Record by an Army Doctor
2. In the city-desert
The weather on August 7 was fine, too. The small village of Hesaka was filled with the many wounded people who continuously found their way there. Also, strangers flooded into the village from afar looking for their relatives and friends. So the Branch Hospital was very crowded with the burned victims, corpses and these people of all sorts, leaving no place to plant a foot. Early in the morning, several soldiers arrived to help us from Ota Branch Hospital in Sanin district. They went at once to help the work at an outdoor ward constructed temporarily to take in victims who had rushed into the village the previous day. As soon as the day broke, the stretcher groups began their activity carrying out the dead bodies one by one Fire was going in the temporary crematory set up in the hill at the end of the village. The rising sun began to come over the peaks above the valley. The smoke rising in the sky from the crematory was colored pink in the morning haze. Nobody had slept the previous night. I was completely absorbed in emergency treatment for survivors, who stood in a long line. Pouring food and water into my stomach from a mere sense of duty, I did not care anymore about the bloody smell on the tips of my fingers which grasped the food.
About 10:00 a.m., an emergency call from GHQ was received, and it was decided to send me there as a liaison officer. Fortunately, hands for treatment unexpectedly increased because a relief corps arrived from several distant Branch Hospitals with a full load of materials and medicine on the backs of horses. I walked down the road along the river over which I had gone on bicycle the previous day. The mushroom cloud which spread over @Hiroshima had changed into a common cloud. Corpses lay along the way everywhere, and burned, wounded eyes followed me silently. The Ota River ran vividly by the road. Before long, I arrived at Choju-En. Some burned black bodies clung to the suspension bridge which had not burned down. I crossed the river under it, waist-deep in water. White smoke rose up in thick clouds over the grounds of the Engineer Corps, which had completely burned away, and a breeze blew stoking embers from burnt charcoal. The road ran into the city from there crossing under the Sanyo Line railroad. I climbed the levee and stood on the track. Though I did not understand how it happened, the surface of all the cross-ties were similarly burned.
I looked around me. There was no city except a burned field. The whole city was reduced to ashes in one day! I could see the water of Hiroshima Bay shining in summer daylight beyond a few ruins of buildings, which were the only obstruction of the sea view. The familiar tower of Hiroshima Castle was nowhere to be found. Some people were walking in a line here and there looking for their families and friends among the light-colored smoke thinly rising. No one expected at that time that many people who came into the city would die by residual radiation.
I ran down the levee toward the stone wall which indicated the location of GHQ. All roads had disappeared under the ruins of the city houses, and tangled electrical wires alone told the direction of roads. Guided by the electric wires, I began to walk toward the Castle's stone wall directly on the debris. Embers were still smoldering and a little fire remained here and there. Burned flesh and bones could be seen under my feet, and sometimes I thought I heard a groan.
Soon, I reached the burned grounds of the Military Hospital. Though it was only eight months since I had come there, I had many memories which remained deeply in my heart. How many friends were able to run away safely from there, I wondered. Three corpses could be seen in front of the main office, but they were nothing but burned black charcoal forms beyond recognition. The green color of the lawn around them was too bright for my depressed heart. There were two dead horses in the debris of the burned cookery. How were they killed in the fire?
My attention was directed toward the strange freshness of the remaining shiny black skin. At their side, clear water was flowing out of a broken water pipe. Beyond it, I saw ruins of wards with broken iron beds lined side by side. To my surprise, all their legs were similarly bent near the frames. What kind of power is this that had crushed such strong iron frames, I wondered. It was not until then that I came to understand the enormous power that made the eyeballs hang out of sockets in front of the breast, and forced intestines out of the anus. On each bed-frame lay a skeleton, also side-by-side, incredible enough. They must have been killed instantly before the fire affected them.
Going over the bank of the lawn, I entered the grounds of the next detachment. There were a number of dead soldiers in orderly rows at regular intervals. They must have been hit during their morning training period. The left side of all their faces and their arms were similarly burned. I thought that their death was due to a momentary blast.
Quickening my steps, I came to the moat. Big lotus leaves on the surface of the moat, and the shadow of the mossy stone wall on the stagnant water retained the flavor of the old castle. But an old pine tree, normally with its branches beautifully spread, fell in half in the water, its trunk split lengthwise. Many large fish floated to the surface bellies up. But it was impressive that the backs of small fish moving in the water were burned white. The great varnished Tower Gate of this historic Castle was completely burned down, and the piles of debris still gave up flames here and there. Of course there was no guard.
In the Castle grounds, the way branched in several directions. I lost my way because the Castle Tower, my guide, had disappeared. I saw a man at the root of a big zelkova tree beside a small pond. He had no clothes on except for short pants, and his bare skin was strangely white. I immediately knew that he was a foreign prisoner. His hands were tied behind his back to the trunk of a tree. Surely, he was a crew member of a plane which had been shot down. Turning his boyish face, hearing my footsteps, he moved toward me and appealed desperately for something. Though his words were not understandable, I knew clearly that he wanted water. My canteen was already empty. I saw the pond. The muddy water reflected dazzlingly in the high noon. Momentarily, the awareness flashed in my mind that he was a member of the enemy who burned and killed citizens of Japan. But hesitation at once faded away. Standing silently behind him, I cut his ropes with my sword. Unable to understand why he had unexpectedly come free, he crept backward looking at me. I pointed at the pond and was going to run off rapidly. He bawled something again and again. By its tone repeated persistently, I knew that he wanted my name. His eyes were quite bright.
