by Masuji Ibuse
Around Sakan-chō and Sorazaya-chō, it was clear that the flames had swept evenly across the whole area. The corpses lay scattered in every conceivable condition—one with only the upper half of the body burned to the bone, one completely skeletonized save for one arm and one leg, another lying face down, consumed from the knees down, yet another with the two legs alone cremated—and an unspeakable stench hanging over all. Nauseating though the odor was, there was no way to escape it.
In Tera-machi, the “temple quarter,” not a single temple was standing. All that remained was clay walls crumbled and collapsed till they were barely recognizable, and venerable trees with their limbs torn open to expose the naked wood within. Even the branch of the Honganji temple, famed as the greatest temple building in the whole quarter, had vanished without trace. The smoke still rising from the embers drifted menacingly over the crumbling walls, then crept low over the surface of the river till it vanished at the other bank.
On the other side of Yokogawa Bridge the flames were still rising. Fanned by the wind, fires were swirling white-hot up to the skies from the whole area on the opposite bank. To approach was out of the question.
We found the road ahead completely blocked on this side of the bridge. The iron girders forming the bow-shaped framework of the bridge were discolored up to a height of some twelve to fifteen feet, and close to one of the piers of the bridge that rested on a stretch of grass stood a horse badly burned on its back and the back of its head. It was trembling violently and looked as though it might collapse at any moment. Close by its side a corpse, the upper half burned away, lay face downwards. The lower half, which was untouched, wore army breeches and boots with spurs. The spurs actually gleamed gold. If the owner had been an army man, then he had been an officer, for only an officer could wear boots with gold spurs like that. I pictured the scene to myself: the officer running to the stables, mounting his horse barebacked, rushing outside….The horse must have been a favorite of the soldier’s. Though it was on the verge of collapse, it still seemed—or was it my imagination?—to be yearning for some sign from the man in the spurred boots. How immeasurable the pain it must have felt, with the west-dipping sun beating down unmercifully on its burned flesh; how immeasurable its love for the man in the boots! But pity eluded me: I felt only a shudder of horror.
Our only choice was to walk on through the river. Close to the bank there were grassy shoals, but in places they were too far apart for us to tread dry ground all the time. We stepped into the flowing water and set off walking upstream. Even at its deepest, the water only came up to our knees. The district we were passing through would have been Hirose Kitamachi or thereabouts. On the sandy parts, where the river had dried up, our shoes spouted water with a squelching sound. No sooner did the water empty out of them a little, and walking become a little pleasanter, than the sand would start getting in our shoes and almost lame us with the pain.
We decided it was actually better to walk in the water, and splashed on regardless. On a pebbly shoal a man lay with both hands thrust in the water, drinking. We approached, thinking to join him, and found he was not drinking water but dead, with his face thrust down into the water.
“I wonder if the water in this river is poisonous, then?” said Yasuko, voicing my own unspoken question.
“There’s no telling,” I replied, setting off through the water again. “But perhaps we’d better not drink it.”
The smoke blowing across from the town gradually diminished, and paddy fields appeared on our right, so we clambered up a crumbling stone wall and onto the bank.
We reached the rice fields. Walking along the raised paths between them in the direction of the electric car tracks, we came across a number of schoolgirls and schoolboys lying here and there in the fields, dead. They must have fled in disorder from the factory where they had been doing war work. There were adults lying about too. One of them, an elderly man, had fallen across the path, and the front of his jacket was soaked with water. He had evidently drunk to bursting point from the paddy field water, then—either unable to care any more or in a fit of vertigo—subsided onto the ground and expired where he lay.
We stepped over the body and wound our way, first left then right, along the paths between the fields, till finally they led us into a bamboo grove. The grove must have been kept for the purpose of gathering bamboo shoots, for the undergrowth was well cut back. Finding ourselves in cool, leafy shade at last, we sank to the ground without exchanging a word.
I unfastened my first-aid kit, took off my air raid hood and my shoes, and sprawled out on my back. At once my body seemed to be dissolving into thin air, and before I knew it I had slipped into a deep slumber.
I awoke, I knew not how long after, to a raging thirst and a pain in my throat. My wife and Yasuko were both lying with their heads pillowed on their arms. I rolled onto my belly, and, filching the quart bottle of water out of my wife’s rucksack, drank. It was a heaven-sent nectar. I had had no idea that water was so good. The ecstasy was touched, almost, with a kind of pride. I must have drunk all of a third of a pint.
My wife and Yasuko awoke too. By now, the sun was sinking toward the west. Without a word Shigeko took the bottle I handed her and, lifting it with both hands, drank greedily. She probably drank another third of a pint. Then she passed the bottle to Yasuko, also without a word. Yasuko in her turn raised it with both hands. She paused between each mouthful, but every time she upended the bottle a stream of bubbles ran up through it and the remaining water decreased visibly. I was almost despairing of her leaving any at all, when she finally put the bottle down with about one-third of a pint still in it.
From her rucksack, my wife took out the cucumbers she had brought for want of anything better, and opened a packet of salt. The cucumbers were blackened and discolored on one side. “Where did you buy these?” I asked. “Mrs. Murakami from Midori-chō brought them for us this morning,” she said.
