Testimony of Akira Onogi: Remembering Hiroshima

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

I read this man's account and cannot begin to imagine what horror to experience such a thing. Then I think of the desperation Bushco's cabal of criminals must be feeling right now as they plan their next big move. I'm very worried.


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INTERVIEWER: All the houses?

ANSWER: Yes, well, I couldn't see anyone around me but I heard somebody shouting ``Help! Help!'' from somewhere. The cries were actually from underground as I was walking on. Since no choose were available, I'd just dug out red soil and roof tiles by hand to help my family; my mother, my three sisters and a child of one of my sisters. Then, I looked next door and I saw the father of neighboring family standing almost naked. His skin was peeling off all over his body and was hanging from finger tips. I talked to him but he was too exhausted to give me a reply. He was looking for his family desperately. The person in this picture was a neighbor of us. I think the family's name was the Matsumotos. When we were escaping from the edge of the bridge, we found this small girl crying and she asked us to help her mother. Just beside the girl, her mother was trapped by a fallen beam on top of the lower half of her body. Together with neighbors, we tried hard to remove the beam, but it was impossible without any tools. Finally a fire broke out endangering us. So we had no choice but to leave her. She was conscious and we deeply bowed to her with clasped hands to apologize to her and then we left. About one hour later, it started raining heavily. There were large drops of black rain. I was wearing a short sleeve shirt and shorts and it was freezing. Everybody was shivering. We warmed ourselves up around the burning fire in the middle of the summer.

INTERVIEWER: You mean the fire did not extinguish by the rain?

ANSWER: That's right. The fire didn't subside it at all. What impressed my very strongly was a 5 or 6 year-old-boy with his right leg cut at the thigh. He was hopping on his left foot to cross over the bridge. I can still record this scene very clearly. The water of the river we looking at now is very clean and clear, but on the day of bombing, all the houses along this river were blown by the blast with their pillars, beams and pieces of furniture blown into the river or hanging off the bridges. The river was also filled with dead people blown by the blast and with survivors who came here to seek water. Anyway I could not see the surface of the water at all. Many injured people with peeled skin were crying out for help. Obviously they were looking at us and we could hardly turn our eyes toward the river.


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http://www.inicom.com/hibakusha/akira.html

[bobbieinok]

1. in the 1950s Norman Cousins and his magazine The Saturday Review

arranged for some women physically badly damaged in the Hiroshima bombing to come to the US, stay with US families, and get reconstructive surgery......the project was called 'The Hiroshima Maidens'

http://www.isop.ucla.edu/asia/print.asp?parentid=20488

later he and the magazine brought women who had survived the 'experiments' at the German women's concentration camp at Ravensbruck to the US in a similar project

my parents subscribed to this magazine (a tremendous magazine), and I remember following both projects as he wrote about them in the magazine

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

2. Thank you for the link..

...this is an important part of our history. It goes right to the soul of our nation.