Hiroshima (8 page)

In scenes of carnage—fire or calamity—in movies or plays, voices cry, “Ouch!” “Horrible!” “Help!” People suffer and writhe. But those scenes are unreal. When people are thrown suddenly into the carnage of an extreme situation, they utter not a single emotion-laden word but act silently on instinct. Just as if watching a silent movie, I, too, looked on at the quiet scene, not saying a word. From time to time gasoline drums exploded, the sound carrying in all directions.

Coming to myself, I took the street leading to our house. But at the beginning of the lane to our home, fires were spreading along the row of structures on either side. Flames crept along the ground. The two fires stretched forward from either side, as if joining hands, and in an instant the road became a sea of fire. The roadway functioned as a chimney, and a hot wind gusted through. The road ahead became a wall of fire, and flames completely blocked the way.

Sensing instinctively that I'd burn to death if I went farther, I reversed course, as if in a daze. I followed the trolley street, and suddenly, for the first time, like an electric current running through my body, wild terror ruled. Loneliness—my family's abandoned me!—and terror—I'm all alone!— seized my mind. I ran back and forth on the trolley street, searching desperately, crying “Daddy!” “Mommy!”

The trolley street from Funairi Naka-ch
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as far as Saiwai-ch
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was a human exhibition, inhuman forms utterly transformed. Naked bodies moving sluggishly, burned by rays and trailing blackened bits of clothing like seaweed. Moving forward, glass splinters from the explosion sticking into all parts of their bodies, spurting blood. People whose eyeballs hung down their cheeks and trembled; they'd been blown out by the sudden pressure of the blast. People whose bellies had been ripped open, trailing a yard of intestines, crawling along on all fours. Shrikes impale fish and frogs on dead tree branches, storing them to eat later; people, too, had been sent flying and hung from branches, impaled. I ran among these horrific humans, threading my way, crying out, searching for family.

Black smoke eddied violently, covering the area. Flames danced crazily, wildly. The trolley street, too, became dangerous. The terror I felt then sank into my heart; I will have it with me as long as I live.

Black Rain

Luckily, a neighbor found me as I was running about and crying. She too wore a chemise, and bits of glass pierced her entire body. She was dousing herself with pump water to wash off the blood. Her white chemise was dyed bright red. It was as if it had been red to begin with.

“Aren't you Nakazawa Kei?” she asked. “Your mother's on this road at the Funairi Kawaguchi-ch
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trolley stop. Quick, go!” In a trance, I headed for the Funairi Kawaguchi-ch
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trolley stop. The crowd fleeing in the same direction proceeded, naked bodies blackened, each holding both hands chest-high, leaning forward, just like the specters depicted in paintings.

In this sluggish procession, I noticed a strange thing. The parts of a person wearing white clothing—white shirt, white pants—were completely uninjured. White shirt, white pants alone caught my eye, bright, as if dancing in space, flickering. When the instant rays, hotter than 5,000 degrees, shone on people on the ground below, their white clothing acted as a mirror, reflecting the rays. By contrast, people wearing black were consumed instantly, clothing and body, by the radiant light. During the war, clothing that stood out and was easy for enemy planes to spot was outlawed, so most people wore dark clothes. Hence the number of those suffering from burns over their entire body increased several times over.

Struck by 9,000 degree rays, your skin immediately developed countless blisters, one connected with the next; scattered over your whole body, they grew to eight inches in diameter. When you walked, the fluid inside the large blisters sloshed with the vibration, and finally the fragile blisters burst, the liquid poured out, and the skin peeled off.

I wouldn't have thought human skin would peel so easily. The skin of the chest peeled off, from the shoulders down; the backs of the hands peeled; the skin of the arms peeled off, down to the five fingernails, and dangled. From the fingertips of both hands, yard-long skin hung and trembled. The skin of the back peeled from both shoulders, stopped at the waist, and hung like a droopy loincloth. The skin of the legs peeled to the anklebone and dragged, a yard long, on the ground. People couldn't help looking like apparitions. If they walked with arms down, the skin hanging off their fingertips dragged painfully on the ground, so they raised their arms and held them at shoulder level, which was less painful. Even if they wanted to run, the skin of their legs was dragging along on the ground, impeding their steps. Shuffling one step at a time, they proceeded, a procession of ghosts.

