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Memoir of the A-Bombing
"A life saved, becoming a bridge to peace"
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by Yasuko Kondo
Atomic Bomb Witness for this Foundation
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Motivation for peace activities
I started getting involved in the Hiroshima Peace Volunteer activities from 2001.
Specifically, I work as a volunteer tour guide in the Peace Memorial Museum and Peace Memorial Park at least twice a month.
When I act as a guide, people always say to me "You're so well."
I think that I am well because I experienced the atomic bombing 73 years ago.
This is because I strongly feel that I never want the next generation to have the same experience.
From 2015, I have been talking about my A-bomb experience to students who come to Peace Memorial Park as part of their peace studies.
I feel encouraged when I receive letters from people thanking me.
August 6, 1945
On that day, the sky was perfectly clear from the morning, and it was scorching hot.
I was four years old, and at 8am that morning I was playing with my friends in the stream next to the food supply station in what was then known as Furuta-machi, Hiroshima City (3.5km from the hypocenter), which is where I was evacuated.
At 8:15am, there was a flash!
And a boom!
I felt an unbelievable ray of light, and dropped down onto the river bank.
My mother immediately rushed out from the supply station carrying my younger sister, and we ran to the air-raid shelter.
On the way there, my sister starting behaving strangely.
Her eyes rolled, and her mouth was moving as though she was chewing something.
There was something in her mouth.
My mother put her hand in my sister's mouth, and pulled out four pieces of glass one after the other.
I'll never forget my sister's mouth and my mother's hand covered in bright red blood.
The residents of Furuta-machi were out doing building demolition work near the hypocenter, but around midday, they all came back in a group, everyone completely blackened, naked, rags hanging off their bodies, their arms held forward.
My cousin (7), who had gone to school, came back in the evening carried on someone's delivery bicycle.
He looked like an old rag, completely different from the boy who had left in such high spirits early that morning.
He died fifteen days later, on August 21.
I can only imagine how hot it must have been for him.
Every year on August 6 I put my hands together in prayer for him at his grave.
One of the people in the group that came shuffling back to escape the disaster sat down next to the jizo (guardian deity of children) stone statue in front of my evacuation house.
He had nothing on, and was sitting there hiding his body with a paper bag.
It seemed like the jizo statue had divided into two statues.
When I approached he said "Young girl, give me some water," but as a 4-year-old child there was nothing I could do.
Back to my home, 800m from the hypocenter
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The next morning, my mother, sister and I left to check our house, which was 800m from the hypocenter.
However, it was very difficult to get to the area near the hypocenter.
We walked around, and finally reached our home on August 8.
Even on the third day after the bombing, there was smoke rising up from the burned remains.
Around us was complete burned devastation.
Our large house was burned down with only the garden rocks from the big pond and the stone steps to the storehouse remaining.
There was also one Japanese lantern plant with red berries that survived.
To my mother's family home
We went from our home to my grandparent's house on my mother's side in Kure, via the
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"Family walking over the rubble"
Drawn by: Kyoka Shintaku and Yasuko Kondo
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naval academy on Etajima Island.
We started living there from around August 12.
For about one month, I had a continuous high fever and diarrhea.
In the end I was producing bloody and black stools, and my intestines came out from my anus.
I will never forget the pain I felt when my mother applied a steaming hot towel to my intestine to push it back in.
My little sister was nine months old and had just started to crawl, and because of her bloody stools when she crawled she left a path of blood.
I developed rashes on my head.
Since there was no medicine, cooking oil mixed with baby powder was rubbed onto my head, and until around December of that year my head was completely white.
We heard that boiled Dokudami plant is good for rashes, so I drank Dokudami tea.
People at that time were saying that a new kind of bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima, and that hibakusha were saved by flushing out the poison using the Dokudami plant.
Appealing for the abolition of nuclear weapons
The reason I am alive now is because of the warm support of the people around me at that time, and I am grateful to them.
In this life that was saved, I wonder how many more years I have left.
I will work as a peace volunteer, talk about my atomic bomb experience and appeal for the abolition of nuclear weapons as long as I have the energy to do so.
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Profile
[Yasuko Kondo]
Born 1940.
Was aged 4, at an evacuation site 3.5km from the hypocenter, when the atomic bomb hit.
Three days after the bombing, walked home with mother and younger sister.
Home was in the city, 800m from the hypocenter.
Will never forget walking over the rubble in wooden clogs.
Involved in activities as a Hiroshima peace volunteer since 2001.
Active as an atomic bomb witness since 2015.
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