The
day Hiroshima turned into hell
Sixty-six years after the atomic bomb was dropped,
survivor Keijiro Matsushima tells of a day of death
and destruction.
By Cajsa Wikstrom
aljazeera.net: http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/2011/08/20118514019236497.html
August 6, 2011
Sixty-six years ago, Hiroshima was turned
into a burning inferno as the Americans dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese
city. Keijiro Matsushima was 16 years old when he
witnessed the attack which claimed roughly 100,000 lives in one day.
He recalls how August 6, 1945, was a
beautiful day, with a blue sky. Matsushima had returned to school only a week
earlier, after he and his peers were mobilized to work for a year and a half in
a factory producing military uniforms.
At 8:15 in the morning, his class had just
started. He was listening to his teacher explaining a question on differential
and integral calculus. "I was looking out through the window and saw two
American B-29 bombers. I just thought 'American planes again', assuming they
were out for some routine work."
When he looked back at his books, the bomb
exploded. "There was a very strong flash and a heat wave. The whole world
turned into something orange. I felt like I was thrown into an oven for a
moment." Later, he learned that temperatures on the ground near the hypo-center, 2km from his school, had reached at least 3,000
degrees centigrade. The flash was followed by a loud boom. Until now,
Matsushima doesn't know whether it was the sound of the explosion or of
collapsing buildings.
Matsushima returned to
Hiroshima three years after the bombing and still lives there. "I covered
my ears and eyes and jumped under the desk," he says. "It was pitch black, I could see nothing. So many boys in the room, but no
one screamed.
"There was a deadly
silence. I was crawling around, thinking 'help me mother, help me Buddha'. It
was the first time I prayed to Buddha." Matsushima describes himself as
one of the most fortunate survivors. He got some cut wounds from glass
splinters, but suffered no serious injuries.
"I thought it had been
just one bomb. But when I got out, I was shocked to see that all buildings had
been hit. I was thinking, 'just two planes, what did they do?" One of his
friends had a big cut in his head. Matsushima covered the wound with a piece of
textile and supported his friend as they walked slowly towards the nearby Red
Cross hospital.
Buildings were on fire and
the two boys met scores of injured people walking along the tram tracks, away
from the mayhem in the heart of the city. "Their hair stood up straight.
Some had lost their hair," Matsushima recalls. "Some were so badly
burned from head to toe, their skin peeling from their heads. Their clothes
were burned, some were almost naked.
"I thought to myself,
'Hiroshima is dying.' I could see red muscle under their skin. They held their
arms forward, all of them, maybe because of the wounds. They were walking
slowly in a long line, hundreds of them, like a procession of ghosts." But
a lot of people could walk no more. "People were crawling towards the
river, crying out for water to cool their burns. But many died on the river
banks or drowned. The river was full of bodies."
Matsushima says the Red
Cross hospital had also been damaged in the blast, and only a few doctors and
nurses, themselves wounded, were struggling to treat hundreds of injured. Realizing
that there was no help to get, Matsushima walked away with his friend, who was
fortunate enough to be picked up by a rescue truck and taken to a hospital
outside the city. Within 2km of the hypocenter, most buildings were completely
burned and destroyed.
Hiroshima played a
strategically important role during the second world war, housing army supply
facilities and some of the military headquarters. About 400,000 people were in
the city when the bomb was dropped. Most residents had been mobilized to work
in military factories along with Koreans and other forced labor. Many forced
laborers survived harsh working conditions only to be killed in the bombing. Matsushima's
mother had evacuated the city earlier in the year, following the death of her
husband.
The dormitory where
Matsushima was staying had been destroyed. He left Hiroshima on foot, and
managed to get on a rescue train some kilometers away, to finally reach his
mother's house in the countryside. She had seen the mushroom cloud of smoke
billowing above the city, and had assumed that her son had been killed.
The next day, Matsushima
became very ill, with fever and diarrhea, but he recovered after a week. He
thinks that because he stayed away from the city after the disaster, he avoided
most of the radiation. Many others stayed in Hiroshima to help with rescue
efforts or search for loved ones, not knowing about the danger they were
exposed to. "I've been ill from time to time, but thank Buddha, I'm still
alive," Matsushima says.
The fact that the atom bomb
was dropped during the hot season slowed the recovery process for those with
injuries, many of whom got infested wounds. "They got maggots in their
wounds and took them out with chopsticks. People died, one by one,"
Matsushima says, shaking his head at the sad memories.
Just three days after
Hiroshima was hit, another atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki.
Only after Japan surrendered on August 15 did the Japanese found out what kind
of bombs the Americans had actually used. By the end
of the year, about 140,000 deaths in Hiroshima were attributed to the bomb,
including people killed in the explosion and later due to radiation and
injuries. Up to 80,000 people were killed in Nagasaki.
Today, Hiroshima is a
modern city, completely rebuilt, with a population of about one million. Only
the so-called A-bomb dome stands as a reminder of the massive destruction. The
building was used as an exhibition hall at the time and its robust concrete structure
was left standing as the bomb exploded almost directly above it.
Despite the sufferings the
attack caused, Matsushima feels no bitterness towards the Americans.
"People go crazy in wars, wanting to kill the enemy. If Japan had owned an
A-bomb, we might have used it. Arguing about the past is nonsense. Now we have
to co-operate to abolish all nukes."
Source: Al Jazeera