It was a living hell on August 9th 1945. Every year on this day I feel distress. I lost my younger brother on this day. He was my hope, my strength. On that day I was helping my family on a field on a low hill in Shimabara. We moved to keep safe and saw a scout plane in the sky. As the air-raid siren had sounded many times we huddled over for a while. Then from the back. On the moment it banked to the right I saw a flash brighter than daylight filling the air with a pillar of flame shooting upwards. This was soon followed by back smoke shooting upright to form a mushroom cloud. I was really taken aback and thought it was Omura or Isahaya that had been attacked. Even after 50 years I still remember it with crystal clarity.

We went to the station to meet my brother but he didn't show up. Someone in the train shouted, Are you waiting for someone from Nagasaki? If so you had best go there and try to find them. Perhaps they can’t get back on their own. The Urakami Area is a sea of flames you know. The entire station building has been blow away. He continued to say that the area was covered in dead bodies.

The brother-in-law and I could not contain ourselves and immediately left to find him. There was no transportation from Isahaya other than being able to hitchhike. What we saw in Urakami! I find it difficult to put into words. There was nothing but burnt black bodies. It was so stupefying I just can’t explain. My brother worked for the ironworks. We visited a broken building. Inside every one we saw was unidentifiable. Some were alive but had round swollen faces with maggots crawling in and out of their eyes, nose and mouth.

We inquired of a receptionist who remembered a Mr. Tetsunosuke Mitsuda being registered. We did have the right place but were unable to find him in the buildings so we searched outside to no avail. We were walking near the Ohashi bridge and someone called to us to hurry up and come to help, as some one was trying to kill themselves. We noticed a man waving his arms about and getting ready to jump. My brother-in-law took him by the hands. He was around the age of 17 or 18. Asking he why he wanted to jump he said, My face and everywhere else is burnt. No one will want me now. I said to him, Your burns will heal soon. Young men like you have to restore our country. He openly said Yes we do.

I gave him and another middle aged man some water and rice to eat as they lay under the shade of an umbrella. The young man had been drafted up form Kagoshima, the older one from Miyazaki. We said goodbye to them and went back to the Ironworks as we could not give up looking for our brother.

We finally met someone who may have seen him. She was taking care of her husband. He had been trapped under a brick wall and was seriously injured with backbone injuries. I gave her a detailed description. She remembered someone like him who had asked about the train arrivals from Shimabara to Nagasaki. However she told us that the man who was taking care of dying pole had taken away a man early that morning that fitted his description. She said they had asked for some water for the dying person. The crematory was full of bodies. In the end we could not find him. We returned home to find everything burned down. All that was recognisable was the concrete kitchen floor and the porch. Also the cows and horses had burned to death.   Picture showing a woman standing by unidentifiable charred remains.

A doctor and nurse were walking by carrying a man with severe burns on his back. They asked me to redress his wounds. The skin had peeled away at a depth of 4 or 5 centimetres at the neck. I could not help myself screaming when I saw all the bone and blood vessels exposed. The doctor scolded me but I could no help it as it was such a gruesome sight.

How I hate wars! No more wars, never. I cry every day. My brother appeared to me in a dream. He entered the room in silence. He looked as if he blamed me for not finding him.

I am eighty years old now. Being weak and sick I been in hospital for three years. I have no family now so I live a lonely life. I wish everyone in the world would love each other and be on friendly terms so we can all help each other.

This is a summary from the letter of Miss Fuki Mitsuda. She has been hospitalised for three year and very much regrets that she was never able to find her brother. We understand how she must have suffered. Whilst desperately searching for her brother . She saw the tragic scenes in Nagasaki. Form time to time she remembers with tears in her eyes.

From her letter dated October 1994 Interviewer Junko Tanaka of Onojo City

Wounded by the A-Bomb - Anonymous

On that day I was with my mother near Urakami Station helping her move to a safe area. She was 64 and I was 15 years old.

