Memoir of the A-bombing
Let's End All Conflict
|
|
by Yasusuke TAGAWA
Atomic Bomb Witness for this Foundation
|
|
|
Growing up during the Pacific War
When I was 15 we were in the middle of the war, and although I was a student (at Hiroshima Prefecture Itosaki Railway School) there was no thought of study.
We were told that working was a part of our studies, and we were mobilized to factories and the munitions industry.
We had to follow the orders of the military and the police in everything that we did, but we had been taught that it was normal so it did not bother us.
That was just how things were then.
Just before I turned 17 I was mobilized to Hiroshima Engine Depot No.1, and even after I turned 17 I just kept on working, with no graduation ceremony, until the ominous date of August 6 arrived.
Early in the morning I boarded the train at Itosaki Station in the eastern part of Hiroshima Prefecture as a member of the train crew.
We arrived at Hiroshima Station nearly one hour later than the scheduled time.
We had just changed over the locomotive engine, finished the final check and reported to the supervisor, and I had changed from my uniform into regular clothes and come out into the square.
Hellish scenes all around me!!
From the west there was a great flash of light, and a wave of heat, and I instinctively put my hands in front of my face.
The backs of my hands were stinging, and although I had no idea what was going on I started running to the east.
It was at that moment that there was a huge boom and massive blast, and I was thrown around 6 meters into the middle of a nearby barber's salon.
Pieces of glass and plaster fell from above me, and I worried about what might happen, but the area around me gradually became lighter, so I picked my way out of the rubble with others who were in the barber's salon and went outside.
First I went to Hiroshima Station, thinking that I would be able to flee by train.
But the station building had collapsed, the steel frames on the platform were bent and the trains had derailed.
So then I decided to go to see what had happened to the house in Hiroshima that I had been renting with my friend, and went out to the street.
|
|
|
Hiroshima Station (around October 1945)
Photograph by Mr. Toshio Kawamoto. Provided by Mr. Yoshio Kawamoto.
"The waiting room protruding from the bomb's blast collapsed. The roof of the main
building was pushed down and deformed. Later, the station building was completely
destroyed and many people lost their lives or were injured. On the following day,
August 7, Ujina Line restarted operations, on the 8th the line between Hiroshima and
Yokogawa restarted and on the 9th Sanyo Line and Geibi Line restarted operations.
On the 10th a shack was quickly built as the station office, and was useful for aid
teams coming into the city and survivors fleeing."
|
|
In the street were crowds of people who had fled from the west.
They were all naked and covered in serious burns.
Their scorched skin was peeling away and hanging down, and I could hear their anguished voices.
"Help me",
"I'm in pain",
"Water..."
There was a mother carrying a baby on her back, and the baby was half melted and was stuck to the woman's back.
Of course the baby was dead.
In any case they were all naked and trudging along from the west like sleepwalkers, saying "Water...water..."
Throughout the city at the time, for firefighting purposes, were concrete water tanks around 1 meter in height and the same in diameter, about one tank every 20 meters.
Because it was summer, the tanks were swarming with mosquito larva.
Seven or eight people who had come to get some water were lying dead with their heads face down in the water.
I couldn't look.
When I reached Enko River, the river banks on both sides were filled with lines of people who had come to the river to drink the water and then had just died there.
It was truly like hell, and made me want to cover my eyes.
Secondary exposure when reentering the city
The house that I had been renting had been destroyed by fire, so I just tried to flee to the east.
I heard that there were trains taking victims to the east, and when I went to the yard where the freight cars were operated, there were seven freight trains waiting there.
Many of the people who had fled there were put on the freight trains, and I got on too.
The train left at 9:30, arrived at Itosaki Station in just over an hour.
At the time there were two large hospitals attached to the munitions factory on the top of the hill in front of Itosaki Station, and the people who had come on the freight train were all carried to those hospitals.
I went further east from Itosaki to get back to my family home in the country, and recuperated from my wounds for ten days there.
In September Hiroshima was hit by a typhoon.
I didn't know it at the time, but although the fires from the bombing had been extinguished Hiroshima was in a terrible state.
Once I got better, my parents told me to return to Hiroshima.
My mother made me four meal's worth of rice balls, and I left home at 4am and headed for Hiroshima.
But due to the typhoon the railway tracks on the Sanyo Line had been washed away in many places, and I ended up walking most of the way back to Hiroshima.
By the time I arrived in Hiroshima it was 7pm at night.
I had finally arrived back, but was told that because the rail tracks had been washed away and the trains could not run, there was no work for the train crews.
I spent another ten days in Hiroshima in a state of homelessness.
Nobody in Hiroshima at the time knew just how horrific radiation is.
People continued to come to Hiroshima from neighboring towns and villages to search for people who had come to work in the city and had not been seen again.
These people were exposed to residual radiation and many later suffered and died from radiation-related illnesses.
I was one of those exposed to radiation upon entering the city.
At the time of the bombing I was young and therefore healthy, but approximately 15 years after the bombing I developed radiation-associated retinopathy and suffered for three months.
Around 25 years after the bombing my thyroid gland swelled up and although I had been a good singer up until that point, my voice started to get hoarse.
Even today I find it difficult to swallow anything hard.
When I turned 80, a spot like a small dot suddenly appeared on the side of my nose, and it gradually got bigger and swelled up to the size of an adzuki bean.
I found out that it was cancerous and had an operation. Little by little I am experiencing for myself the horror of radiation.
My friends, my seniors and juniors – may your souls rest in peace
My friend who was renting the house together with me was sleeping soundly on the morning of August 6, and died in the fire trapped under the rubble of the collapsed house.
My seniors who had helped me at work died one after another from the effects of the radiation, bringing me much sadness.
One person two years younger than me who I worked with was 1.2km away from the hypocenter when the bomb was dropped, and was covered in burns all over his body.
Although he was treated in hospital and returned to work, his face was covered in keloids, and it looked painful for him to speak.
He had a number of operations that removed the skin little by little and was happy that he had somehow recovered his appearance, but he died of illness at the age of 42.
This, too, was hard to watch.
I want us to continue to communicate these horrors of the atomic bomb to people in the future.
And I want nothing more than nuclear weapons to be reduced to zero.
I put down my pen now praying that the souls of those many people who lost their lives may rest in peace.
|
|
Profile [Yasusuke TAGAWA]
Born 1928 in Kinosyo Village, Mitsugi County.
At the age of 16, started working at the national railway as a mobilized student, continuing for over 38 years.
After retirement, employed at the Hiroshima Bus Center and the Silver Human Resources Center.
Has an exceptionally strong hatred of conflict.
|
|
|
|
