Hiroshima (9 page)

On the street, the silent procession of ghosts continued. People hauled corpses in the fields by hand or foot, piling them up along the edges of the fields. The next ghostlike people to arrive collapsed in the spaces this opened up in the field. And in the same way, they too died, one after the other, and were added to the piles. I simply watched, struck dumb. The stench of death floating on the air became all the fiercer.

Around noon a truck stopped in front of us, and a civilian warden holding a megaphone called repeatedly to us, “We're distributing food, so come get it!” A stream of people who, like us, were living on the street squirmed their way toward the truck. Mom had me go: “Get some food!” Carrying a steel helmet, I lined up behind the truck. A straw mat had been spread on the truck bed, and on it was a mountain of rice balls. A man shoved a flat, square shovel into the heap of rice balls, scooped them up, and dropped them into the bowl or bucket each of us held out. The steel helmet I held out became a heap of rice balls. The rice balls had been grilled till the rice was brown. That way they wouldn't go bad so quickly in the summer heat.

I'd dreamed of white rice, but even with rice balls right there—rice balls made entirely with white rice—I simply had no appetite. Normally I'd have gulped them down in a second, but perhaps because of the strange odor or because I'd been bathed in radioactivity, I vomited frequently, spitting up the yellow fluid. Mom kept stuffing food into her mouth, saying, “For the baby, I've got to produce milk!”

That night, too, the great chorus continued from the fields on either side—“Water! Water!” I thought, “What an annoyance!” Still, I fell into a deep sleep.

Next day, too, we were plagued by the August sun and the stench of death. Not able to stand the heat reflecting off the pavement, Mom said, “Let's get out of here and go find some shade at Sarayama or Ebayama, beyond the end of the trolley line in Eba.” We concealed blanket, bowl, and axe behind a clump of grass; I took the metal helmet of rice balls, Mom carried the baby, and we moved off, holding the umbrella over us. Everywhere on the road there were large numbers of corpses, and the stench of death hung in the air everywhere.

When we got to the Eba terminus of the city trolley, there in front of us was the broad field, the army rifle range. We'd come here occasionally to catch grasshoppers, but now there were army trucks coming and going. Those coming were loaded with corpses. Soldiers lined up the corpses and cremated them. The smoke danced in columns above the field, and an ugly smell wafted, like the smell of burning hair. Next to the Eba trolley stop was a can factory. Climbing up the sloping road beside the factory, we went along the embankment of the lower Temma River toward Sarayama. At the foot of Sarayama people squatted, leaning against the slope, their burns and injuries rotting, the pus flowing. People lay fallen, blocking the path; they had already turned into corpses. Seeking shade, Mom and I pushed on up Sarayama.

When we got to the foot of a huge tree that seemed to promise shade, we found a circle of people, silent, squatting. We had climbed the hill searching one tree after another for shade, but the space under all the big trees was taken by burned and wounded people. Mom and I were shocked anew at how many people had fled to the hill and collapsed. We saw we wouldn't find shade, so we had no choice but to go back down the hill. With twigs for chopsticks, people with burns were often picking at their own arms and legs. When we looked more closely, we saw that dozens of maggots were seething, wriggling amid the pus flowing from putrefied burns. It must have been impossibly painful when the maggots crawled, so with these tweezers, people silently grabbed the maggots teeming on their bodies. We understood that, borne by air, fly eggs attached themselves to burns, and with plenty to feed on, turned into maggots with frightening speed.

By this time I, too, hurt—on the back of my head and the nape of my neck. When I touched those spots, the skin felt greasy; pus flowed. I realized for the first time that I had burns. In my dazed condition, the pain hadn't registered. An army relief tent had been set up right where we came down the hill. Mom urged me to go to the tent: “We're lucky. Quick, go and have them treat you.” The tent was surrounded by people with wounds and people with burns, all seeking treatment. I entered the tent to find it filled with people who looked exactly like Stone Age humans: their whole bodies were smeared with a white fluid (zinc oxide), white like coal ash dissolved in water. When I got to the military doctor, he scolded me, “We don't have any medicine, so there's no point in your coming here.”

