60th anniversary of Hiroshima: Greenpeace volunteers fly doves bearing messages of peace at the A-bomb memorial dome
By Keiko M. Lane
My name is Keiko and early in 1945 my mother decided to move with me and my 14 year old brother from Tokyo, which was being fire bombed, to the untouched city of Hiroshima, where we lived in a typical wooden house near to the city centre. Hiroshima had become a haven for refugees, most of whom were women and children, and they felt safe there.
On the morning of the 6th August 1945 I was sitting be a small ornamental pond in the garden when with a mighty roar the house collapsed on me. I was seven years of age and 1.2km from the point over which a 20 Kiloton nuclear weapon had been detonated.
My mother who was also buried, managed to free herself and after a frantic search she released me from the now burning wreckage and roughly dressed my wounds and burns with pieces torn from her clothing. Next door a young woman was trapped up to her chest and crying for help in the debris that was starting to burn. Mother tried unsuccessfully to free her and, finding no one nearby able to assist her, she ran up the street with me in her arms leaving the woman still hopelessly trapped.
All that day my mother carried me through the destroyed and burning city, stepping over or around the dead and dying as she made her way to the outskirts of Hiroshima where she hoped medical help could be found. I drifted in and out of consciousness as I was being carried, but saw many charred bodies lying in the streets including mothers who died leaving their babies and young children still alive, some with terrible burns. I also saw shocked survivors walking around aimlessly like Zombies in the weird dusty twilight after the explosion. Some were naked having had their clothes burned away by the terrific heat.
In the evening, mother found an emergency dressing station that had been set up near a still smouldering elementary school. After finding space in the playground in which to lie down, my injuries were examined by a Doctor. Later, I found out that the medical staff had no pain killing drugs and only cooking oil with which to treat the burns, and when that ran out, they tried potato juice.
All through that night and for the next few days a steady stream of injured survivors arrived at the school. Most were terribly burnt and some were blind. A few cried out in their agony as they shuffled along, their arms held out before them with skin hanging down from their bodies and arms in long strips. Many of these died later from their horrific injuries and, because it was warm weather, some old soldiers dug a pit in the playground and started to incinerate the dead of which there were many, stacked in piles up against the walls.
I remember in particular a young boy of about 12 who was terribly burnt and had been blinded. He kept crying out for his mother and as he became more delirious he repeatedly asked her to make him some tempura because he was hungry. Later, he also died and was put onto the fire. We stayed at the school for three days and during that time the soldiers feeding the incinerator were kept busy day and night. A lasting memory I shall always keep is the smell of bodies burning.
For years afterwards I was in and out of hospital suffering from leukaemia until my mid twenties and, because of the real possibility of having deformed babies, I decided not to marry until much later in life. Mother suffered badly from the effects of radiation and my brother, who had gone into the city searching for us just a few hours after the bomb, later married but was unable to have children. My aunt, who was an elegant teacher of traditional dance, had a silk dressing gown welded to her body, her fingers joined together like ducks feet and she took three years to die. One especially sad day was when I had a conversation with a mid-wife who had attended to the pregnant survivors and those women who been affected by radiation. She wept as she spoke of the many hideous and deformed infants she had helped to bring into the world and the terrible distress of their mothers.
I apologise for this shocking and dreadful story but I do believe it is necessary to try and show the world just how dreadful nuclear weapons actually are and the terrible effects they have on human beings. How many died in Hiroshima is not known but it is estimated at about 200,000 with countless numbers left injured and seriously affected by radiation. The after effects of the radiation are still with us.
For the sake of humanity and future generations, I beg those who have these terrible weapons to please destroy all that you have and promise not to make any more. I do not want anyone else to go through what I, and the other survivors, experienced after the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima.
