Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital (right).
The Postal Savings Bureau was located at the point where the apartment building on the left in the background is currently built The photo was taken in February 2004.
One of my friends stopped in front of the building, could not walk any further, and sat down. A lot of splinters of glass got stuck all over her body. She had joined us when we had crossed the Minami-ohashi-bridge. I still can not remember her name, but I was sure she was going to back Ujina like me. We left her at the Postal Savings Bureau because we did not have enough energy to bring her back home with us.
On the way to the Miyukibashi-bridge, we found a concrete water tank for extinguishing fires. Suddenly one of my friends ran to the tank. She did not have enough energy to get into the tank, so she just stuck her head into the water. There were already two men in the tank with their faces next to each other, so there was little space left for us. As we could not get into the tank, Kurokawa-san and I decided to splash water to each other.
My hand touched one of the men, who wore a combat cap on his head. He had been badly burned underneath the cap. I grazed his face, head and shoulder when I scooped up water with my hand. But he never looked up from water. It means that he was already dead in the tank.
After I pulled my friend away from the tank, we walked to the Miyukibashi-bridge. There were a lot of injured people sitting on the both sides of the bridge. There were indeed a huge number of people with a wide range of injuries. When we walked down to the middle of the bridge, someone grabbed my foot. I was stunned and stopped. It was a woman saying, “Please.” She was injured worse than Taka-chan, hideously burnt and her face seemed peeled and soggy. She held onto my foot with all of her strength. People always seemed to fold their hands naturally when they asked a favor. She said, “Please take me to Ujina port. I live on Etajima-island. I’ll board a ship at the port by myself. Please help me. Please take me to Ujina port.”
I could do nothing for her; it was all I could do to survive myself. I said to her, “I can’t do anything for you. The solders will help you, OK? I’m so sorry.” I tore her fingers from my ankle one by one. I did not feel odd doing it. Finally I escaped from her strong fingers. I repeated, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Until today, I remember what the touch of her fingers felt like.
We started walking again. Soon I heard voices coming from someplace nearby. “Help me, mom! Dad!” “Help me, please!” The voices were not coming from the people lying on the ground, and I wondered where they were coming from. Then, I looked down to the river first time, and saw that many people were floating in the wide river. They were being carried away to sea. Somebody in the river were crying out, “Help me, mom! Help me, dad!” with raised hands. I heard the voices all over the river, but even as I saw that horrific sight, I did not feel sorry about it. I watched the people being carried away to sea, emotionless.
Dead bodies were also floating in the river, but the river was not completely full yet. I heard that the corpses which had floated away with the current later came back during high tide.
Then, I saw that my friend who had drunk water from the tank was entering the river, too. Kurokawa-san and I shouted to her, ”You will be carried away! Come back!” But she did not stop.
There was a staircase down to the river at the foot of the bridge. The water was high and part of the staircase was buried in water. Many people, who could not stand with the heat of their body, were sitting on the steps in the river. We watched that my friend pushed her way through the crowd. Kurokawa san and I shouted from the bridge again. “Don’t enter the river! You will be carried away!” She turned to us and raised her hands up to her heart, gesturing repeatedly. She meant that she would enter the water up to her heart, but we were certain that she would be carried away by waves because she did not have much stamina.
Miyukibashi-bridge from the downstream
Photo taken in September 28, 2003
We turned back and went down the steps into the water and pulled her out by holding her arms. It was forcibly. “Hey you! We will be home soon! It is a 4 station walk away from home!” Kurokawa-san was so angry, but our friend did not react. We pulled her along towards Ujina.
It was horrible in Ujina, too. All the houses were ruined. What had happened to us? I did not know, but I could not afford to worry about it because I was very exhausted and had seen worse things than the scene in front of me. My head was filled with the hope of getting home.
On the way home, we passed by Ujina 10chome. Taka-chan’s house was there, so I dropped by her house to tell her family about her, but nobody was there. On that day, it seemed that the neighborhood was given evacuation warning for possible night bombing. So I could not contact any of the families of the friends I had left in the city.
I lived in Ujina 6chome, and I walked back home along the bus route. When I got home, my neighbor, Ms. Yamazaki, who owned a fancy goods store, was distributing straw sandals to people escaping from the city. When she saw me, she said to me in surprise, “What happened to you, Chiyo-chan? You’re bleeding.” She gave us three pairs of straw sandals.
