Memoir of the A-bombing
Living for Today
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by Tamiko SHIRAISHI
Atomic Bomb Witness for this Foundation
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My atomic bombing experience
August 6, 1945, was sunny with not a cloud in the sky, and the sun was beating down brightly.
I was 7 years old, a first-grade student at Ujina Elementary School (4 kilometers from the hypocenter).
As usual I ran around the playground for a while, put on the air raid hood next to my desk, and had just taken a book out of my bag and opened it, when I saw a bluish-white light from the skylight on the right.
As I wondered what it could be, there was a huge boom that felt like it would burst my eardrums and at the same time the windows smashed, and the shards of glass came flying toward me.
All at once the classroom burst into a commotion and we all ran out to the shoe rack in the corridor, crying as we ran.
In the confusion I could not find my shoes.
I went home from school barefoot.
On the way home there was shattered glass everywhere.
My mother was waiting for me in front of the house.
I had glass stuck in two places in my head, two places on the inner side of my left hand and innumerable places on the soles of my feet, but thankfully the wounds were minor.
My mother removed the small pieces of glass one by one with tweezers.
That night I just lay there, sleepy but unable to sleep, and as I did I could hear a sound coming from the road in front of our house, like something being dragged along the street.
I managed to fall asleep somehow.
My mother woke me the next morning, and when I got ready and looked outside, I realized what that sound was.
It was the sound of people with hair that was frizzy and standing on end and the skin from their faces and their bodies peeling away and hanging down.
The people were fleeing, dragging their skin along with them.
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"A-bomb Drawings by Survivors" by Kichisuke Yoshimura
"Their clothes ripped to shreds, their skin hanging down. On the riverbank I saw
figures that seemed to be from another world. Ghost-like, their hair falling over their
faces, their clothes ripped to shreds, their skin hanging. A cluster of these injured
persons was moving wordlessly toward the outskirts."
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My grandmother's atomic bombing experience
My grandmother was a kind, gentle person, and lived in Mukainada with my mother's younger brother.
Around once a week, she would walk to our house and bring pumpkin, sweet potato, with some leaves and stalks, carrying them all in a baby carriage made from woven cane.
On the morning of August 6, she had left the house as usual saying that she was going to our house, and it was then that the bomb hit.
From the morning of the 7th, my mother went around to aid stations as far as the area near the hypocenter, searching for my grandmother.
She took me with her, not wanting to leave me at home on my own.
The smell that met us when we entered the aid stations was indescribable.
I felt that it must be the smell of the complete razing of all of Hiroshima, the people, animals, plants and buildings.
I cannot forget that smell even today.
On the 8th we went to an aid station that was probably close to Hatchobori.
Someone grabbed my leg, saying "Water..." I went to the broken tap and got some water in my hands, and brought it to the person.
One or two drops of water fell on the person's lips, and he said something that sounded like "Thank you".
But then another person pushed me away, saying "You can't give water to this person!"
After a short time, the person who had drunk the water stopped moving.
I can still hear the words said to me at that time:
"He died because you gave him water."
The streets were full of people trapped under the rubble of collapsed houses, dead with their hands still raised in the air;
people lying dead on the side of the road, eyes wide open as if staring at the sky;
people trapped between the clay walls of houses, half of their bodies burned, the other half not burned but covered in soot.
I was terrified at the time, but just did my best to keep up with my mother.
My mother put her hands together in prayer as we passed those tragic corpses.
And it was not only people - there were many dead horses too.
Some of the horses had swollen stomachs.
We had to step over many dead people and horses to make our way forward.
On the 9th, we went around to a few aid stations in the Ushita area, and finally found my grandmother.
Her whole back was burned black, and she was lying on her stomach.
We had her taken to the military and shipping headquarters facility in Ujina near our house, and I went there too to look after her.
My job was to use a fan to chase away the flies that would rest on the wounds on her back.
Even so a number of flies somehow stopped on her wounds and lay eggs there.
I had to remove the maggots that tried to make their way into her body.
The day before my grandmother died, she said that she wanted my mother to make some sushi for her to eat.
But we could not get the ingredients and in the end she passed away without eating sushi.
Emotional wounds (trauma) and illness
After the bombing I had more and more sleepless nights.
I was having dreams about horrific scenes of the bombing.
Even during the day, I would recall the dropping of the bomb and became scared of airplanes.
Every time a plane flew overhead I would hide in my room.
In the spring of my third year at elementary school, I had a fever of 40 degrees and constant bloody stools, and was admitted to the Red Cross Hospital.
The doctor suspected that it was typhoid fever, but could not find any typhoid bacillus.
The high fever and diarrhea made me physically weak, and I started talking loudly in my delirium.
Apparently someone in the hospital laundry said to my mother, not realizing she was my mother,
"That child was talking in a loud voice again today, so it looks like she hasn't died yet".
I can still remember the painful expression on my mother's face when she told me that.
I was away from school for a year after that, but got better and returned to school when I was in fourth grade at elementary school.
But at school I was bullied by some of my classmates, who said things like
"Don't go near her, she experienced the A-bomb. If you go near her you'll get sick",
and I stopped going to school for a while because of this.
When there were hard times like that and I was feeling dejected, my mother would say,
"The most important thing for a girl is to smile. When you speak to someone kindly with a smile on your face, you get a smile back from the other person."
She was always saying this.
For junior high school I took exams to enter a private junior high school in the city.
None of the girls at the junior high school knew me, so there was no one to bully me about my A-bomb experience and I enjoyed my school days.
I got married when I was 21 and for the time being, I could not tell my husband that I was an A-bomb survivor.
Our son was born one year after we got married, and he was close to premature and a weak child.
Until my son was around 13, I was unable to tell my husband that I thought that our son was physically weak because I had experienced the atomic bomb.
Being an atomic bomb survivor is not an experience limited just to that time - it is a burden that we have had to bear for many, many years after that.
To our future leaders
It was my mother's death that became the trigger for me to get involved in peace volunteer activities.
Up until that time I had not been able to speak about my A-bomb experience or my grandmother's death after the bombing.
I had pushed such memories deep inside of me, wanting to somehow forget them and put them behind me.
However, as I participated in the activities I came to realize that there are many people who do not know about Hiroshima or the bombing.
Compared to you, A-bomb survivors like me do not have as long left to live.
Please remember these horrible things caused by the A-bomb.
I hope that you will work towards the abolition of nuclear weapons, so that we can have lasting world peace.
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Profile [Tamiko SHIRAISHI]
Born 1939.
As a first-grade elementary school student, aged 7, she had just opened a book in a school classroom 4 kilometers from the hypocenter when the bomb was dropped.
After retirement at age 60, active as a peace volunteer from 2000.
Started activities as an atomic bomb witness for this Foundation from 2013.
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