In this procession of ghosts, I made my way to the Funairi Kawaguchi-ch
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trolley stop. On both sides of the trolley street in Kawaguchi-ch
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were sweet potato and vegetable fields. The farmhouses scattered in the fields were leaning from the blast. Wide-eyed, I looked about the trolley street. There, on the sidewalk on the left, sat Mom. She had spread a blanket
on the sidewalk, set some pots beside it, and was sitting in her apron, face sooty, a vacant expression on her face. I stood in front of her. We looked each other in the face, silent, exhausted, and I sank to the ground beside her. I was overcome with joy and relief that I had finally found family. Soon I noticed that Mom was holding carefully to her chest something wrapped in a dirty blanket. I peeked inside the blanket and saw a baby, newborn, face red and wrinkled. It was a mystery: “Huh? Suddenly a baby. . . .” I looked again at Mom's tummy, and it had shrunk.

The shock had sent Mom into labor, and in the carnage of atomic hell she had given birth on the pavement to a baby girl. As she writhed in pain on the pavement, several passersby had gathered and helped with the birth.

Exhausted, I squatted on the pavement. Perhaps because of the effect of the radiation, I was nauseous. I vomited a yellow fluid, and I felt bad; I hadn't the energy to sit up. Trying to hold back the urge to vomit, dazed, I watched the scene unfolding before me. From the direction of town, the procession of ghosts continued one after the other, passing before me. Right before my eyes, skin trembled from arms now completely skinless, drooping twenty inches from fingers. I watched in amazement, “Skin really does come right off!”

Each person shuffled, dragging a yard of skin from each leg, so from way back in the direction of town, dust swirled into the air. When the procession of ghosts reached the trolley street, they climbed down into the potato and vegetable fields on either side, collapsed atop the plants, and fell asleep. Burned by the rays and blistering, their entire bodies were hot and painful, and the cool of plants against their skin felt good. Instead of blankets, they lay on plants. As I watched, the vegetable fields turned into row upon row of people whose skin had melted.

The sky suddenly turned quite dark, and when I looked up, a stormy black cloud had covered the sky. Large raindrops spattered against the asphalt and created a pattern of spots. Large drops of rain struck my head and my clothes. The surface of the drops was oily and glittering; it was “black rain.” Black spots clung here and there to Mom's clothing and mine. When I wiped the drops from my face with my hand, they were slippery. I didn't like how they felt. Somehow or other a rumor spread: “Those damned Yanks! This time they're dropping heavy oil from the sky to make Hiroshima burn easier!” The black cloud moved rapidly to the west, the black rain stopped, and the sky cleared. I never dreamed that this black rain contained radioactivity that forever after destroyed your cells.

We were lucky. Had we fled to the northwestern part of Hiroshima, we would have been soaked in radioactivity, quickly contracted leukemia, and died. Black rain continued to fall, concentrated in northwestern Hiroshima. Where we were, it rained a bit and then stopped, and we avoided being drenched in a lot of radioactivity. While I watched the pavement, patterned with large black raindrops and gleaming eerily, I was overtaken by drowsiness and, before I knew it, dropped off to sleep.

When, feeling as if I was choking, I opened my eyes, night had fallen. With no electricity and virtually no lights, it should have been pitch-dark, but all Hiroshima, leading city of the Ch
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goku region, was going up in flames, a waterfall flowing upward instead of downward. By the light of the fires, you could see clearly. The heat reflected from the flames blazing brightly had made me gasp for air and wakened me. I turned my eyes to the right, and on the shore of the lower reaches of the Honkawa, thick tree trunks had been piled high in a long row. The hot wind quickly dried the wood, and the fire spread to them, one after the other. The tree trunks made loud sounds, split apart, and flew up into the air. The heat reflected from the flames was hot; we moved right up next to the field's stone wall and shielded ourselves from the heat. The stones were cool and felt good. I looked up at the night sky, dyed red, scorching; smoke eddied in columns, and the flames reflected off the smoke. It was as if a double red curtain covered us. Watching that night sky, I fell asleep again.