Early that morning, apparently, Mrs. Murakami had brought us three cucumbers and a dozen or so tiny dried fish, of the kind used in flavoring soup, in return for a share of some tomatoes that Shigeko’s people in the country had sent us. Shigeko had left the cucumbers in a bucket of water by the pool in the garden, and the flash from the bomb had discolored them.
“It’s funny,” I said. “When I went back to the house from the university sports ground, the basket worms were eating the leaves of the azalea. The cucumber was burned, but the insects were still alive.”
I dipped the cucumber in the salt and turned the question over in my mind as I ate. Some physical reaction had obviously taken place on the surface of the water in the bucket. Could it be that reflection inside the bucket had stepped up the amount of heat and light? Glancing at the pond as I went to sink the mosquito net in the water, I had noticed basket worms on the azalea that grew out over the water, busily eating the new summer buds. I shook the branch, and they drew back into their baskets, but when I got back from collecting pieces of brick to sink the net with, they were busily eating once more. The buds themselves were not discolored, nor were the worms’ baskets burned, which suggested that light and heat had caused some chemical change when it came up against metal. Or had the basket worms and azalea been sheltered by the house, or by some other obstacle, when the bomb had burst? The rice plants in the open paddy fields seemed to have been affected by the flash. It seemed likely that they, too, would have turned black by the following morning.
I washed my small towel in a ditch at the edge of the bamboo grove, wiped my right cheek and the sinews of my neck, then rinsed the towel time and time again. I wrung it out and rinsed it, wrung it out and rinsed it, repeating the same seemingly pointless procedure over and over again. To wring out my towel was the one thing, it seemed to me, that I was free to do as I pleased at that moment. My left cheek smarted painfully. A shoal of minnows was swimming in the ditch, and in a patch of still water the flags were growing in profusion. Here is shadow, they seemed to say, here is safety…
.
Smoke came drifting from deep within the bamboo grove. Going to investigate, I peered through the bamboos and saw a group of refugees who had built a shelter of green bamboo and branches and were preparing a meal. They seemed to have been burned out of their homes and to be making ready to spend the night out.
I strained my ears to catch their conversation. It seemed from what they said that the houses along the main highway had all closed their shutters in order to keep out refugees. At one sundry goods store this side of Mitaki Station on the Kabe Line, they had found a woman who had got in unnoticed and died in one of their closets. When the owner of the store dragged the body out, he found that the garment it was wearing was his own daughter’s best summer kimono. Scandalized, he had torn the best kimono off the body, only to find that it had no underwear on underneath. She must have been burned out of her home and fled all the way there naked, yet still—being a young woman—sought something to hide her nakedness even before she sought water or food. The refugees were wondering whether bombs like today’s would be dropped on other cities besides Hiroshima. What were Japan’s battleships and land forces up to, they were asking each other. It would be a wonder if there weren’t a civil war….
I made my way back quietly through the bamboo, and with a “Come on” to the others started to get ready. I had a stabbing pain in my toes. “Come on,” I urged them again, but neither Shigeko nor Yasuko made any reply. They seemed utterly exhausted. “Well, then, I’m off!” I said sharply, and this time they reluctantly got to their feet and started to get ready.
Walking made my toes hurt so that I nearly danced with the pain. The others were complaining of the pain too. I myself must have walked some ten or eleven miles already. My wife had walked five or six, and Yasuko about five. We ate parched rice as we walked. We would thrust a hand into the cloth bag my wife was carrying, take out a handful and, putting it in our mouths, chew on it as we walked. It gradually turned to sugar, and tasted sweet in the mouth; it was better than either the water or the cucumber. The most effective way seemed to be to chew as one walked, and I could understand why travelers in olden times took parched rice with them as rations for the journey. Finally, one gulped it down, then took another handful out of the cloth bag and put it in one’s mouth. Parched rice may be very unappetizing-looking, but I gave thanks in my heart to my wife’s folk for sending it.
The main highway was dotted with refugees. Just as I had overheard the people in the bamboo grove saying, the houses by the roadside all had their doors and shutters fastened. Where there was a roofed gateway, its doors were shut fast. Outside one of the gates with shut doors lay a bundle of straw scorched by fire. I wondered if passing refugees had set fire to it.
However far we went, still the houses along the road had their doors shut. Here the breeze was cool, unlike the hot breath of the town, and ripples were running over the rice plants in the paddy fields. The fathers from the Catholic church on the north side of Yamamoto Station went running past us at top speed, carrying a stretcher. With them was one father, a man past middle age, whom I had often seen on the Kabe-bound train on my way to work. He came panting along far behind the others carrying the stretcher, and as he passed me he glanced into my face and nodded briefly in recognition. “Good luck to you,” I called after him.
At last, we reached Yamamoto Station. From here on, the trains were running. A train was standing in the station, every coach full, but we managed to squeeze our way into the vestibule of one of them. Wedged tight, I tried to make more room by nudging at a bundle directly in front of me. Wrapped in a cloth, it rested on the shoulders of a woman of about thirty. Somehow, it felt different from a bundle of belongings, so I tried touching it furtively with my hand. I contacted what felt like a human ear: a child seemed to be in the bundle. To carry a child in such a fashion was outrageous. It was almost certain to suffocate in such a crush.
