Surviving Hiroshima: A Young Woman's Story by Anthony Drago & Douglas Wellman

Author:Anthony Drago & Douglas Wellman [Anthony Drago & Douglas Wellman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781608082360
Google: JcxQzQEACAAJ
Publisher: Boutique of Quality Books Publishing Company, Incorporated
Published: 2020-09-15T23:42:24.362520+00:00

Although she couldn’t see, her hearing hadn’t been affected. The first sound she remembered hearing was David—half calling out, half crying—“Mom, Mom, where are you? It’s so dark; I can’t see!” The dust was beginning to settle and Mom became conscious of movement across the room. It was David under a pile of rubble. She was suddenly aware that their house had fallen on them. The bomb obviously must have landed in their yard. It was lucky that David had just stepped into the house before the explosion; he would have been killed had he been outside. She heard another voice. “David, David, are you all right? God save my boy!” It was Grandmother. At least three of them were still alive.

Mom crawled out from under the debris and made her way to David, helping him out from under the dusty remains of the door frame and pieces of the ceiling. They were stunned, shaken, and confused. One minute they were preparing for breakfast and the next they were laying under the remains of their house. It is difficult for the mind to grasp such a thing. They could hear my grandmother moving in the kitchen, so Mom and David crawled through the debris and found her half-buried under plaster, kitchen furniture, and utensils. After digging her out, they immediately went looking for Grandfather and quickly found him pulling himself out from under the remains of the bathroom walls, choking on the thick dust. The four of them clutched one another in the shattered remains of their home, checking each other for injuries. No one had lost any limbs, suffered any broken bones, or was bleeding excessively; however, there were numerous small cuts as well as bumps, bruises, and sore muscles which would become evident as the shock wore off. They stood together dazed, certain that they had all just survived a direct hit. There was no fire. Later they would notice something very curious about the blast. Their house had many windows that let the sunshine in. It appeared that the bomb had acted somewhat like sunlight. There were scorch marks where the radiation (they would later learn) had passed through windows and open doors, but not where it had been blocked by the house’s walls.

As they stood there stunned, they heard the sound of a child crying and calling for help. They recognized the voice as that of their neighbor, Teruo Sasaki. They assumed the Sasaki’s house must have been hit by a bomb as well, so they climbed over the rubble to look for him. Teruo was David’s age and one of the children he had been playing with minutes earlier. They found him on the ground between the houses, his brown hair parted to reveal a massive fracture that left his skull laying open like a clam shell. There was nothing they could do to help him. The other children David had been playing with were horribly burned. They would all later die.

The cloud of dust

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