VOSHN 226

<body><a href="../index.html">HOME</a><br><table summary="210"><tr><td class="etesti">210</td><td class="edate">August 9<sup>th</sup>, 1945.  After 4 o'clock</td><td class="eage">36 years old at that time</td></tr><tr><td class="ei_midasi" colspan=3>It was hell on earth.</td></tr></table><div class="largep"><p>Beyond the Nagasaki station there were no houses standing.  There were fires burning like bonfires everywhere.</p><p>We, the police corps, made our way, dodging fires, into the hypocenter.  On the way I saw many injured people fleeing from the Oohashi Bridge toward the Nagasaki station.</p><br><p>I heard a young man's scream "Help, help," which still lingers in my ears, from under the bridge over the Shimono-kawa river.  There was nothing I could do for him.</p><br><p>When I came to the civic athletic field, I found numbers of suffering people escaping from Yamazato (district) and Shiroyama (district).  There were children screaming for their parents and parents screaming for their children.  In a place a parent found their children and they hugged each other and cried for joy.  In another place a mother found her child at last, but it was dead.  She howled, clinging to the dead body.</p><br><p>A person with serious injuries was unable to walk but crawled over the ground like a caterpillar.  It seemed to me that he had determined to survive.  The devastation was simply beyond description.  If there were hell, it must be like that.</p></div></body>