Memoir of the A-Bombing
"So that Hiroshima does not just become an old folk tale"
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by Reiko Yamamoto
Atomic Bomb Witness for this Foundation
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Experiencing the bombing in the schoolyard
Although the national school that I attended was in an area neighboring Hiroshima City, it was a rural area, so in 1945 there were no group evacuations.
The summer holidays were scheduled to start from August 10.
August 6 was a Monday, and it was a hot morning.
I was a Grade 1 student, and when I arrived at school I put my bag in the classroom and went out into the schoolyard to play.
I heard voices yelling "It's a plane!!" "It's a B-29!!", and when I looked up at the sky two planes gleaming silver in the morning sun were flying up and down.
I thought "How pretty", and at that moment there was a flash of light, and I thought "The sun has fallen!!"
The clouds of dust turned the schoolyard an ocher color, and everything went dark as if it were dusk.
Children running around trying to escape were bumping into one another and falling over.
I also tried to escape with my friend.
The clouds of dust gradually settled, and as it became lighter and I could see around me, I left the school through the back gate and crouched under the veranda of a house nearby.
There were around ten older students near me.
The older students eventually went back to school, so I followed them back.
The two-story schoolhouse was standing as is, but roof tiles had fallen and the windowpanes were smashed and scattered.
I tried to go in the classroom, but the corridor ceiling had fallen down and I could not get in, so I went home.
The second floor of my house was partly twisted, the shutters and sliding doors had blown away, and drawers and cupboards had fallen over.
I could not get inside the house, so I was playing on the veranda with my younger sister when the sky turned dark and it started to rain.
Our cat Tama walked slowly out to the garden in the rain.
We had a cat in our family to catch mice, as they would get into the rice and barley that we had harvested.
Tama was a black and white spotted cat, but the rain turned the cat's white fur black.
It was unusual to see black rain, so I went outside too and caught the rain in both hands.
This was the strange, sticky 'black rain'.
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Gym uniform with stains from 'black rain' (Donated by Toyoko Matsumiya to Hiroshima
Peace Memorial Museum);
Toyoko Kubota (then, 16) was a student at Nishi Girls High School, who experienced
the bombing from the second floor of her school building (approx. 1,350m from the
Hypocenter).
This is the shirt she was wearing at the time of the bombing, stained by
the 'black rain' which fell while she was fleeing for refuge.
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The man's burns
A man that we knew came into the garden wearing only his underwear and carrying a futon (mattress).
Saying "Water, give me water!!" he collapsed on the veranda.
He had horrible burns, and it looked like he could not move.
My grandmother and mother laid him on the futon and gave him water.
He then vomited something that looked like yellow water.
His clothes were hanging down from his arms, so my mother cut them off with scissors, and when she did, we saw that it was not just his clothes hanging down－stuck to the clothes was the burnt skin from his shoulders, neck and arms.
They put oil on his burns, but there was not enough oil, so they also applied some grated cucumber, which was thought at the time to be good for burns.
Before we knew it countless flies were swarming around his wounds.
The man had a high fever, and passed away just after noon on August 7.
Everyone working together for peace
Life after the war was tough, with little food.
As my family home was a farm, we did have simple food to eat.
However, relatives whose houses had burned and were left with nothing came to live with us, and life with so many people in the house was hard.
My daily chore in the fall was collecting grasshoppers from rice fields after the harvest.
I would catch the grasshoppers with a net, and put them in a large bottle.
When left in the bottle for a day, waste is discharged from their bodies.
After that, we would roast or fry them and eat them.
On school days when we had to bring a box lunch to school, everyone would come home to eat lunch.
Our staple foods were rice gruel with sweet potato and soup with dumplings, and these could not be taken to school in the lunchboxes used in those days.
From about ten years after the war ended, more and more people started dying from diseases like leukemia.
The grade 1 and grade 2 students who experienced the bombing because they were not evacuated as a group fell ill and suffered from poor health, and some even committed suicide.
War is started by people.
If we want to protect humankind and the Earth, we must not wage war, and we must definitely not use nuclear weapons.
I hope that we can work together to protect the world and achieve lasting peace with no nuclear weapons.
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Profile
[Reiko Yamamoto]
Born 1938.
Experienced the atomic bombing as a grade 1 national (elementary) school student, aged 7, in the schoolyard of a national school 4.1km from the hypocenter, when looking up at the B-29 heavy bomber.
After the war, worked at a casualty insurance company, then left to focus on child rearing.
Working at an after-school childcare facility since 1980.
Active as a Hiroshima Peace Volunteer since 2005.
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