My name is Michimasa Hirata, and I am a survivor of Hiroshima A-bomb.
When you hear the word “A-bomb”, you may imagine a “mushroom cloud” rising into the sky. That was the scene observed at a distance from the city, the image shown in the photo taken from the airplane of the US Army in confirming the blast.
Being under the mushroom cloud was different from the impressive photo. It was literally a hell or inferno on the earth. I am one of persons who experienced that terrible experience.
It is pity that we have no photo to show what it was like at the time of bombing at the center of the blast. The first photo showing the disaster was taken 3 hours later after the bombing and a mile and a half from that location. There are two reasons for that. The first is that no photographic film could survive the strong radiation exposure. The second is that the people close to the center of the blast, if they were alive, were receiving serious burns. They were rushing to a safer place to escape from the fire caused by the heat and could not think of taking pictures.
I was in Hiroshima at 8:15 am on Aug. 6 in 1945, 65years ago. I was nine years old. My family and I had just finished breakfast. All of sudden, there was brilliant flash. I thought it was a flare bomb even though it was daytime. The light came first along with the heat. Our house was 1.3 miles away from the blast center. Within one mile from the blast center all persons out of doors had burns and those closest to the center were burned black and died. In my case I was lucky to escape the burn because I was under a roof. At the moment of the flash my father pushed me into a nearby underground shelter. As soon as I was in the shelter the shock wave hit us. My father was injured by the debris caused by shock wave. Light and heat travel much faster than the shock wave. I no longer remember how long we stayed in the shelter, but when we came out, we found that our house was destroyed and our wooden fence was on fire. Hiroshima had become a sea of flames. First the heat, then the shock wave, and then a third stage of damage possibly more serious than the other two. That was the radiation damage which was not initially apparent because the damaging forms of radiation are invisible. There are two effects of radiation damage, acute and chronic. I shall talk about this in detail.
Concerning myself, because of the radiation effects of the A-bomb, my white blood cell count is less than half as great as yours. I did not know about this until I was refused to be a blood donor when I was a high school student. I have been very susceptible to bacterial infections throughout my lifetime.
Let me speak back to the horrible scene which I saw on the road in front of our house. There were multitudes of ghostly crowds, suffering from the burns, their skin dangling from their wrists. It wasn’t possible to distinguish male from female, young from old. It really was just hell on the earth.
A nuclear weapon is a weapon of mass destruction, but far worse than other weapons of mass destruction. It is certainly different from ordinary weapons in two ways. One way that it differs is in the extent of damage it produces and the other is the continuing damage that occurs to individuals. The latter, the radiation damage, is still a lingering pall on the health of Hibakusha even now 65 years later.
I want to elaborate on the extent of the damage produced by a single A-bomb. A city attacked by an A-bomb turns into a burned out shell. In Hiroshima almost all buildings in the area within the radius of 1.5 miles were burned down and most of people in the area were either died or were mortally injured. The two A-bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed over 200,000 people. Laid out side-by-side, not head-to-foot, their bodies would extend out over 60 miles. If the nuclear weapons are used during wars to give damages on combatants, it certainly would kill substantial number of civilians as the indiscriminate murder of general people.
The number of nuclear weapons in the world today is about 14,500 and the most powerful ones are more powerful by several tens or hundreds of times as the one dropped on Hiroshima. If all of the existing nuclear weapons are used as they were in Hiroshima, the earth would become a dead planet without any living creatures. It is our fear that such a catastrophe could happen.
Now, I want to return to the radiation effects. Needless to say, those who were in Hiroshima when the A-bomb was dropped received radiation damage. In addition, people who entered the city to seek missing parents, children, relatives, or to restore the destroyed city, were affected by the remaining radioactivity through drinking contaminated water or breathing contaminated dust. Acute effects of radiation include bleeding, loss of hair, etc. For survivors of these acute effects, there were chronic effects of radiation to live with. Many survivors are still suffering from radiation aftereffects, i.e. high incidence of cancer, leukemia, thyroid disorder, etc. Chronic effects have also led to birth defects including mental retardation. I must emphasize that radiation effect have a high probability to plague our children and probably our grandchildren as well.
I hate terrorism and can never condone the behavior of terrorists. I want to express my deep sympathy and condolences to the families of 9.11 victims. However, I must say that Hibakusha who saw the terrible scenes on TV could not help but feel that the damage to the World Trade Center was far less than what we experienced in Hiroshima. We saw many people entering the ravaged World Trade Center area seeking survivors or to restore the area but they were fortunate in that they were not subjected to the long term effects of radiation.
The US Army controlled Japan after the World War II and declared a press code relating to the atomic bomb for eight years. Rumors that A-bomb survivors would be the source of infection were prevalent, largely because of the observable acute effects of the radiation. Consequently Hibakusha were subjected to both physical and mental agony. They encountered difficulties relating to employment, marriage, birth, health and so on. I shall speak about just one example of mental agony. A son who could not rescue his mother trapped under the beams of a collapsed home and the approaching fire, lives with her dying words “Escape, forget about me!” and then her dying screams. He is still being agonized by the bitter memory of leaving his mother to her fate
In hearing my story, I hope you realize that the nuclear weapons should not be permitted to coexist with human beings. I do not intend to blame or ask apology for A-bombing. We, Hibakusha, have never uttered a word of retaliation for the A-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States. Instead we have tried hard to tell others about our experiences and to speak loudly to abolish nuclear weapons as our obligation on behalf of those who died from the bombing. We are really afraid that continued existence of nuclear weapons will lead to the extinction of the Earth’s inhabitants. I believe that human beings should be wise enough to learn from the history or experience.
In closing my remarks, I sincerely ask your help to influence and motivate your family, friends, and hopefully your government to abolish all nuclear weapons and save this beautiful planet for our children, grandchildren and further generation.