Twice, three times, I was awakened by a sound as if dozens of insects had flown into my ears, flapping their wings. Already confused, I kept thinking, “What a racket! What is it?” As time passed, the sound became louder, and I couldn't sleep. When I listened carefully, it turned out to be a one-word chorus: “Water!” “Water!” From the fields on either side resounded the agonized chorus. I looked at Mom, and she too had been awakened by the chorus crying, “Water!” Mom said, “Those poor people—let's get them some water. Go scoop some up.” At her urging, I picked up a metal helmet that was rolling about on the pavement and pumped it full of water.

Mom found the cup we needed, scooped water from the helmet I was holding, and offered it to a person groaning, “Water! Water!” With a start, as if he'd caught the scent of water, he bent his head over the cup, and emptied it in one gulp. Then, three or four seconds later, he collapsed, his head striking the ground. Alarmed, Mom shook him and cried, “What's wrong?” but he was already dead. We offered the cup of water to others groaning “Water! Water!” and each and every one buried his or her face in the cup and drank it off in one gulp. And then, three or four seconds later, they all died, their heads hitting the ground. When we gave them water, they died, one after the other. Amazed at this strange phenomenon, Mom and I stood stock-still in the field.

On August 6, the day the bomb fell, this phenomenon occurred in the suburbs on every side of Hiroshima: when water was given to survivors fleeing the atomic bombing, they died. Quickly the rumor spread, “Absolutely don't give water to people with burns! If you give them something to drink, they'll die right off!” We, too, heard the rumor and believed that water was dangerous, bad. People clutched Mom's leg and mine and cried and pleaded, “Please, water!” Mom said to them, “Water will kill you. Do without. You have to do without,” and we brushed off the hands clutching wildly at our legs. When we walked about the field, we were plagued by hands reaching out, seeking water. The strange question remained: why did they collapse and die after drinking water?

On reflection, I decided it was death by shock. Medically speaking, it was fine to give lots of water to people with burns. With burns over your entire body, your flesh contracted and froze and you couldn't move or crawl, but lay in the field tormented by your body's physiological demand for water. With “water!” as your sole thought, you held on to life. Many people who had been burned went virtually crazy thinking about water. Give water to those in that psychological state, and they relax—“Ah! At last! The water I've longed for!”—and the result is shock: stretched taut till then, the thread of life is suddenly cut, and they die.

“Sonny, please! Water!” “Please give me water!” All over the field voices called to Mom and me for water almost until dawn. Soon, however, I fell into a deep sleep.

A Gathering of Ghosts

Hot, I woke up. Overhead, the August 7 sun was glaring down. A strange odor was wafting about us, an odor to make you puke. The odor—rotting corpses and all the stuff that had burned—was impossible to describe. I retched any number of times, bringing up yellow fluid. Holding my hand over my nose, I looked around. Half the people lying in the fields on either side of the road were already dead. The August sun hastened the putrefaction of those corpses with melted skin. When I turned my gaze toward town, ghosts came marching, sending dust up into the air; their numbers had increased over those of August 6, when the bomb fell. When they got this far, they collapsed in the fields on either side, one after the other, and their voices echoed sadly, always the same: “Water. Water, please!”

Dazed, with a fixed gaze and a scary expression, Mom was suckling the baby. Unable to stand the burning August sun, she told me, “Find something to give us shade.” Holding back the urge to vomit, I shuffled along the trolley street searching for likely objects. Things had been tossed aside on the pavement. A bicycle, steel helmets, clothes, and the like lay scattered. I found an umbrella, brought it back, and opened it over Mom and the baby, and I sat down, holding the umbrella over them.