Images and Text from our visit to the Atomic Bomb Museum
庞壚(夕
The Ruins at Dusk
松添博
Hiroshi Matsuzoe
Nagasaki,
where the curtain of history opened with the arrival of Portuguese ships in 1571.
Nagasaki,
Japan's only open port from 1641 to 1859.
Nagasaki,
surrounded on three sides by mountains and a colorful history of 374 years.
240,000 Nagasaki residents greeted the summer morning
of August 9,1945.
At 11:02am an atomic bomb exploded over the city,
three days after the first atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima.
A clock was found in a house
near Sannno Shinto Shrine,
800 meters from hypocenter.
The heat generated by the bomb caused fires that grew into a raging conflagration,
centering in the Urakami district,
then extending 3.5 kilometers south,
ultimately reducing one-third of the city to ashes.
The bomb, the fires, and the lingering radiation killed 73,884 and injured 74,909 through the end of 1945. The suffering and deaths continued for years after.
An enormous mushroom cloud rising.
What has happened?
What has happened to the people?
Please learn the reality of what happened beneath that cloud.
Please do not forget.
Please tell others.
魔墟（朝）
The Ruins at Dawn
松添博
Hiroshi Matsuzoe
TESTIMONY
Fuiio Tsuimoto, five years old at the time of the bombing:
I am now a 4th grade pupil at Yamazato Primary School. The school ground has been cleared. None of my friends know that so many children were cremated here. I sometimes recall that day. I squat down on the spot where my mother was cremated and touch the ground. And when I scratch it with a bamboo stick, chips of black charcoal appear. And I can see my mother's face floating faintly in the soil.
Michiko Ogino, ten years old at the time of the bombing:
My two-year old sister was crying hysterically, trapped under the fallen house. The beam was so heavy. The sailors tried to lift it but went away saying, “It's no use." Suddenly I saw someone running toward us. It was a woman. She was naked and her body was purple. “Mother!" Now we thought everything would be al-right. Our neighbor tried to lift the beam but it did not budge. "It's impossible," he said. "There's just no helping it." He bowed deeply in apology and went away. The fires were approaching quickly. Mother's tace went pale. She looked down, and my sister peered up with fear-stricken eyes. Mother scanned the beam again, then slid her shoulder under it and heaved upward with all the strength in her body. The beam rose with a crack and my sister's legs came free. But mother sank exhausted to the ground. She had been out in the field picking eggplants for lunch when the bomb exploded. Her hair was red and frizzled. Her skin was burned and festering all over her body. The skin had ripped right off the shoulder she had applied to the beam. The muscle was visible and blood was streaming out. She soon began to writhe in agony, and she died that night.
Sachiko Yamaguchi, nine years old at the time of the bombing:
"What on earth has happened?" said my mother, holding her baby tightly in her arms. “Is it the end of the world?" We knelt in the air-raid shelter, praying to God with all our hearts. Injured people came into the shelter one after another muttering, "Urakami is a sea of fire." What was going to become of us? Since the shelter was bad for the baby, we departed for the house of an acquaintance in Mikumi-gochi. But when we arrived in Mikumi-gochi we found that the houses in the valley had also been destroyed. Where could we go to find a house in which my mother and her newborn baby could rest? Large groups of people were huddling together, trembling in the shade of the mountain and other places. Desperately thirsty, I went to draw water but found an oil-like substance floating all over it. People told me that the oil had rained down from the sky. But I wanted a drink so badly that I gulped the water down just as it was.
Sumako Fukuda:
I was to receive treatment as an "atomic bomb patient." I felt as though I had been branded with a fearful stigma, a stigma that would not come off no matter how hard I tried to remove it No basic method of treatment had been found for atomic bomb disease. The atomic bomb survivors were deeply and tragically convinced that no amount of treatment would ever provide a cure. Designation as a sufferer of atomic bomb disease brought that conviction to the surface as a burning stigma. As soon as the stigma was branded we began to live under a whole new set of values, abandoning ourselves to a life of hopeless solitude until death. This is a world that shuts out all the joy and hope of an ordinary human existence, a world of despair and isolation painted over in black.
Dr. Tatsuichiro Akizuki:
“Concentric circles of death Concentric circles of the devil.” I found myself mumbling these words as I drew a mental map of the city of Nagasaki. Death seemed literally to be fanning out in concentric circles with each passing day. Today people living in houses up to that point died. Seeing this, I would be correct to assume that the people living another 100 meters up the hillside would die the following day. The ripples of death that expanded from the hypocenter soon began to consume people who had suffered only mild injuries or who seemed to have escaped unharmed. “There is still a long way before the circle of death reaches the hospital..." Living everyday in trepidation about the expanding circle, I gathered people together and tugged at their hair. “Are you losing any hair?' I asked. The head nurse and all the nurses and patients shook their heads, showing an expression that revealed neither anxiety nor freedom from anxiety. We were all suffering to some degree from a feeling of sickness. Our bodies were weakened by fatigue and diarrhea.
Man, 39 years old at the time of the bombing:
At the age of 40 I suddenly found myself without a family. That morning they saw me off with smiles when I left for work, but now I was alone in middle age. There are no words to describe this grief. Every day until the first anniversary of the bombing I sat in front of the pot containing the ashes of my eldest daughter, nine years old, grieving over the fact that I had survived. I could not even look at newspapers or magazines. Nor could I bear to go outside because it made me so sad to see children the same age as my own departed but unforgettable children. I lived day after day simply shedding tears and wondering when and how to commit suicide. The memories of that time are still etched in my memory.
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