by Masuji Ibuse
There was an air raid warning about six-thirty on the morning of August 6, and two or three B-29’s came and flew off to the south again without dropping a single bomb. They saw nothing unusual in this; it had often happened before. The warning was lifted at something past seven, then at 7:50, while an alert was still in force, the whole unit—commander, doctors, sanitation orderlies, and reserves—fell in in the yard, bowed towards the east, where the Imperial Palace lay, and listened to a ceremonial reading of the Imperial Rescript to the Army to mark the anniversary of its promulgation.
The senior medical officers and medical orderlies were in the front rank, next came the medical reserves drafted from Yamaguchi and Shimane prefectures, in their best uniforms, then, at the very rear, the medical reserves from Hiroshima, whose uniforms were the poorest. The army had not given those responsible sufficient warning before the Hiroshima people had arrived, and they were still in what were little better than fatigues, with no stars on their collars or other trimmings.
The ceremony over, the second-in-command began his address, but it was now that a B-29 dropped the atomic bomb. What follows is Iwatake’s own account of what happened.
The ceremony was over in about twenty minutes. It happened just before we were to be dismissed, as we were getting a talking-to from the second-in-command for not being snappy enough in following the required procedure during an air raid. There came the familiar drone of a B-29. It came from the south, and when it seemed to be directly above I involuntarily glanced up at the sky. For a moment, I had a glimpse of something that looked like a captive balloon drifting lazily downwards in the sky beyond the barracks roof. The next moment, there was a white flash like lightning, or the light from a great mass of magnesium ignited all at once. I felt a wave of searing heat. At the same time, there was a terrifying roar, and that was all I knew. What happened after that, or how much time passed, I do not know. Struck down by the blast, I may actually have lost consciousness.
Someone else stirring and planting an army boot on my neck and head in the effort to get up, restored me to consciousness. I was somewhere pitch dark, wedged tight beneath a piece of timber. Gradually recovering my senses in that small space where it was impossible to move, I found I could make out a source of dim light in the darkness and, exerting all my strength, started to crawl towards it. I realized that I was beneath a wooden roof minus all its tiles.
It seemed to me to take a considerable time, but eventually I found myself standing on open ground. Looking back now, I believe I was in the space between the general affairs office and the kitchens. Even allowing for the distance I had crawled, I must have been blown quite a long way. The two-story buildings of the infirmary and the education unit no longer rose against the sky. Everything had been flattened and scattered in disorder. All about was silence, with no sign of life anywhere. It was dark, as though dusk was drawing in, and black smoke was rising from the direction of the kitchens and the infirmary.
The right half of my uniform was smoldering and smoking, and the wallet that had been in my right breast pocket, the watch on my left wrist, and my spectacles had all vanished. After a while I succeeded in rubbing out the fire in my uniform. The skin on the back of my right hand had peeled off and hung down a grayish-white color, and the raw flesh beneath was coated with black soil. My whole face felt on fire, and the back and fingers of my left hand, though not skinned, had turned white as though cauterized. Below the waist I felt no pain even when I walked, but my back must have been hit by a piece of timber or something, for it hurt excessively. For want of something better to do, I made my way to the wash-place, where the pillars were still standing. I tried turning a tap and, to my surprise, water came out. I first washed the dirt off the back of my hand, then bound it with a loincloth that someone had left behind in the drying room. I am very shortsighted. Without my spectacles, everything seems dim, and distant objects are indistinct.
There was nobody about. Getting my bearings from the position of the wash-place, I succeeded in reaching the bank of the Ōta River. Here I found two or three soldiers I knew by sight, and another lying half-naked on the ground.
A pile of blankets, taken out of the barracks at the time of the air raid, was lying in the open, so I helped myself to one and flopped down on it on the ground. Tension temporarily left me, and I felt empty and exhausted. Our number increased to five or six, but none of us could give any convincing account of what had happened. The only feeling was one of shock in the face of the result. The destructive power was fantastic. I had thought at first that the barracks had been destroyed by a near miss, but as I calmed down I realized that this was not so, for the houses on the opposite bank had also gone.
Red flames rising from the direction of Mitaki Bridge and around the Honganji branch temple on the opposite bank showed where fires had started. It might be that both explosive and incendiary bombs had been dropped at the same time, but it was almost unthinkable that this could have happened when there was no air raid warning in force. Three or four of my fellow reserves turned up, Miyoshi and Itō among them. All were men who had been with me in the rear rank. All of them seemed to be past speech. Many of those who had been in the front ranks must have been still trapped under the buildings, but it was hopeless to think of getting them out from under ruins from which the flames were already rising, when one was injured oneself, and with no implements save one’s bare hands.
Miyoshi and Itō somehow agreed that it was dangerous where we were, and that we should take refuge at the Mitaki branch hospital. I decided I would go along with the rest. I knew from experience that the flames from a fire tended to sweep over the surface of rivers. On the night of March 9 in Tokyo, when the Asakusa, Honjo, Mukōjima, and other districts bordering the Sumida River were burned in the raids, the whole area had become a sea of flames, and I myself saw people who had been burned to death as they floated in the water.