One after the other, people waiting to be treated fell and lay on the pavement. It was a cruel, horrible scene; but when you got used to it, the bodies seemed merely like felled tree trunks, and you felt absolutely no horror. No matter how horrible the conditions to which they're subjected, humans quickly adapt to their environment.

When you slice into the stems of squash and cucumbers, juice oozes out. Seeing people who had smeared their burns with that juice, I asked Mom why. She told me, “It helps to paint burns with the juice of squash and cucumber. So do it!” So I too painted the wounds on the back of my head and neck with squash juice.

The Eba shore near the military hospital was teeming with people with burns and wounds. Those who'd got admitted into the military hospital and treated were the lucky ones. Searching for a shady spot, Mom and I wandered along the shore, pursued by the broiling sun. Stepping over fallen corpses, we sometimes missed, stepped on the bodies, and slipped. It felt like slipping on banana peels, and the burned skin clung to the soles of our feet. We scraped the skin off on the ground.

Life in Rented Quarters Begins

We returned to the trolley stop at Kawaguchi-ch
o
¯
. Why did Mom insist on returning to the trolley street? My oldest brother K
o
¯
ji would be coming home from Kure Naval Arsenal, and she judged that the trolley street, with all its traffic, was better for letting him know that we were still alive. We raised the umbrella and continued to wait on the pavement for K
o
¯
ji's return. The pus started flowing heavily from the back of my head and neck; the burns hurt and made me feel terrible. “How did I get burned?” My thoughts turned back to the situation at the time of the explosion.

It really must have been destined that I survive. I'd been saved by the school's concrete wall. I had drawn near the wall and was talking with my classmate's mother, and the heat rays from the atomic bomb came from behind and at an angle. My head and neck had been exposed, and I'd got off with light burns. Had I been one yard farther from the wall, I would have received burns over my whole body, like my classmate's mother. Moreover, after the heat rays flashed, a blast hit the city at a speed of 140 miles an hour. It blew off roofs. It knocked over everything, blew it away. I, too, was blown over, along with the school wall. Had the wall fallen on top of me and covered me, it would have squashed, flattened, killed me. But trees had been planted along the street two yards in front of the wall, and the blast first broke those trees off, leaving about two feet of trunk sticking up. The wall fell over onto those stumps and lay propped at an angle. That's why I wasn't crushed. As I thought about that spot, I realized there'd been a double miracle. I was amazed I had survived.

A strong stench of death was in the air, but my sense of smell became utterly deadened, and I stopped noticing it. In the heat, even the rice balls in the steel helmet began to go bad; I pulled out gooey strands. As before, I felt like vomiting, and I had no appetite; I merely stared at the rice balls. “They've gone bad,” Mom said, but for the baby's sake, she went on stuffing herself with the gooey rice balls. The baby slept on. When I got thirsty, I went into the fields and sucked the flesh and juice of sweet squash.

About then, soldiers began coming with fire hooks to clear away the corpses lying in the fields and on the trolley street. Hooking the corpses at neck and waist, they pulled them to the road, lining them up. They lined up the charred corpses exactly like tuna at a dockside fish market. Some were still conscious, gasping like goldfish and signaling that they wanted to be saved. But at best they'd live only another hour or two, so the soldiers hooked them by the neck and dragged them off.

Soon a truck came along the row of corpses, and they were thrown one after the other into the truck, quickly piling up. Fully loaded with corpses, the truck took them to the field of the army firing range. At night, the whole area near the end of the city trolley line in Eba was bright from the fires cremating the corpses. In that hell we waited and waited, hoping that K
o
¯
ji would come back and find us.

