I was in a mountain pond north of the Commerce School in Aburagitani when the bomb came down. Our house was at the back of Chinzei High School. The family had evacuated to a place near Michino-o station. I did want to go to another school and was staying with my uncle and his family. That day I was swimming with friends. At 11 a.m. there was an air-raid siren but later the all clear sounded. Relieved all my friends came out of the water except one. But at that moment I sensed the American Aeroplanes and dived into the water. Soon the water became very hot. So hot I was nearly scalded. I was fortunate to be in the water my friends that had got out had terrible burns covering their entire bodies. I came out of the pond to find the area had become a sheet of fire. The weather was fine and it should have been bright, but it was like dusk, just like the sun had already set.

I ran as hard as I could perhaps three or four kilometers to Michino-o. I had been swimming naked and the road was unbearably hot under my feet. There were dead bodies everywhere as far as the eye could see. Around the Urakami river was black with bodies either dead or dying. It was impossible to tell if they were men or women. It was indeed a living hell.   The dark pattern of clothing has burned the skin of this lady

We were told later that the heat of the bomb had exceeded 1,000 degrees centigrade. No wonder bottles had melted. At that time most of the people wore black clothing as white made them stand out too much. I think this increased the energy of the bombs light and worsened the effects.

I managed to find my uncle because he was wearing a name tag. He lived about three days more. During that time it was like his intestines had been boiled and his body became spongy. It looked as if his skin might come off if you touched it. At that time I did not understand why he had died in such a way. It was only later that we learned that this horror was the result of an atomic bomb.

Thanks to god I managed to reach my family. They carefully nursed me and saved my life. I lost my hair, had anaemia and diarrhoea and lost a lot of weight. I was only 20 kilograms when I was 10 years old. This was also due to the food shortage. My face was terribly swollen from burns. I was admitted to Nagasaki Medical College. They tied me too the bed they put gauze into my cut to let the pus out. I received no other treatment. No drugs or medicine was administered and it took me three months to recover.

Growing up I started work at the Mitsubishi Shipbuilding Company but had to give up as I was lacking in concentration. At the age of twenty I moved to Tobata, dependant on my uncle in Yahata. I did not tell anyone I was an A-bomb victim and successfully enter a leading electronics company.

A

gain I had to give up because of ill health and changed jobs one after the other then suffered from Gallstones for a year. I cannot sit cross-legged or sit up straight. I often feel as if there is not enough oxygen, My legs become numb and everything becomes indistinct as if I am losing consciousness and my heart is getting weaker. The spasms last anything up to eight hours. If I have a spasm when under medical inspection, it feels as if I am floating in the air them come back down. Now I enter the ICU once every two or three months. When I married I worried every time we had a child for fear that they may be handicapped or deformed. I have six children. The youngest is still at high School and the rest are already married. One of them has a allergy to medicine. Social services supports me. They started to issue certification of relief to bomb victims in 1959. This was 14 years after the bombing!. One needs two witnesses to acquire certification. This cannot be family member or a relative. It took me many years to get a certificate, as all my friends were already dead. I finally received one in 1987. There are 196 people with these certificates. Among these 141 have joined the A-bomb victim association. Three or four of us die every year. Some of them say they want no one to know they were bombed. They consider that their children may have problems in finding a marriage partner if someone knew. My lifelong work from now is to do whatever I can for other victims, their families and the families of those that have died. I am more than happy if I can anything to help them. The day of the bombing, the ninth of August was my birthday. I have not celebrated my birthday since 1945. Non of my family have celebrations either. I sincerely wish that a perilous incident will never happen again.

We must tell future generations everything we experienced, how terrible the A-bomb was and how miserable the war was. We can only hope the younger people will understand how frightful it was.

November 15th 1994

Interviewers - Masako Mitarai, Riuko Terai, Takako Nakano, Ikuko Minami, Sachiko Sakai, Kazumi Wasada, Emiko Shijo, Chiemi Yonemura all of Tobata Kitakyushu City.

Nagasaki Hospital after the bomb

A prayer for peace - Michiko Kai

I was only four years old at the time and lived in Imauo-machi. Nagasaki Prefecture. On that day I was in the open-air concert hall in the park behind Suwa Shrine. I have a dim memory of everyone lying on the stage of the concert hall. I remember a man running and shouting, Here comes a plane! There was a flash and everyone jumped off the stage. I was too small to jump. My sister s tell me someone pushed me off. I remember staying in the dugout with my Grandmother and others. No one was outwardly injured as we were three kilometers away from the hypocentre.

That night we went to the graveyard. Small as I was I wondered why we were there. Later I knew that we were escaping from the fire spreading all over the town. Bodies were cremated in the school playground. My sister tell me I went there with them but I cannot remember. But sometimes the scenes appear in my mind as if imprinted there. I was very little at the time.

Mother passed away when I was ten. I had ovarian cancer myself. It was detected at an early stage and I was treated for a year. Since then my strength has declined sharply. I hate to relate my illness to radiation but all the victims of the bomb are weak and easily tire although they outwardly look fine. There is a lot of prejudice against bomb victims even now. Some of us are afraid that the this will be an obstacle to our sons and daughters getting married. A lot of people have never applied for certification. Even if you do have a certificate, some hospitals will not exempt you from treatment charges. I hope that they will issue certification to second generation children of victims to assure their future.

We the victims of the atomic bomb are getting older. I am afraid that this tragic incident has not had enough public exposure. As a little girl it was a tremendous incident I can never get out of my mind. The faint memories come back vividly even now after 50 years. I hope no one ever forgets and I always pray for peace.

After the interview: We were surprised and sad to hear that A-bomb victims are still discriminated against. We believe it is very important to hand down the victims experiences from generation to generation so that many people will pay attention and make sure that this will never happen again in the future.

February 27th 1995

Interviewers - Yoshiko Kobayashi of Yahata-higashi. Naomi Hashimoto of Yahata-nishi Kitakyushu City.

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