Surviving Hiroshima: A Young Woman's Story

by Anthony Drago

accoutrements

conscription.

“The emperor of Japan is the emperor of the world.” At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, the Japanese set out to accomplish what they felt was their destiny.

Japan offered a compromise: They would recognize Russian authority over Manchuria if the Russians would recognize Japanese authority over Korea. The Russians not only refused, but demanded that the Japanese not occupy Korea above the 39th parallel to provide a neutral zone between Japan and Russia. Attempts at a diplomatic solution to the problem failed, and the Japanese launched a surprise attack against the Russian fleet in Port Arthur. The Russians fared badly. Despite heavy losses and an apparent willingness on the part of the Japanese to negotiate peace, Czar Nicholas II pressed forward into a series of humiliating defeats which ultimately cost the Russians two of its three naval fleets, while elevating the Japanese as a military power on a global scale.

My grandfather and his colleagues were essentially men without a country being hunted by their former countrymen

The churning sea, the barrier that kept them locked in Russia, also contained the means for their escape.

I suppose the situation was similar to a house fire: What do you save when you face losing everything? When it was over, the émigrés’ possessions were limited to what they could carry in their pockets and a few suitcases.

As I look back almost one hundred years, and at all of the events that have transpired in between, it’s amazing that the entire future of my family hinged on two events: my grandfather being willing to take a stand and seize a ship to protect all of their families from certain death, and a Japanese sea captain having the humanity and respect to allow it to happen without repercussions.

I think we would all focus very hard on our memories if we knew that someday they would be all we have left.

virulently

War creates fear, and not just for those on the battlefield. Attitudes of congeniality and friendship can quickly turn to distrust and suspicion. This is particularly true when there are significant cultural and physical differences in the population.

“I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” —Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto

there were three pillars of strength that sustained her: faith, music, and athletics. These were all formed around a core family character trait of determination.

Our only hope for a return to a normal life, we knew, and confided to one another when we were safely alone, lay with an Allied victory. “Provided . . . ” my father gasped as we piled into an air raid shelter seconds before a diving P-38 machine-gunned crowds in the street outside—“ . . . provided the Americans don’t kill us all in the process.4

The initial detonation killed over 80,000 people instantly.

In some cases, the pattern of the design of a person’s clothing would be burned into their skin. Sidewalks and structures were covered with “nuclear shadows,” dark areas in the shape of people or objects. The people were vaporized, but their bodies blocked enough thermal radiation to leave their “shadow” on adjacent structures, a grotesque monument to the place of their death.

Teruo was David’s age and one of the children he had been playing with minutes earlier. They found him on the ground between the houses, his brown hair parted to reveal a massive fracture that left his skull laying open like a clam shell. There was nothing they could do to help him. The other children David had been playing with were horribly burned. They would all later die.

Before there had been a city—a vast city 6.9 square miles, home of 343,000 men women and children—before, there had been a city between here and Kure.13

Because the force was directed downward, there were utility poles and trees directly under the detonation point that remained upright. (Scientists would later use the leaning utility poles to determine the exact spot over which the bomb had detonated.)

The combined blast and subsequent fires destroyed over sixty thousand of the estimated ninety thousand structures in the city.

Father and mother and David walked hand in hand, oblivious of their torn clothes, their streaked faces. To us, already, the cruelly abnormal was taken for granted.

“For the first time since the war began, we felt no antagonism on the part of our neighbors just because we were white; we all had endured this thing together,” she wrote. “There was only one common denominator now—life.”

New rule: Don’t give water under any circumstances.

As the numbness gave way to conscious perception, we found ourselves angry and incredulous that the United States, the country we longed to call our own, that Americans, whom we had considered the most peace-loving, the kindest, most civilized people in the world had done this terrible thing.

My mom wrote, “We were the last to know, probably, that we had experienced the first atom bomb explosion in history.”4

The airburst of Little Boy had sent a 360-degree shockwave that leveled almost everything in a radius of one mile.

Shikata ga-nai—it can’t be helped.

There was not a dog, not a cat, not a dragonfly, not a green leaf anywhere. As far as I could see, I was the only living being.2

One of the rules of life is, if you absolutely must be in a war, it is best to be on the winning side.

A one-sided use of the atomic bomb could certainly end a future war, as it had in Japan; however, if the enemy was also a nuclear power, and it led to an exchange of nuclear weapons, it could result in the destruction of both sides.

You can’t imagine how awful it is unless you live through it . . . You have to feel the awful heat . . . the terrible stink . . . the agony, confusion and the utter helplessness. You have to see people roasted alive before your eyes. Hear living flesh pop and sizzle like a pork chop. See women and babies, with their eyes melted out. You have to see these tortured, helpless people . . . convulsed with agony. Whimpering for doctors who never come. Crying for food and water . . . until their swollen tongues mercifully silence their croaking voices.2 If the radio audience had any questions about what it was like to experience an atomic bomb, that should have cleared them up.

“Right after the bomb I couldn’t imagine that Americans could do such a thing. But when I found out it saved so many lives, I was glad. However,” she added, “it mustn’t happen again.” Caron’s response was simple, but heartfelt: “Amen.”

If you want to know your enemy, you had better be able to understand him.

He told me that he thought I was too young to get married and offered me $500 to escape to New Jersey. Fortunately, Kathy has a great sense of humor.

During my mom’s youth, it had been a vibrant city of 340,000 people, but when she left Japan—for all practical purposes—it had ceased to exist. Now, it had regrown to a population of 1,046,000.

On that day so long ago, Mom and my family had to decide whether to stop and come to the family’s aid, or continue walking down the road with the rest of the survivors. It had been a life or death decision, and my family chose life.

To the contrary, the pain in their lives seems to have made them especially sensitive to the pain of others.

They had gained an appreciation for the best in life by being subjected to the worst.

In once-devastated Hiroshima, there is a glass display case in a school lobby. It contains the violin that Grandfather preserved through the Russian Civil War, the flight from the Bolsheviks, and the atomic bombing. He guarded it in the belief that art and humanity could prevail, even in the worst of times. Today it remains as a symbol that reminds us of the indomitable spirit of man.

Wars are the creation of a few. The average person, like it or not, ends up going along for the ride.