VOSHN 125

<body><a href="../index.html">HOME</a><br><table summary="117"><tr><td class="etesti">117</td><td class="edate">After August 9<sup>th</sup>, 1945</td><td class="eage">18 years old at that time</td></tr><tr><td class="ei_midasi" colspan=3>I struck the dead bodies' eye sockets with a fire fighter's rake and dragged them along</td></tr></table><div class="largep"><p>I was ordered to dispose of the remains of victims lying In the rubbles.  I was doing it every day.  It was easy to tell the dead from the living.</p><br><p>Almost all of their clothes had been burnt, so we held their naked bodies with bare hands and carried them.  We made piles of 50 remains.  When the soldier said, "OK," we put heavy oil on each pile and burned them.</p><p>In the stench of rotten bodies, we ate rice balls, and then went back to work again.  From the second day after the Atomic Bomb was dropped, we couldn't hold corpses with hands.  When we tried to hold them, their skins peeled off and stuck to our hands.  Sometimes we got their hairs stuck onto our hands, too, because their hairs were stuck to the rotten skins and wouldn't come off.</p><br><p>I think I handled more than 100 corpses at that time.  Among the bodies, I found a neighbor -- a beautiful young woman.  I just mechanically carried her; I mean that I carried her emotionlessly.</p><p>From the third day I couldn't carry them with my hands, so I stuck the dead bodies' eye sockets with a Tobiguchi (Special rake) that was used by fire fighters, and dragged them.</p></div></body>