Diana Preston - Before the Fallout

Futaba Kitayama, the young mother who had seen the bomb fall from “an airplane as pretty as a silver treasure” and explode “with an indescribable light” made up her mind that, despite her severe burns, she must survive to see her three children again—she had sent them to the countryside a little while previously for safety. “Suddenly, driven by a terror that would not permit inaction I started to run for my life,” she recalled. “I say ‘run,’ but I had no idea where the road was. Everything was covered in wood and tiles so I had no idea which way to go. Such a bright morning until a moment ago, what in the world could have happened? Now we were under a thin cover of darkness, just like dusk. The dull haze, as if my eyes were covered with mist, made me wonder if I was losing my mind. Looking around unsteadily, I saw something that looked like people running on the bridge. ‘That’s Tsurumi Bridge. If I don’t get over it right away, I’ll lose my chance to escape,’ I thought. Jumping over trees and rocks like a crazy person, I ran towards the Tsurumi Bridge. When I arrived I saw a horrifying spectacle. Countless bodies squirming and writhing in the flow of people and water under the bridge. Their faces were grey and so swollen I couldn’t tell male from female. Hair stood straight up. Arms waved in the air. Voices groaned wordlessly. They were jumping into the river one after another. The strong ray had burned my work pants to rags, and my whole body was in agony, so I was preparing to jump in with them when I remembered that I couldn’t swim.”

When she turned around, she saw that the whole city was “a solid sheet of flames. Calling out the names of my three children in turn, I encouraged myself over and over, saying ‘Mother will not die. Mother will be alright.’ Looking back, I simply cannot remember where or how I ran. The many pitiful sights I saw are etched in my brain.”

Eventually she came to another bridge, where, she recalled, “corpses were floating by like dead dogs and cats, their shreds of clothing dangling like rags. In the shoals near the banks I saw a woman floating face up, her chest gouged out and gushing blood. Could such terrifying sights be of this world? Suddenly I lost strength and [after crossing the bridge] had to sit right in the middle of the [neighboring] drill ground. All around me, junior high school girls and boys from another volunteer corps writhed on the ground. They seemed crazed, crying ‘mother, mother.’ As my eyes took in the cruel sight of their burns and gaping wounds so horrible I couldn’t bear to look at them, an enormous rage welled up from deep within, but I didn’t know where to direct it. Even these innocent children… crying for their mothers first one, then another, breathed his or her last. All I could do was look at them.

“I gathered all the strength in my flickering body and soul and fell in line with people heading towards the mountains. Probably about 3 pm, having been utterly lethargic for some time, I sat down. As I gazed around with what was left of my eyesight I could tell that the station and all of Atagocho had become a sea of fire. I felt lucky to have escaped. Gradually my face grew stiff. Gently touching my cheeks with both hands, I measured with my eyes the distance between my hands as I took them away and saw that my face had swollen to about twice its normal size. My vision was more and more restricted, ‘Oh no, soon I won’t be able to see. Could I have come this far only to die here?’ Stretcher after stretcher came by carrying the injured. Carts and trucks drove by full of injured people and corpses that looked more like monsters. On both sides of the road, many people wobbled this way and that, as if sleepwalking.”

“I realized that while I could see a little, I needed to find a safe place where I would not be hit by a truck and could quietly trust myself to fate. Peering here and there through barely open eyes, I saw my own sister squatting and resting. ‘Sister, sister, help me.’ Without thinking I ran towards her. My sister at first looked at me doubtfully. Finally, she recognised me. ‘Futaba-chan you look… ,’ she couldn’t say any more and just held me. ‘Sister, I can’t see any more. Please take me to my children.’” Her sister put Futaba on a vegetable cart and took her to a relief station. After a couple of days the doctors said her case was hopeless. Futaba persuaded her sister to take her to her home.

“That evening my children arrived at last. When I heard their voices scream ‘mummy’ I felt rescued from the depths of hell. ‘I’m O.K. These burns are nothing much.’ And I cried as the children I had missed so much came and clung to me. On the 11th I was quietly preparing myself to give up and die when my husband arrived, having tracked me down. At that time my suffering was so bad I found brief solace thinking, ‘Ah, good. Now if they lose their mother they’ll still have their father’ and I was happy. Then, three days after finding us, my husband, who had no serious injuries at all, began vomiting blood. Then he was gone, leaving behind a wife, unsure she would see another day, and his three beloved children. Our little boy sat near my pillow crying, ‘mummy.’ I almost bled with grief and, even now, as I recall that time, the tears flow. ‘My poor children, I can’t die now, I can’t leave them orphans.’ With all my heart I prayed to the spirit of my husband, asking help. Over and over I was told I had no hope, but miraculously I lived.”

Down in the port area, two and a half miles from the center of the blast, a twenty-eight-year-old army doctor, Hiroshi Sawachika, remembered, “I had just entered [my office] and said good morning and I was about to approach my desk when outside it suddenly turned bright red. I felt very hot on my cheeks. I felt weightless as if I were an astronaut. I was then unconscious for twenty or thirty seconds. When I came to I realized that everybody including myself was lying at one side of the room. I went to the windows to find out where the bombing had taken place. And I saw the mushroom cloud over the gas company. I still had no idea what had happened, I realized that my white shirt was red all over. I thought it was funny because I was not injured at all. I looked round, then realized that the girl lying nearby was heavily injured with lots of broken glass stuck all over her body. Her blood had splashed and made stains on my shirt.”

He was told that “injured citizens were coming towards us for treatment [there were] big hospitals in the center of the town, so why should they come here, I wondered, instead of going there? With lots of injured people arriving, we realized just how serious the matter was. As they came to us they held their hands aloft. They looked like they were ghosts. We made the tincture for their treatment by mixing edible peanut oil and some other things. We had to work in a mechanical manner in order to treat so many patients.” After a while he went into a nearby room, where patients were waiting. “I found the room filled with a smell that was quite similar to the smell of dried squid when it has been grilled. The smell was quite strong. It is a sad reality that the smell human beings produce when they are burned is the same as that of the dried squid when it is grilled. The squid—we like so much to eat.”

Afterward he walked back through the rows of people awaiting treatment. “I felt someone touch my leg, it was a pregnant woman. She said that she was about to die in a few hours ‘but I can feel that my baby is moving inside. It wants to get out of the womb. I don’t mind if I die. But if the baby is delivered now it does not have to die with me. Please help my baby live.’ There was no obstetrician there. There was no time to take care of her baby. All I could do was tell her that I would come back later when everything was ready for her and her baby. Thus I cheered her up and she looked so happy. The image of that pregnant woman never left my mind. Later I went to the place where I had found her before, she was still there, lying in the same place. I patted her on the shoulder but she said nothing. The person lying next to her said that a short while ago she had become silent.”