I notice an aeroplane in the sky and we sheltered under some eaves. Someone shouted, “Look a parachute”. I turned around and saw something glittering like snow falling to the ground. This was soon followed by a hot flash. I was blown over and lost consciousness. When I came to I found myself across the road lying next to a statue Jizo the Shinto deity that looks after children. I was bewildered and found it difficult to think clearly A mass of buildings had disappeared in a moment. There was nothing but smoke. A little later I came to me senses and heard my mother calling for help.

My mother and I quickly moved to the hillside. I was not concerned with myself as I saw she was bleeding from the head. I carried my mother on my back and hurried away. I did not know until my mother told me that I was badly burned until she told me. Though I had notice my legs were white all over I thought it was smoke. My back was burned and peeling. Especially the part that had not been sheltered under the eaves. In addition my legs and arms were swollen, my hands like a pair of baseball gloves. Moving away we saw an old man that had died after drinking contaminated water. I could not forget the daughter of the man crying, Daddy, daddy. Everything I saw was a living hell.

Finally we reached a soldiers dugout where we got some water. We were told not to drink the water has we had been burned. But I was dying of thirst. Right after drinking I brought up a yellow bile. It was very painful.

It was 2 o'clock in the afternoon but we were in darkness as if it were midnight due to the atomic cloud. The sun was a deep red and looked as if it were about to explode. The mountains burned all night and I was so hot I felt as if I was burning at the stake.

The next morning the soldiers brought us melons, carrots, and eggplants. They were from the hillside fields and had not perished. We ate them raw. People that worked at a nearby Prison gave us riceballs. Soon after the burnt area became passable my uncle came to meet me at the dugout. They carried me on a shutter door to Asahi Elementary School. On the way we saw countless numbers of bodies by the river some burnt to a cinder.

At the school there were about twenty blast victims in a room with a wooden floor. Five to six patients died each day. Lying next to me was an eighteen year old girl carried in from the plant. She had maggots and lice all over her and was in terrible pain until she died. I stayed there until August 15th. Around me I saw many people become demented and die one after the other. There was a constant smell as they were cremated in the playground. I lay on my back day after day and survived on small riceballs. They applied zinc ointment mixed with camellia oil to my burns. I was then moved to Shinkoze Elementary School until the end of November. Soldiers came to treat out burns with ointment, gave us chocolate as then left us alone. Relative did not visit us any more and there were rumours that foreigners would come. Some one said that the chocolate from the soldiers was poisoned. We ate it all but were not sick, so we ate it little by little after that. Later a Japanese A-Bomb investigation committee visited us and took pictures of our burns. Finally when I was handed into the care of my elder sister, there was only two or three of us surviving.

Then we moved to Karatsu through a connection of my brother who was a seaman. There I suffered from radiation sickness. My faeces were bloody diarrhoea, I had a high fever and all my hair came out. I could not speak clearly and was unable to make myself understood. The landlord thought I may be suffering from dysentery. I was examined and diagnosed with a stomach cold. My treatment for the burns was simply to cut of the burnt skin. Purulent matter oozed from my skin and it was inflamed. They told me I was a leper and was discriminated against. The burn scars took more than ten years to heal and became yellow. I was described as maimed and had to cover up the scars with clothing.

Before the bombing I was strong and healthy and worked my hardest at Mitsubishi Shipbuilding. In my twenties and thirties I suffered form the worst symptoms of radiation sickness. I was discriminated against and had to change jobs many times. Sometimes I had no work and nothing to eat. Countless times I tried to kill myself.

I moved from place to place and finally married. I was unable to tell my husband and family that I had been in the bombing for many years. We had children but I had little strength to bear and the first child was small at 1600 gms. After my third child was born my blood vessels became terribly congested after an injection. I managed to keep on working thanks to the hope my children gave me. I collapsed many times from anaemia and am sorry to have worried them. I am more than grateful that they have all grown up and got on with their lives.

Wars must never happen again. We must not let our children suffer the same miserable experience as I did. I wish that the days of peace without wars will last forever.

After the interview: In spite of her horrible experience she calmly told her story. As an interviewer I was struck speechless with the bewilderment listening to her terrifying story. I was very much inspired by her being able to survive and live her life to the utmost.

October 2nd 1994 Interviewer - Junko Inaba of Dazaifu City