I asked Ms. Yamazaki what time it was. She answered “It is 7 o’clock PM.” It was still light. At that time, none of us had a wristwatch, so we always asked somebody else. I was surprised to hear that- it was so light that I could not believe it was 7 o’clock.
Two of my friends headed to Ujina port, so we parted in front of my house. I said to them, “You can come back to my house if you can’t find any of your family.” But we have not seen each other since then, and I do not know if they are still alive or not.
I found my house broken and messy. All the glasses were shattered into pieces, the walls were collapsed, the roof tiles fell off, and the roof was tilted. But I did not care about that at all. I was finally home, and I thought, “I don’t care if I die.”
During the war, everyone kept a bucket of water at home. When I found it, I drank the water directly from our bucket by crouching over like a horse. At first, I thought I might die if I drank the water because I remembered that the soldier said to me, “If you drink water, you will die!” But when I saw water, I could not help. I did not care whether I die or not, if only I could drink the water. “Now I’m home. I don’t care.” And I drank more.
Five seconds later, I threw up some filth that looked like gastric juice. Then I felt even thirstier, and drank again. I sat down next to the bucket of water, drank and threw up several times.
I heard later that the people, who drank water and threw up the toxic, have survived the A-bomb, but many people died who did not drink water as they were told “You would die if you drink water.” So many people had tolerated thirst and though they were not injured, they died. It was lucky for me that I drank much water then. That is how I survived.
Soon after, my mother came back home. I saw her running towards our house with her arm lifted in a cloth and a bandage over her head. She cried my name, “Chiyoko! Chiyoko!” I was so glad to see her that I shouted, “Mom!” My mother apologized to me, “Chiyo-chan, I am so sorry for not caring about you.” She said she had not remembered me until she got a medical treatment at a first-aid station. Then, she thought of me, “Oh my god! Chiyoko went to Zakoba-cho to work!” My mother always said until she passed away, “A human being thinks about him in an extreme situation. I really experienced it.”
My mother had her injuries treated at a first-aid station in Ujina.
It was still light outside even though it was past 7 o’clock. To realize that I got home was a big relief. It took me about 12 hours to get back home that day.
On the evening of 6th August, we fled to Mt. Tanna, which was located southeast of Hiroshima city. I was carried in baby carriage up to Mt Tanna with a Korean boy named Takeshi Murata who lived next to my house. We called him Take-chan.
He was a Korean. At that time, Koreans did not use their Korean names. Take-chan and I were carried in baby carriage to Mt. Tanna. The old baby carriage, which was made from rattan, was big enough to carry two children. We left our home around 8 PM and arrived at the top of the mountain around 9 PM.
There was a shrine on the top of the Mt Tanna, which we fled to, and the shrine remains there until today. From there, we could see the whole city of Hiroshima: all the way to Yokogawa and even Nishi-Hiroshima. The city was burning dark red like a fire, but I did not feel sad as I saw my city burning. The sight was just the same with the panorama model in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum: only two or three trees and a few buildings were left and all the others were burned, allowing us to see all the way to Nishi-Hiroshima. That night, we watched the whole city dimly burning from the top of the mountain.
Soldiers distributed white rice balls to us. It was the first time I ate a rice ball in several years, and I was very happy to eat it. I ate it with Take-chan and watched the city burn. Take-chan said to me, “Chiyo-chan, this is very good.” “Yes,” I answered.
My mother asked us, “Are you still hungry?” We said yes, and she divided her rice ball into 2 pieces and gave them to us. We ate those, too, and watched as Hiroshima burned.
There was no place to sleep on the top of the mountain, so everyone sat around the shrine. I hardly slept all night, watching at the city burning lightly.
On August 7th, we went down the mountain and escaped from Ujina port to Nomijima island, which was my mother’s hometown. The island was located in the Seto Inland Sea. At the time, only her big brother lived there.We stayed there until Japan was surrendered. We came back home on August 15th.
I had been healthy for a while after coming back home. Suddenly, something strange started happening. Around September 3rd, bunches of my hair fell out every time I combed, and I was scared. Furthermore, purple spots appeared on my body. I cried, “Mom! I’m losing my hair! Purple spots are showing!” In those days, it was believed that if you got purple spots on your body, you were dying. I shuddered.
Soon, when I brushed my teeth, my gums bled badly. I was frightened and shouted, “Mom! I’m bleeding!” I fell down. My mother laid out a futon bed and told me to go to sleep. That evening, as I lay in bed, I ran a high fever and completely lost my appetite.