“Dr. Hida,” I answered briefly and quickly left there. In Hiroshima, in fact, the will to continue the war had gone since the previous day, but in other parts of Japan the spirit to fight somehow kept on. Thinking of my impulsive action to set the prisoner free made my heart beat rapidly.
GHQ was located in front of the wreck of the Castle Tower. Though it was called GHQ, nothing was left there except a few people. Lying on the ground was a high-ranking officer who was bandaged all over except his eyes. Some bloody bandaged officers sat on the ground surrounding him. The regimental colors raised above was the only sign of the authority of the group. One man among the group stood up and reported the actual condition of his Corps. He looked too badly burned and wounded to keep standing, but his voice was very loud. After him the next officer followed. No matter how long I kept listening, I realized that the Corps contained less than one hundred soldiers. Hiroshima Division had disappeared completely. Although covered with mud and dust, my normal appearance must have looked strange because the others were dreadful with burns and blood. At last my turn came. All the confused eyes were turned on me.
“Where are you from?” the officer bandaged all over except the eyes asked me. The voice said that he was Colonel Matsumura. I remembered seeing him sometimes concerned with the selection of medics working for the Medical Department when the Second GHQ was organized. I concisely reported the state of affairs in the Hesaka Branch Hospital. If I remember correctly, the entire number of staff and patients in the First and the Second Hiroshima Military Hospitals was over sixteen hundred. There were only about 30 who were confirmed to be alive, including the Director and other ones who were in Osaka. I heard nothing from all the others.
I left the Castle in haste on the pretext of my duty as a doctor. Though I did not feel guilty, I had something pricking my conscience against my conduct of releasing the prisoner without permission. As I finished my duty to report to the GHQ, I walked toward the ruins of the First Military Hospital. I had secretly hoped that Second Lieutenant Kondo survived somewhere far away. But I heard from a soldier, who arrived at Hesaka the previous night, that he lay in front of the laboratory in flames with the upper half of his body burned. The soldier also said that he did not seem to be alive. He was not sure since he saw him for just a moment.
Though I wished him to survive somewhere, the sight of the terrible ruin of the hospital forced me to give up such a dream. There were a few corpses in the neighborhood of the main gate. I thought that they must have been guards. Looking over the whole place, I did not recall well the location of buildings, because they were newly built after I had moved to the educational section. Seeking the ruins of the laboratory, I walked about here and there. There were bones and bones piled up one upon another, no less than 5 -600 at a glance. Standing in the burned field filled with the strange, nasty smell, I tried to hold back my tears for a while. At that time, the letter came back vividly to my mind -- the one I burned in the cooking stove in Hesaka -- and the words of Second Lieutenant Kondo, with whom I talked through the night drinking together. He sharply pointed out, “However angry you may be at trivial or unreasonable events, you can never be free from the sense of meaninglessness, if you dare not see the truth of war, that is, as the root of all evil.”
He said in his letter, too, that it was just the time to make efforts to end the war. This was what everyone thought secretly in their minds, but could not speak out under any circumstances. Why must he write it to me out of all people? What on earth did he intend to teach me? This was an important problem which must be pursued, but now was not the time to think about that. I prayed for him in the Buddhist manner and retraced my steps.
I walked straight toward Hiroshima Station. As far as I walked, I saw nothing but rubble and corpses in the city. Some sick soldiers must have been at the station just at the time of the bombing, and they had come there to move into hospitals in their home towns. It was sad to think about them, for they were all lepers. They lived lonely in a ward which was more isolated in the inner most part of the infectious ward. Impressed by the severity of their lives, I volunteered for the job of their treatment for a few months. I read some novels aloud to those with poor sight for some nights. Even such a small thing encouraged their will to live. I walked along the streetcar track under the blazing sunshine recalling each face. I saw a few burned corpses hanging on the straps of a derailed tramcar.
The station was reduced to burned iron flames, and repairs had begun on the main line. There were many people who gathered from far away looking for their relatives. The corpses had been taken away from the square in front of the station, but the peculiar smell of burned flesh came from behind the station. I spoke to some of the people around me, but no one had any information of the condition of the station at the time of the blast. I picked up a few grains of sand and put them in my palm. A blast of wind blew them off one by one, as if each grain was a symbol of my dear lost friends to whom I could not say good-bye.
That day, a supporting party of six people from the Ota Branch Hospital, 40 people including three doctors from the Takamizu Branch Hospital in Yamaguchi Prefecture and 42 people with a doctor from the Hanawa Branch Hospital in Kudamatsu arrived at Hesaka, and the staff of the Hesaka Branch Hospital swelled up at once.
3- Record by an Army Doctor
- 1. The day Hiroshima disappeared
- 2. In the city-desert
- 3. New Tragedy
- 4. Departure from Hell
This sentence is licensed under the Hesaka public hall.