We started to move upstream. Every road worthy of the name was blocked by fallen buildings, and for a while we were obliged to follow a path trodden out along the river bank. Several times I tripped on holes in the ground, and finally lost one of my shoes. I looked for it, but in vain, and Itō called out to me not to lag behind. I seemed to hear someone groaning in a patch of briars nearby, but I was fleeing in a kind of daze, and was incapable of doing anything to save him. The fires were closing in. My face was gradually swelling up, and the pain growing steadily worse. I had difficulty in walking. I reproached myself as a doctor for leaving another human being to his fate, but the situation was too desperate to leave room for anything but flight.
I do not know what time it was, but to make our way past the Nigitsu Shrine and reach the river bank again must have taken at least two hours. Around the time that we arrived, a weak sun was trying to break through the cloudy sky. From what I learned later, I imagine it was then that the dark mushroom cloud was at last beginning to disperse….
—
The barracks where Iwatake was stationed were close to the center of the explosion, which suggests that his flight kept him on a course where he was in a position to see the mushroom cloud from directly underneath. This would explain his reference to a “cloudy sky.” It is extraordinary that he should have got to safety with such serious burns and then lived on to tell the tale. He was one of the only three survivors from among the more than one hundred and thirty men in the unit.
When he got to the road by the side of the Nigitsu Shrine with his two colleagues, someone told them not to go any farther because of the danger of explosions near the Heavy Artillery headquarters, and they were instructed to ford the river to the center shoals. So they put the blankets on their heads to keep them dry, and waded up to their chests in the water as far as the dry sand at the center of the river. At this point, they noticed flames gleaming amidst the smoke billowing up towards Mitaki. Mitaki had had it too, it seemed. So they changed their plans and went ashore on the bank farther upstream. By now, Iwatake felt neither hunger nor pai
n; all he wanted was a place where he could lie down and be left undisturbed.
Numbers of army trucks were driving hurriedly in the direction of the city. The driver of one, seeing them lying out flat, shouted to them as he passed:
“Hey there! You soldiers? There’s a place called Hesaka on the north side of this hill. They’re getting a reception center ready there, so keep going. They say there’s plenty of medical supplies there. Just over on the north side of this hill.”
“Hesaka, Hesaka,” the three of them repeated to each other, and started off to the north. Iwatake, with his one bare foot, followed limping in the others’ wake. They had been told it was just over the hill, but it seemed an awfully long way. In fact, it was about six miles. The road there, with its procession of frantically fleeing wounded, was a gruesome sight.
At Hesaka, the National Elementary School had been taken over as a reception center to accommodate the injured; there was no medical relief center as such. There were just two single-story school buildings, with two tents erected as emergency accommodation in the tiny playground. Both buildings and tents were besieged by the injured, who stood awaiting their turn in long lines even though the sun was already setting. In the corridors were people lying groaning on the floor where they had collapsed, and others who lay with pieces of cloth over their faces, having struggled all the way there only to breathe their last. Parents were calling the names of their children, and children were calling for their mothers. The only people giving treatment were some applying mercurochrome and others applying a mixture of flour and oil as a substitute dressing for burns. There seemed to be nothing to make bandages with, and no medicine for injections.
Iwatake’s face swelled up more and more until it was as round as a watermelon and his eyes closed up almost completely. Miyoshi had a great blister on his cheek and all the skin off his hands. Itō had a burn on his cheek and a lump on his forehead caused by a blow. Miyoshi was a doctor of medicine, a specialist in obstetrics. He always carried a photograph of his baby daughter concealed in an inside pocket. Itō was a general practitioner in the town of Miyoshi, and an expert on pharmacology.
Iwatake and his two companions got themselves painted with mercurochrome, then, finding a vacant space in the corridor near the entrance, wrapped themselves up in the blankets they had brought and spent the night there. Perhaps because they were too agitated, they experienced no hunger, although they had had nothing to eat or drink since breakfast. They did feel thirsty, but refrained from drinking any water for fear of contagious diseases. None of them spoke much, no longer having the energy for it.
The next day, soldiers and civilians were sorted out and the soldiers installed in the classrooms of the school buildings. Iwatake’s face was swollen up to about twice its normal size, and he could not see unless he pried open his eyelids with his finger, so he was put on a stretcher and carried to the classroom at the east end of the building, where the seriously injured were accommodated. He never saw Miyoshi again. He was also separated from Itō, but discovered later that the latter was shortly afterwards reunited with his wife, whose loving care saved his life. He is alive and well today, practicing medicine in Miyoshi.