“Excuse me Ma’am,” I said softly. “Is it your child in here?”
“Yes,” she said in a scarcely audible voice. “He’s dead.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, taken aback. “I didn’t know….I really must apologize, to be pushing and….”
“Not at all,” she said gently. “None of us can help it in such a crowd.” She hitched the bundle up, bent her head, and was seized with a fit of weeping.
“It was when the bomb burst,” she said through her sobs. “The sling of his hammock broke, and he was dashed against the wall and killed. Then the house started to burn, so I wrapped him in a quilt cover and brought him away on my back. I’m taking him to my old home in Iimori, so I can bury him in the cemetery there.”
She stopped weeping, and ceased talking at the same time. I could not bring myself to address her any further.
A kite was wheeling in the air above the wires. The cicadas were chirping, and a dabchick was bustling about the pond with waterlilies by the side of the highway. A perfectly commonplace scene that somehow seemed quite extraordinary….
The conductor announced the train’s imminent departure, and a fiercer clamor arose from those who had not succeeded in getting on. The train lurched forward and stopped, lurched and stopped again.
“What the hell’re you up to? Are you starting or aren’t you?” bellowed a voice, to be followed by another voice that launched into a speech somewhere inside the coach: “Ladies and gentlemen, you can see for yourselves how sadly decadent the National Railways have become. Concerned only with carrying black market goods, they have nothing but contempt for the ordinary passenger….” But this time the train glided smoothly into motion, and the rest of the speech was lost forever in the clatter of its wheels.
CHAPTER 8
The train tracks and the main road to Kabe ran parallel to each other, and on the main road we could see the refugees trudging along on foot or being carried on hand-carts. All were heading in the direction of Kabe. The train carrying us must have outstripped several hundred of them when, without warning, the engine or something gave out and we jarred to a halt.
“What the hell!” said a voice. “This isn’t a station! No wonder people say the National Railways are going to the dogs!” Another passenger jumped down from the platform of the coach. A healthy-looking man in his middle years, he got onto the main highway, adjusted the net haversack on his back, and without so much as a glance back set off walking in the direction of Kabe.
The train showed no inclination to start again. We were jammed together like sardines, and the heat was insufferable.
“Come on, National Railways!” came another voice from somewhere inside the coach. “Are you starting, now, or aren’t you? If not, I’m going to walk too.” And someone, apparently the owner of the voice, climbed out of the window. I could not see them from where I was standing, but three or four other people seemed to be climbing out of the windows after him. Before long, at least a dozen more had gone. Thanks to this, we had a little more room inside, and I gradually got myself away from the vestibule and half inside the coach. My wife and niece were already completely in. The woman carrying the dead child in the white cloth was still standing in the vestibule.
From outside the window came the voice of the conductor calling as he went past: “Owing to a breakdown, the train is unavoidably delayed.” At this, another three or four people left via the windows. A group of people who seemed to be a family helped each other out of a window, then, with a “the child, if you wouldn’t mind,” had a child passed out into their waiting arms by the people still inside.
Still more came pushing their way out through the crush to the exit. The result was considerably more space, and passengers who had remained silent so far began sporadic attempts at conversation. Without exception, they talked of the bombing. Each told what he had seen or heard as an individual, without relation to the others, so that even synthesizing their stories it was impossible to get an overall picture of the disaster. Even so, I have set some of them down here just as I remember them.
—
/> The man in his forties who stood on my right, with his air raid hood dangling down his back on a string, had had the left half of his face burned, and the skin had peeled clean off; he was far more badly hurt than I. Even his eyebrows were burnt away. His eyes were extraordinarily deep-set—so deep-set that that may well have been what had saved them. He had been glancing at my face from time to time, and now he suddenly said:
“Where did you get caught, may I ask?”
“Yokogawa Station,” I told him.
“I come from Fukushima-chō,” he said. “I was just coming out of the air raid shelter when I caught it.”
He had gone back to fetch his cigarettes and matches, which he had left in the shelter, and had just come out again when he was aware of a sudden flash and found he could see nothing about him. However, he soon discovered that he could still move his arms and legs, so he more or less groped his way to the front entrance of the house; whether he walked or crawled, he wasn’t sure. The first thing he knew, he had recovered his sight and could see the house, which had been knocked flat. He assumed it had received a direct hit from a bomb. His small daughter in primary school and his wife had been evacuated to Kobe, but his elder daughter, who attended the Municipal Girls’ High School, had gone to work at Nakajima Hommachi to help pull down houses to make firebreaks. Worried about her, he started running, but had only got as far as the near end of Fukushima Bridge when he met an acquaintance called Yoda running from the opposite direction.
“How’s your place?”
“Knocked flat. I’m worried about my daughter—I’m going to where they’re working at Nakajima Hommachi.”
“You mustn’t, you mustn’t! All the girls at the Municipal High School were wiped out, I tell you. D’you mean to give up your own chance of getting away and run into a sea of fire?”