Few doctors were available. Eventually, a surgeon named Fujinami came to see me, but said he could not treat me, so I was hospitalized at the Ujina branch of the Army hospital. Daiwa Rayon’s plant was temporally used for the branch hospital- it is now a Mazda plant. I guess I was allowed to go there because my elder brother worked at an army-clothing depot and my cousin was a nurse there. It was around September 10th when I asked my brother to take me there and checked in.
There was no glass in the hospital room windows- they were all broken by the blast. The roof leaked, many buckets were placed all over the floor. This was how the hospital was like.
During the stay at the hospital, I lost all my hair; not a single hair was left on my head, and my gums were still bleeding. My Mom was with me all the time: I slept in her arms every night. She wrapped her arms around me. She must have felt guilty for forgetting about me during the bomb explosion. She held me all night long, and kept telling me not to die. I basked in heartfelt warmth, in deed.
Thanks to her, I escaped death.
The surrounding patients were all soldiers. They came to see me every evening because I was the only girl among the patients. They stared at me as if they were remembering whether their own daughters were sleeping deep like I was.
Those soldiers were dying. They were carried on a stretcher to another room one after the other- I could see them well through the windows without glasses. Soldiers in my room were moved to that other room as well. When I recovered, around November, I went to the other room and found that it was a morgue.
Lots of soldiers died and were carried there. Because the roof of the morgue leaked, the corpses looked like wax figures- raindrops turned their skins as if the wax layers. The soldiers’ faces were covered with a white cloth with the soldier’s name and rank written. When a soldier was cremated, the cloth was removed. This was the way they recorded who died.
There were many corpses because soldiers were still dying continuously. It felt strange because the war was over. I suppose they died from radiation. A huge pit was dug to manage all the corpses. They were all placed in the pit and cremated with oil. This was a daily routine, and it smelled very bad.
Since the end of the war, the thing I remember the most is the smell of burning corpses, and the voices crying, “Help me! Help me!” from the river. I will never forget those things.
In those days, the smell of burning corpses drifted all over Hiroshima. In every open space, like schoolyards, squares, fields, and kindergartens, corpses were cremated. Since coffins were in short supply, corpses were even burned in bureau drawers.
In the vicinity of Ujina, many corpses were cremated. After the war, there was a food shortage and all those open spaces were used as fields. Neighbors worked together, and potatoes grew very well there. The potato’s name was Koukei No.4 or something. We grew a lot of large ones. I was a child, so I did not tell others about it, but I thought to myself that it was because so many corpses were burned there and turned to good manure to let potatoes grew so well. Eggplants grew very well, too. Thanks to that, we were all survived. We had many open spaces in the area.
To cremate corpses on a fine day, they put bodies together into the pit, poured oil and set a fire to them. There was no glass for windows, so whenever the wind blew it smelled very strongly, and I really suffered from that unbearable smell.
The smell was so strong. Do you know Konoshiro, a fish? It is silver, thin, bony and delicious when broiled. Yes, it is like a thin horse mackerel. When you broil Konoshiro, it smells just the same as a cremated corpse does. This is why I have not eaten Konoshiro for fifty-seven years since the war ended.
Countless soldiers were cremated. They died one after another, even after the war.
I gradually got better, and left the hospital when my white blood cell count was up to around 2,800. When I went home, it was Mandarin Orange season. So I guess it was about early December, which means I had been in the hospital for three months.
I was burned on my face, arms, neck, legs and the back of my head. Keloids formed there, eventually healed- not perfectly, though. I went to see the doctor frequently, and was later hospitalized several times.
My hair hardly grew. I can not remember how long it took to have it grow back. I was hospitalized again and again, and could not go to school sometimes. I can not remember exactly.
My hair was really like that of boy’s. I literally had no hair, and when any grew, it was very thin downy hair. At school, I was very embarrassed with my lack of hair and the keloids on my face. I attended the Third National School again.
When I returned to the elementary school, I had little hair. You know the kewpie doll used to advertise a brand of mayonnaise? I looked like her, with my soft downy hair on top of my head. Those days, a lot of girls wore a scarf on their head. I think they all hardly had any hair.
It was embarrassing, and we wore cover our heads with scarves. But, on the way to school, there were mean boys waiting to steal scarves away. We made easy prey for them. Covering our head was only way to avoid being embarrassed, so, we put on those scarves. Those boys kept taking them and making fun of us.