The following is Iwatake’s own account of conditions that day:
There was nobody else from the medical reserve in the classroom into which I was taken, all the other patients being ordinary soldiers, all of them young men and seriously injured. I had an unbearable thirst. My bones felt as though there was no connection between them. I was intensely cold, and developed a fever. It must have been over 104°. My eyelids were so swollen that I could not see, and to lie still was the only thing I could do. On August 7, I was given one bowl of gruel. I passed water only once in two days.
I was not supposed to drink water, but in the end I could not hold out any longer, and, opening one eye with my fingers, stole out to the artesian well and drank. The water tasted metallic, but it gave me a new lease of life. The number of tents in the school playground had increased to six, but they were still overflowing with patients. The bodies were laid out in a heap at one end of the sports ground. With nightfall, the moans became still more anguished. One patient with brain fever leapt out of the window without warning and started walking through the paddy fields outside. In the course of the night, nearly one-third of the men in our room quieted down. As each corpse grew cold, it was unobtrusively carried away on a stretcher.
I cheered myself up by telling myself that I should never die from the degree of burning that I had suffered. Yet I was still baffled by the question of what could have produced so many casualties all at once. A nurse came round taking the name, rank, unit, and home address of each patient and noting it in a book. I asked her to let my family know that I was in the Hesaka reception center, but she refused. There was no sign of any military doctor coming to examine us….
CHAPTER 18
On the morning of August 8, there was a sudden announcement. The number of patients had become too great for the temporary reception center to handle, and some were to be transferred to the army branch hospital at Shōbara, to the north in the same district. Any man, therefore, who felt himself capable of going on a train unaided was to speak up.
The number of new bomb victims being brought in was, indeed, far greater than the number removed by death. No sooner was a corpse got out of the way than more injured arrived to take its place. The classrooms and the tents on the school playground were all jammed tight. Even the storerooms and woodsheds of the neighboring farms were full, and victims were lying outside in the gardens. The national elementary schools in towns and villages in the Hiroshima area had all been converted into emergency centers in the same way as the Hesaka school, and all, it seemed, were full to overflowing. It was necessary therefore to disperse the victims more widely and to more distant areas. Otherwise, there would not be enough doctors to go round, and a certain percentage of patients would have to be left out in the open air.
“Attention! Urgent announcement!” repeated the voice of a sanitation orderly. “Did you all get it? Those who want to go to the Shōbara center are to let us know. Any who can manage to get to Shōbara by train without help, raise your hands. It’s three hours from Hesaka to Shōbara by train.”
“Is there anybody who wants to go to Shōbara?” came the milder, feminine tones of a member of the Women’s Defense Association. “Those of you who feel up to going by train, please raise your hands. It takes three hours from Hesaka to Shōbara by train.”
At the mention of Shōbara, Iwatake, who was lying on his back, opened his eyelids with his fingers and looked at the ceiling. He could distinguish the grain of the wooden boards quite clearly. It gave him the feeling that he could manage the walk to the station at Hesaka. So he shut his eye again, summoned up all his energy, and raised a hand. He could not get much strength into his arm, and the hand dangled limply from the wrist.
The other patients seemed to be in two minds. “I’d like to, but can’t,” Iwatake heard one soldier call, though he could not see what kind of man he was or what his injuries were, “stop your kidding, will you?” “Those who want to, let ’em go!” muttered another, equally unidentifiable soldier almost defiantly. “I’m going!” bellowed yet another.
Iwatake determined to stay alive long enough to get to Shōbara at least. Even if the worst happened in the end, he had no fancy for breathing his last on the train. For one thing, Shōbara was his home, the place where he had been born. Moreover, the commander of the Hiroshima First Army Branch Hospital at Shōbara was Dr. Fujitaka Shigeaki, who was from the same village as himself, had graduated before him from the same university, and had been drafted into the army as a medical officer. As a doctor, he was strict but kind. Dr. Fujitaka, Iwatake told himself, would at least put some oil on his burns for him. It was a heaven-sent opportunity. It was such a remarkable piece of luck, in fact, that he would have raised both hands if only he could. As it was, his raised right hand soon got so tired that he had to ch
ange to the left.
“Alright! Lower your hand!” came a voice close by. “I’ll issue a confirmation tag.” Iwatake lowered his arm and, prying open the lids of one eye, perceived a sanitation corporal, who came and attached a luggage label to the belt of his military uniform. Iwatake half raised himself to a sitting position, and discovered that he was labeled “For Shōbara,” in black ink.
“When do we leave?” he asked the orderly.
“As soon as we’ve made sure of the number. We’ll be assembling in the school yard before long.”
Lunchtime came, and a kind of cross between gruel and dumpling soup appeared, but Iwatake had no appetite. All he could get down was a cup of tea. It must be the fever, he told himself.
The order to assemble came at three in the afternoon. They gathered in the school yard, their nostrils assailed by the smell from the piles of bodies there, then set off walking in single file, a good six hundred of them, along the paths between the paddy fields leading in the direction of the station. Iwatake held open the lids of his eyes, first the right, then the left, as he walked. None of the party was in anything like presentable shape. It was a sad, shambling procession of ghosts.