By the fourth day after the atomic bombing, I'd pretty much recovered my calm, had my normal energy, and had regained my appetite. Hunting in the fields for sweet squash and cucumber, I brought them back and ate plenty. The numbers of those like us who'd been burned out and thronged pavement and fields shrank, a tide going out. Either they moved in with relatives or acquaintances, or they became corpses and were cleared away. But pus still flowed from the burns on my head and neck, and I kept cutting the stems of squash and cucumbers and smearing the burns with the juice. That's what I was doing when a pair of military boots wrapped in puttees stopped before me. I looked up, and standing there, wearing a battle helmet and khakis, his face and chest drenched in sweat, was K
o
¯
ji. We looked at each other silently.

Mom spoke: “Great! You found us.” K
o
¯
ji started to speak; his voice was without emotion. The trains weren't running, there were no buses, and he had come back to Hiroshima on foot from the naval arsenal in Kure. From about the eastern edge of Hiroshima, he had a panoramic view of burned-out Hiroshima and had realized that his entire family must have perished. But he'd kept walking toward our house. On the road along the way, there were many corpses covered with sheets of galvanized tin, feet sticking out. Fearing they might be members of his family, he'd moved the sheets to see. He was shocked at the horrific, half-burned corpses; they'd made him want to scream. Still, regaining his courage, he'd walked on, pulling back the tin sheets and checking the corpses. Not able to bear the sight of too-grisly corpses, thoughtful people had covered them with the tin. When he stood where our house had been, where nothing at all remained, neighbors were cremating their relatives. They told him that Mom and I were at the Kawaguchi-ch
o
¯
stop.

With K
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¯
ji, we appealed to the M. family, distant relatives in the half-farming, half-fishing town of Eba, and we moved in with them. Carrying blanket, bowl, and axe we'd picked up on the street, which were now our sole earthly possessions, we bade farewell to the pavement life we'd lived for what seemed like ten years.

To get to the M. family's house, we went past the army rifle range, where they were methodically cremating corpses, and as we came near, the stench of burning corpses was so fierce that we had difficulty breathing. We held our breath and walked. At several spots in the rifle range field, corpses were piled a yard high. Soldiers poured oil on them and lit them, one after the other. The light from the flames consuming the corpses illuminated the pitch-dark road, taking the place of electric lights.

The M. family's house was at the foot of Ebayama. On top of the hill there was a weather station; the middle slopes were tangerine groves and vegetable fields, and the town crematorium was also there. Mother came out of the M. entryway, relief on her face, and we realized we'd found temporary shelter. When we lay down in the nine-by-twelve room, the feel and smell of straw mats reawakened in us the realization that human living conditions actually existed. Mom worked like a beaver doing the laundry and making clothes for the baby.

Before we knew it, a week had passed. Meanwhile, on August 9 an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, too, and a grim situation unfolded, like that in Hiroshima. On August 15 came the emperor's radio broadcast informing us, through heavy static, that Japan had lost by unconditional surrender. Mom and the M. family gathered in the kitchen, faces gloomy all around, and talked: “What will become of Japan? How are we going to make ends meet?” I could have cared less what happened to Japan. What I kept thinking about every day was filling my stomach. I roamed the neighborhood of the M. family's house searching for food.

Counting the baby, the four of us had barged in on the M. family, so it stood to reason that our presence would be resented. M.'s mother-in-law treated us with an attitude of “Get out!” They wouldn't divide food fairly. I hunkered down in a corner of the room and studied the M. family's faces. Mom pleaded, “When we earn money working, we'll absolutely repay you.” She borrowed money, and the four of us rented a room in one corner of a three-family tenement and moved there. It was a shedlike room, nine feet by twelve. The houses there were full of groaning people who had experienced the atomic bombing, had been burned over their entire bodies, and had come back here from the city proper.

Toward the end of volume I, Nakazawa depicts the events of August 6. Here Gen and his mother try to rescue Shinji and Gen's father from the ruins of their home. We know from the autobiography that Nakazawa himself was not present, that he learned about these events only after the fact, from his mother. But in
Barefoot Gen
, Gen is the focus throughout, and here he tries heroically first to rally neighbors and then to lift the roof beams himself.