VOSHN 263

<body><a href="../index.html">HOME</a><br><table summary="246"><tr><td class="etesti">246</td><td class="edate">August 10<sup>th</sup>, 1945.  In the evening</td><td class="eage">34 years old at that time</td></tr><tr><td class="ei_midasi" colspan=3>It would be lucky to die in bed.</td></tr></table><div class="largep"><p>I went to the ruin, where there used to be Nagasaki Medical College.  I found many people dead in the waiting room.  They had turned to black Buddha.  In the view of Buddhism we generally call a dead man Buddha.  All bodies were with no clothes on.</p><br><p>A doctor said to me, "Clear off the bodies." I gripped a part of a body and felt a bone touch my fingers.  I found my fingers pierced the skin, as if the body had been steeped in boiling hot water.  We call this condition yugaki in Japanese cuisine.</p><br><p>Then rice balls were distributed among the sufferers.  One middle age woman had got seriously injured in her face.  I thought I would give rice balls to the others in better condition and didn't hand her.  So the woman said to me, "Please give me, too." Then she held out her hands, and I gave her two.  15 or 20 minutes after I came back there and found her dead with the two rice balls in her hands.  At that sight I thought people might care about eating until the very moment of their death.  I thought so.  My tears had run dry.</p><br><p>I easily get angry; on the other hand I'm sentimental.  At that time I felt pity so much.  I thought it would be happy for human beings to die in their bed (for Japanese to die on tatami).  Then I was crying.</p><br><p>It would be really lucky to die in bed.</p><p>It's indeed beyond description, what a pitiful sight being killed by A-bombs was!</p></div></body>