There were also nice boys in those days. One day, one of boys apologized to me, “Sorry, Chiyo-chan.” I said nothing and he continued, “Don’t tell your father that I bullied you. Don’t tell your mother, either.” I said, “I won’t.” Then, he told me he would take us to school starting the next morning. He escorted us, and became our guard on the way to school. When the mean boys approached us to take our scarves away, he shouted, “Hey! Don’t do that!” The boys would run away. While he was a leader of boys, he protected. Children were not sinister like they are today. Throughout the rest of my elementary school days, he protected us.
He still lives in Ujina. The other day, I heard that he fell ill and checked into a hospital. I went to see him in the hospital, and told him, “I owe you a lot. You saved my life.”
I graduated from elementary school and entered Jissen girls’ school, but my health conditions deteriorated and I could not go to school very often. Because I became unable to walk and needed hospitalization often, I did not finish girls’ school; I have no photos of my graduation ceremony or other reminders. I could hardly attend school.
It took a long time before my hair started to grow again. Because I only grew downy hair at first, it was strangely shaped from the scarf I wore, and formed odd curls.
Even after my hair grew back, it was not as thick as it once was. Though it became long, but it did not grow thick. Before the bombing, I had a lot of hair. I suppose the hair roots were damaged when they were burnt. By the time I was 30 years old, the roots seemed to have recovered and grew in normal amount.
I have suffered from keloids for so long. I had one here on my arm; it became larger as my skin grew. It is itchy and painful even now, and scratching there scrapes the skin. When it is hot, I sweat and it makes the skin itchy. In that way, it gives me a lot of trouble. Here is my old skin.
I have a keloid on my neck, too. Half of my face was burned. You do not notice it, do you? There was a big one here and it still remains. It has left a faint scar.
Skin was burnt here on my face. When I laugh, I feel my skin stretched. The mark from the burn has remains as a black stain; I can not get rid of it, though I apply a pack to my face every night. Keloids were on my neck and face. I also had one on my leg, which has healed completely. There was a keloid here on my arm that swelled badly. It grew large and expanded- I can still feel the pimples on my arm, though they have been gradually fading away. What an amazing healing ability human being has! I have been rubbing them every night when I take a bath, so they have become less noticeable.
I could not wear short-sleeved clothes and my face was dark. It was a psychological pain. We all wailed because we were unable to enjoy our youth. We could not wear our company uniform with short-sleeves. My face complexity was dark at that time, though it had become much lighter now. I had bitter days in my youth; I really feel that way.
I got a job with the Monopoly Corporation, which was the predecessor of what is now the Japan Tobacco, Inc. I worked there until I retired at the age of 54 due to illness.
I kept working after our wedding. I met my husband at my work and we got married on his birthday, June 9, 1965, which took place 20 years after the end of the War. My husband is 4 years younger than I am; he was born in 1935 and I was born in 1931. Even now we have some small problems about our age difference, but we can joke about it.
We had a baby soon after our marriage. I have been blessed with children and a wonderful family. I was happy with my new family, but 43 days after the childbirth, I returned to work by sending my baby to a baby day-care center. I was afraid I always had my children feel lonely as I let them at baby day-care center and nursery school while I work.
Now my child is older and has her own children. I am trying to make up for what I could not do when she was a child. Our relationship is more like that of two friends. We go out for a drink with my husband and go to peace movements. We are more like friends. I have good relationship with my son-in-law Yoshinori, too.
The memory of my mother makes me sad and brings tears to my eyes whenever I talk about her. She passed away 19 years ago due to lung cancer, and at the time I was still working at the Monopoly Corporation. I used to get up at 4 am and make lunches for my mother and husband, and continued this for 10 months. With this tough life pattern, I developed diabetes as a result, and collapsed at work. I woke up and found myself in bed at the company clinic.
My mother said to me, “I am having chest pains.” Because of her lung cancer, she would die in the hospital. By that time she could only eat ice. I opened her pajamas and rubbed her chest in response to her complaints. I touched my mother’s breasts. I grasped the breasts like a child even though I was mature. Her breasts were warm, and it reminded me of sweet memories. I used to sleep with my mother when I was a primary school pupil, and the memory made tears trickle down my cheeks.
I saw my mother’s legs under the covers while grasping her breast. They were bent, reminding me of the boils on her legs. She had suffered for 6 years from boils on her legs. By the time they healed, her legs were bent.
