I hadn't put my monpe top over you,
You might have become atomic-bomb orphans.
Under that bridge,
There was also a naked soldier with no cuts or bruises.
But as he was so pale and gray,
His undressed body looked like a marble statue.
I wondered at that, but was forced to leave him.
We slept on the sandbank that night,
Because everywhere we looked,
The city of Hiroshima was a scorched plain
Still smoldering with some flair-ups here and there.
The sandbank seemed like the only safe place.
Our house had burned down,
And we didn't have anything like futon quilts with which to cover
ourselves.
So we pulled up vines of the yamaimo yam
That grew on the slope of the river bank,
And covered our bellies with a few strings of them
Just to feel like we had blankets,
Then tried to fall asleep.
With the tattered clothes that were stiff with caked blood,
With the streaks of blood smeared on our dirty black faces,
With the shards of glass still stuck in my face and shoulder,
With my left arm gashed and limp,
All four of us,
Tried to fall asleep on the sandbank of the Yamate River.
It was so cold that night.
The next morning,
Soldiers distributed some rice balls
That had been provided by relief agencies.
During the war, food was so scarce,
And rice balls had become such luxury food.
We hadn't tasted them for months.
Yet you children didn't eat them.
The rice balls had been grilled to prevent them from spoiling.
But looking at the charred rice balls,
You started to wail,
Seeing a reflection of the charred, black skin of so many people
Suffering around us.
Indeed,
A great number of corpses were floating in the river,
And the burned and the maimed lay moaning nearby.
Are they alive?
Are they dead?
A burned woman kept on begging feebly,
"Mizu, Mizu!"
Then suddenly she ceased her calls.
Silent, forevermore.
After seeing so many deaths,
I felt emotionally numb.
I wasn't even sure
If I myself was still among the living or the dead.
But one incident stands out clearly in my mind.
It occurred maybe three days after the bombing
To a woman who, crying over the dead child in her arms,
Found that maggots had hatched on the corpse,
And had started to wriggle in and out of it,
Feasting upon it.
Because she couldn't leave her dead child like that,
She dug a shallow hole in the sand.
And, as there wasn't wood left in the city,
She filled it with some yamaimo vines she had pulled up by the roots,
And cremated her child by herself,
Sobbing and wailing as the flames grew higher.
Around Hiroshima,
So many people were cremating their parents and children like that.
The air was filled with the rank, squalid smells of the wounded and
the unwashed,
With the stench of so many rapidly decomposing bodies,
With the sharp smell of cremated human flesh,
And with the ashen odor of an entire city in ruins.
Ah, that time on the sandbank.
I don't know how to describe it all.
It was truly a living hell on earth.
Never.
Oh, never again.
..........
Oh, I can't continue to speak of it!
Fleeing Survivors
August 6, 1945
The burn victims held their hands out in front of them, with sloughed off skin hanging from their fingertips like gloves. These survivors were lucky to still have their clothes. But many other survivors were left naked because their clothes had been shorn away or burned off by the bomb's searing blast.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Masako's Story by Kikuko Otake Copyright © 2011 by Kikuko Otake. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Letter to the Reader....................xv1. I Can't Talk About It Today....................4
2. Oh! I Can't Continue to Speak of It!....................7
3. Nam'amidabutsu....................22
4. The Remains of Uncle Yataro....................34
5. Human Beings Don't Die Easily....................40
6. That's Why You Are Still Alive Today....................44
7. "Watashi no Ningyo"....................49
Two Haiku About Masako....................55
1. Atomic Bomb....................59
2. Skinning Tomatoes....................60
3. Anniversary....................61
4. I Believe in God....................62
5. WHY....................63
6. No More Radiation....................64
7. Breast Cancer....................66
8. Medicine to Prevent Radiation-Induced Cancer....................67
9. I Will Ask YOU....................68
10. What Would Happen to Our Bodies?....................69
11. Nuclear Deterrence....................70
12. Don't Repeat the Evil....................71
13. Looking Back, Moving Forward....................73
Epilogue....................87
Selected Bibliography....................89
About the Author....................91