VOSHN 319

<body><a href="../index.html">HOME</a><br><table summary="297"><tr><td class="etesti">297</td><td class="edate">August 16<sup>th</sup>or later, 1945.</td><td class="eage">Medical science had no chance against it.</td></tr><tr><td class="ei_midasi" colspan=3>24 years old at that time</td></tr></table><div class="large"><p>We tried to give aid and treatment, but there were no equipments.  All we could do was to lay the patients on the floors of Shinkozen Elementary School, which became a provisional first-aid centre.</p></p><p>None of the patients wore proper clothes.  When we tried to take off their shirts or gauze from the affected area, skins came off with it.  When I tried to take off a cloth from this person's face, his/her nose and ear fell off.  When I tried to take off the gauze which covered an eye, the eyeball dropped off.  After a while, they all died.</p><br><p>What I regret the most is that I could not arrest nasal hemorrhage.  Patients kept on bleeding.  We did not know at that time, but there was no way to stop bleeding, since the bone marrow and the haemostatic function itself was damaged.</p><br><p>I had studied many ways to arrest hemorrhage at the army medical school, but none of them helped.  Once a patient started nose bleeding, s/he died in a few days.  I felt miserable.  I became keenly aware of the reality that medical science, which I had learned, had no chance against this situation.</p><br><p>On arrival, we could not identify the patients' names or where they were from.  There was no hope for the bereaved to come and pick them up, so we piled up the bodies in a corner of the school field, sprinkled gasoline and burned them.</p><br><p>I felt terribly sorry for them, but there was no other way at that time.  If we leave the bodies inside the school, there would be no place to for the patients that came one after another.</p></div></body>