KJ
Selections
Recreating
Memory
Paul D. Scott
“When I was in Hiroshima and met and listened to Ms. Yamaoka…”
This incomplete sentence should be on the lips of hundreds
of fortunate people. How these people complete the sentence is matter
of personnel choice. Yamaoka Michiko was 800 meters from the epicenter
of the Hiroshima bomb blast. Her survival in a zone of death and destruction
was miraculous. Years later she would go to the United States as one
of the famous Hiroshima Maidens. She underwent 27 operations.
Ms. Yamaoka began to speak about her experiences after the death of
her mother. The event which prompted her was the death and cremation
of her mother. The tale of her mother walking back into the inferno
of Hiroshima to find her 15-year-old daughter is extraordinary. In February
1975, Ms. Yamaoka’s mother died and in the ashes of her cremation
there was molten glass. The mother, without complaint, had suffered
with large shards of glass embedded in the joints of her arm. She did
not have them removed since the doctor informed her that the only way
to take them out would be to cut the tendons making her unable to use
her arm. She suffered in agony for 25 years. Her daughter upon seeing
these pieces of glass was prompted to speak out. She is one of the most
eloquent and most forceful atomic bomb speakers. Twice a year she talks
to my students. Twice a year I am left speechless.
Ms.Yamaoka has been diagnosed with cancer. On October 26, 2002, she
told the 120 international and Japanese students who accompanying me
to Hiroshima that talking to them gave her courage and hope.
Michiko Yamaoka, Hiroshima A-bomb
Survivor:
At 8:15 on August 6, 1945 Hiroshima suffered the cruel tragedy of the
first atomic attack
human history. And I would never be young again.
I was just fifteen, a third-year student at a girls’ junior high
school. Every morning I would leave my home (1.3 kilometers from the
hypocenter) and walk to the Central Telephone Office where I worked.
I was a so-called mobilized student. My father had died when I was three,
and since then I had lived alone with my mother. She raised me single-handedly
and took care of me until her death in February 1975.
On the morning of August 5, my uncle, his wife, and two cousins in elementary
school arrived at our house, bringing some rice with them in exchange
for some clothes. In those days, food was very scarce in Hiroshima-as
it was in all major cities in Japan- and we were constantly bartering
our clothes just to get enough to eat.
Than night there was another air-raid alert and, though we were not
allowed to turn on any lights, we could not sleep either. This sort
of thing had been going on for some time now, so for safety reasons
my uncle and his family weren’t planning to stay long at our house
in the city. But that night, having no inkling of the terrible misfortune
about to befall our family, we spent a warm and pleasant evening, happy
that we had this chance to all be together. Even today, when I think
about it, I am overcome by the uncertainty of fate and my body trembles
with sorrow and anger.
August 6 dawned clear and bright, not a cloud in the sky. The “city
of water” was sparkling, beautiful. For some reason, I was reluctant
to leave home that day, but just before 8.00 a.m., I made up my mind
and started off for the Central Telephone Office, roughly 500 meters
from the hypocenter. My little cousins, I recall, had left earlier for
the Red Cross Hospital. To this day we know neither where nor how they
died.
I waved good-bye to my mother and remember her casually reminding me
to be careful even though the all-clear had sounded. But I had already
turned away and hurried out the door.
I was about 800 meters from the hypocenter when I heard the roar of
a B-29. “That’s strange,” I thought, “We just
heard the all clear.” I put my hand to my forehead and looked
up into the sky. That very instant I saw yellow and bluish rays darting
out in front of my eyes, just like the magnesium flash of a camera.
With this sight still in my mind I felt my body rise into space, my
consciousness blurring. “A bomb has just been dropped right on
my head,” I thought. In my heart I screamed, “Good-bye,
Mama”
I know I was unconscious for a while, but I am not sure how long. Ten,
maybe twenty minutes. I just remember waking to the cries and shouts
of the children, then finding I was trapped under a collapsed wall and
some rocks, completely unable to move. Everything was pitch black. “Help!
Someone help me! Mama help!” Time and again I gathered strength
to force out these words.
Suddenly I heard my mother’s voice calling for me. “Michiko,
Michiko!” I yelled back, “Mother, I am over here. Over here!”
Just my legs were sticking out from the rubble, and I was afraid she
couldn’t see me.
“Michiko, where are you? Michiko!” She was still shouting,
but I could not see her. I had already begun to lose hope when I heard
someone shout, “Ma’am, the fires are building up. you better
get out of here now!” I too was beginning to hear the crackling
flames. “They’ll never save me now. I’m going to meet
God,” I thought, and shut my eyes tight.
“Soldier, please help me! My daughter’s trapped under here!”
My mother had finally found me. “Soldier, as a military man, it’s
your sacred duty to help me rescue my daughter. Hurry over here and
lift this rubble of her!” She was shouting now with a surprising
voice.
With their help I was finally able to crawl out from the wreckage. My
body was covered with deep burns; my face was puffed up like a balloon.
Mother told me my face was swollen, but I could tell that myself by
how it felt.
I looked around me then gasped. The scenes before me were not of this
Earth. They could only be called a living hell. Shattered heads. A dazed
mother covered with blood, still clutching her dead baby. A child with
skin peeling from his entire body, shrieking from inside a collapsed
building. Internal organs spilling out of the bodies. Lines of completely
naked people.... Images of inconceivable carnage burned themselves into
my mind, and every time I recalled them, the tears begin falling before
I realize them. To this day, I cannot eat sausages because they remind
me so much of those horribly visible internal organs.
My mother, worried now about my uncle and aunt, whom she was forced
to leave behind, told me she was going home and that I should go as
quickly as possible to Hijiyama Hill. (Luckily, I discovered later,
they escaped with only minor cuts and bruises.) We parted and I began
walking alone.
I saw one of my friends on my way to Hjiyama and urgently called out
to her, but she couldn’t recognize me. My face was so swollen
and grotesque that, when I told her who I was she refused to believe
me. My hair was completely singed, my mompei trousers were in tatters
but my white shirt was intact. It was then, in my sadness and humiliation,
that, for the very first time, I was aware of the heat and pain of my
burns.
Hijiyama Hill was crowded with burn victims. I was give minimal treatment,
then just rested. My mother appeared some time later. Seeing her again,
I momentarily forgot my pain, and we held each other tight. After a
while, as one of the severely wounded, I was transported by boat to
a relief center just outside of the town. In the boat I saw people dying
one after the other. “I guess I will be next,” I thought.
I closed my eyes and prayed fervently.
I was treated again at the second relief station, but when I saw a soldier
nearby and begged for some water, he refused. “Sure, I will give
you water,” he told me sternly, “if you want to die”
My mother, however, couldn’t bear seeing me so thirsty, and secretly
let me drink. I wonder now if maybe she was wrong to do that. Not long
after I drank the water, my condition grew much worse. Soon I found
myself on the brink of death. I was losing more of my hair. My urine
and feces were bloody. Yet somehow, I didn’t die.
As my burns healed, keloids pushed out of my skin, grossly distorting
my facial features. I withdrew more and more into myself, refusing to
let people see me. I lost all hope for the future. If I had been alone,
I probably would have killed myself. But there was my mother, taking
care of me and working whenever she could, though repeatedly hospitalized
herself. I was unable to die because of her.
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held by the author
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