I went to the burned-out city to look for my son. On the way I found an air-raid shelter, where several bodies lay, but there left nobody alive. I went to Nagasaki Technical Senior High School my son went to in those days, only wishing that I could find his body, because I doubted he was alive.
The school was located on the hill across the valley from the ground zero. The school buildings had been blown off, as if clean swept. I shouted my son's name, "Akira, Akira!" Then I heard a voice answering, "Yes!" I went there and found my son naked and sitting in a corner of the foundation of the buildings. I guessed he had taken off his clothes as he felt hot.
I told him, "Don't worry. Now I'm with you." Taking off the gaiters around my shins, I connected them to each other, with which I tied him on my back, and started for home. At that time he was still alive. But I remember he passed away near the heart of the ground zero.
With a hat on, his hair was not burned, but all the rest was by the heat of explosion in an instant: his face had been swollen and his hands were tattered like a worn-out floorcloth.
I took a rest there for a while, then I just had to correct used woods and commit his body to the flames. After I found a rice bowl, correcting my son's bones, I put them into it.