I am afraid that my mother absorbed the radiation and toxic from my body because she held me in her arms every night at the Army hospital. I think that as a result, all the nuclear toxic and radiation entered her body.
My mother reached out her hand to my head rubbed it, and said, “Chiyo-chan is funny today.” I could not answer her anymore. Her doctor from the Hiroshima Prefecture Hospital told me that she would die the same night or next morning. In my silence, she took off a ring and put it in my hands. “Chiyo-chan, this is the ring of jade which your father bought when he worked as a crew of the chartered ship on the China during the War.” She said that she gave me the ring of jade so that it might protect me. I could not say anything, not even to thank. If I tried to say something, I would have started crying. I wept into her chest and held the ring. Her last words were that she was sorry about forgetting me when the atomic bomb dropped. I cried at that moment- her final words deeply touched me.
Whenever I have chances to talk about my A-bomb experience at schools, I say, “People, who died from atomic bomb disease, suffered for a long time. People who have survived still mentally and physically suffer from experience of the A- bomb. Sadness and pain increases at the death of each friend and acquaintance. War is an indiscriminate homicide. You should not repeat wars but should agree to prevent them. Please make an effort to create and keep peace as much as you can.”
However, I think this is a difficult thing to carry out, and say moreover, “Think. What you can do to work towards peaceful world is to try to understand other people’s pain, consider other people and be kind to them.” I request my audience to tell their family members about my A-bomb experience and discuss war and peace- truly think about it when they go back home. Then, I conclude my speech.
I always say, “It is people who starts wars, but also who are able to stop them. Peace will not come without effort. Peace is not the thing given to you by teachers or parents. You have to grab it and make an effort to create a peaceful world and society. To create a peaceful society, as I said, think of other people, have an open heart, try to understand other people’s pain and please keep peace in your mind always. Please don’t forget about it.”
Now I’m suffering from cataracts as an after-effect of the atomic bomb and I had lost sight in my left eye, so I underwent an operation to put an intraocular lens there. Then the other eye went bad. That is my right eye, and my vision is 0.2 in the right eye and 0.2 at most, usually 0.1, in the left. Even though my doctor recommends an operation within the next year, the operation will not
improve my eyesight by much- it will only improve it to 0.3 with the operation. I think, because my eyesight will not get much better even after operation, I do not want to go through. On the other hand, I also think I should go through with it if my eyesight will improve, even if by a little. The doctor in the Atomic bomb hospital said, “Ms. Kuwabara, let’s decide whether to have an operation or not.” I still have not made up my mind.
In retrospect, I am happy to have met so many nice people in my life. I have met many nice colleagues at work who have supported me. I have had a lot of happy times in my life. I am also happy to have met my husband, who accepts my pain - emotional and physical pain, mostly emotional, in my life. I wish to live until the age of one hundred.
I told my husband. “When you die and go to heaven, please save a seat next to you for me. I will get there later.” Can you imagine what did he say to me? He said, “Well, no. You are always nagging me, so I think I would like to sit next to a young girl next time.” So I said to him, “Oh, come on. Hahaha…
（Interviewed on November 8, 2002 at Mrs. Kuwabara’s house. Interviewer: Taro Tatsukawa and Tsutomu Igarashi）
Poem
- Let me dedicate the rest of my life -
Chiyoko Kuwabara
It was at 8:15am on August 6, 1945
I was exposed to the atomic bombing in Hiroshima
800 meters away from the hypocenter,
I was blown away with a crash noise ‘dong’,
I flee from place to place
I was 13 years old being numb with any sadness or fear
Insulin Injection in the morning and evening
With large keloid scars on my arm, I could not wear short sleeves ? It was my youth.
At my first childbirth, I prayed to the god.
My baby’s first cry struck great pleasure into me
My eyes became dim with endless tears.
A daughter was born, and another daughter was born.
As my daughters have grown up, I told them about that day.
With twinkles in their eyes, they were listening carefully with intense concentration
Watching the daughters, I shed tears again.
I continue to call for realization of the Atomic Bomb Victims Assistance Law and
call for the nation to confirm that they will never have a war,
with help of my families and friends
I am a testifier.
Let me dedicate the rest of my life to testify my experience.
(Published in the Zentabako shinbun, newsletter of Japan Tobacco, Inc. labor union, on December 18, 1991 issue.)
Kanda Shrine in Ujina. The original shrine building was burnt, and lost about 20 years ago and a new building has been rebuilt.