AUGUST, 1945: MEMOIRS OF THE SURVIVORS

...mouth widening, and skin graft operations, some without anesthesia...

...I told her that I had thought a lot before giving birth to her and didn't know whether she might get a bad disease, not wanting to mention leukemia...

...Livid spots appeared all over my body, and I frequently felt very sick...

...There was nothing I could do but write "Kazue, Alive...

...Stephen Salaff who lives in Toronto, is a mathematician and writer on nuclear energy...

...However, in 1950 my husband again abandoned me for another woman, taking the child with him...

...It was then that he found it difficult to live with such an ugly, feeble woman...

...My husband came home again, unemployed, and my wages now had to support the child...

...AUGUST, 1945: MEMOIRS OF THE SURVIVORS 'There must never again be victims like ourselves9 —Toyoko Fujikawa BY JANET BRUIN AND STEPHEN SALAFF The atomic bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, left some 370,000 survivors—"Hibaku-sha," which translates literally as "A-bomb received persons...

...the intense anxiety about the health of the "Nisei Hibakusha"—the second generation of bomb victims...

...I raised the boy with all my might, as if he were my own...

...The gatherings of the Women's Section have given me the opportunity to come across my dear old Nagasaki dialect, and to give full expression to the feelings I have had ever since that fatal day...

...Government in-sensitivity has compounded the pain...

...She now edits Pax et Libertas, the quarterly journal of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, in Geneva...

...Nobody will ever cheat me into believing in the glory of war...

...Your notebooks will provide you with everything you need, won't they...

...I lost consciousness...

...I was later taken on a truck to a naval hospital in the nearby port of Kure...

...But instead they carried me back on a stretcher and tenderly cared for me at home...

...Through the Women's Section, a doctor supported my application for medical compensation, and I was awarded a modest allowance...

...Left alone, I joined a government program for the poor as a laborer Tor less than 400 yen ($1.00) per day in Niigata...

...He died there in the A-bomb Hospital around 1960...

...When I made up my mind to publish my life story in Unvan-quished, We March, the magazine of the Women's Section, my daughter at first tried to stop me, because she was afraid that it would renew my sorrow...

...Some of his friends suggested that he divorce me...

...the loneliness and poverty of being widowed or abandoned...

...She left Nagasaki to work in Osaka in late 1956...

...Our anger," she continues, "is focused not so much on what happened to us thirty-five years ago as it is on the continued existence and development of weapons which could make victims of the rest of humanity...

...That September, the Women's Section of the Osaka Association of A-bomb Victims was born...

...In time, a Health Notebook for A-bomb Victims became available, which qualified us for limited compensation under Hibakusha legislation...

...But again my husband left me and went this time to Hiroshima...

...My husband later told me that while I was in the hospital he was often tempted to kill me because he could not stand to see me suffering so much pain.' My parents, brother and sister, and several other relatives came to the hospital with two urns of firewood, prepared for my death and cremation...

...There were many days when I could hardly stand up under the load, but I was at least fortunate to have the heartwarming encouragement of my fellow union members, who offered me the blood I needed for anemia transfusions...

...My brother-in-law carefully removed the darkened skin from my face and limbs with tweezers, washed my skin with salt water, and coated it with cooking oil...

...As she grew older, Maki noticed that newspapers in the summer featured stories of the bombings and deaths of survivors...

...And we are not getting any younger or healthier...

...So even though it is painful for us to recount our stories of misery, it is the least we can do to warn people about the grave threat to world survival which is being intensified by the arms race...

...When I could finally move my body, I returned to the dwelling of my husband...

...My first baby was stillborn, as was the case with one of my older sisters who was A-bombed in Hiroshima...

...After I realized that I could not trust him, we separated, but I was already pregnant...

...My sisters nursed me back to health...

...The Japanese government has not yet taken responsibility for fully compensating us for the pain we have suffered, and no one has guaranteed us and our children the peaceful life we believe we deserve...

...That made me very angry...

...I could not even approach home, and so I fled, alongside a few other ghostlike, tottering forms which had emerged from the , flames, into a sweet potato field, where I had to spend the night...

...I was suffering intensely from diarrhea...

...In painful honesty I told her that there was nothing we could do about it...

...The dwelling was crushed under the neighboring house, which in turn had fallen beneath the next house...

...Women's Section spread, and demand for its services increased...

...Only my jacket and underwear saved my inner organs...

...When I pushed my way out of the shelter, I saw a blaze envelop the whole neighborhood, including our home, where several of my six children were playing...

...An elderly passing soldier told us that it was the skull of a man in his thirties or forties...

...But I had to begin earning a living, and so I became a seamstress...

...When she was fourteen she looked me in the face reproachfully and asked, "Why did you give birth to me, Mom...

...You are a bomb victim, so you should not have brought me into the world...

...This must be my husband's, I realized...

...There were some 1,600 women Hibakusha in Osaka who carried the same burden—suppressed feelings of loss, shame, anger, guilt, and fear...

...I moved to Osaka, originally to get away from where my husband was, and to find a more suitable climate for my convalescence...

...What could I answer her...

...As their isolation ended, so did much of their grief...

...I am glad to be alive to work for peace...

...It was not until 1968 that I was well enough to come to Osaka...

...Stunned, expressionless, monster-like people, young and old, cried out for their mothers and begged for water...

...News of the...

...the troubling question of whether, as bomb victims, to marry and bear children...

...I don't know how much time passed before I returned to my senses...

...I could open my mouth only wide enough to swallow three grains of rice at a time, and my mother patiently sat at my bedside feeding me the nourishment I needed to stay alive...

...We discovered a white, round object...

...In November, although I was still weak, I went to my two sisters in Osaka, carrying the ashes of our parents in an urn wrapped in cloth...

...People called me stubborn, and as such I fought my way through...

...Janet Bruin is a writer and social worker who came to know many members of the Women's Section, Osaka Association of A-bomb Victims, in 1977 and 1978...

...I decided to have the child, a baby girl who was a living image of my departed second daughter...

...In late 19761 began to suffer from symptoms of anemia, and a gynecological examination revealed myoma of the uterus [a fibro-muscular tumor...

...On the third day, a friend of my husband came to help me salvage the debris of my home...

...But I won't give way to this disease so soon...

...Here are excerpts from three women's memoirs...

...The next morning, I returned to the site of my house, but whatever objects I moved only raised clouds of hot ashes...

...I was hurled to the floor by the fierce blast, and felt warm blood spurting from my nose and mouth...

...In 1948, when I had still not absorbed all the effects of the atomic catastrophe, I married a man who initially promised to help me...

...My skin was suddenly shredded and hanging like dried squid roasted on a fire...

...Public assistance was offered to A-bomb survivors only after long struggles, and even now information and benefits are often withheld...

...In 19501 gave birth to a boy, and in 1953 I had a girl...

...Give me back my husband and my six children...

...I still had to undergo scar removal...

...As the war grew in intensity, the Telephone Exchange was staffed almost entirely by women, mobilized high school girls among them...

...It looked as if the house had been melted and coagulated...

...But when she saw my insistent look, she agreed...

...Takagi and Miura set out to find them...

...I walked back and forth between what had been my home and my place of work, ignorant of the terrible effects of residual radioactivity, looking desperately for my family and friends...

...I moved from city to city with my daughter, from Fukuoka to Sasebo and back to Nagasaki, working as a poorly paid hotel domestic, trying to keep her from going hungry while I was periodically hospitalized for A-bomb illness...

...KAZUE MIURA When I finished school in 1941, Ibegan work as an operator in the Central Telephone Exchange...

...When I tried to comfort children, words would not come, only tears...

...At one of the second floor exits, I found a girl who was thrown through a window and whose face, full of glass, was bleeding profusely...

...Kazue Miura died of stomach cancer on April 25,1980...

...They introduced me to a good man, and we married in 1948...

...Several dozen of them published their stories, and afterward they found it easier to stand on public platforms to demand their rights—and to report firsthand on the dangers of an arms race spiral-ing out of control...

...me that there is a tumor in my gullet...

...In addition, it has been difficult for men to understand the special difficulties of Hibakusha women: the too-common diseases of the breasts and reproductive organs...

...But women, who make up more than half of the survivors, have not always been able to participate fully...

...I had long anticipated that question, but no amount of emotional preparation could have softened the blow of those words...

...As awful as that was, it didn't seem as important as being without my children...

...Beautiful Hiroshima was now a wasteland of debris...

...And what would you do if it happened to me...

...My tather, mother, little brother, and sister were nowhere to be seen, and I learned later that they had all perished during or soon after the bombing...

...I threw down the notebook, crying, "This book will not restore my family...

...He did go off with another woman, who bore him a son in 1946, but their relationship did not last, and he brought the child to me...

...For thirty-six years, as other scars of World War II have gradually faded, the Hibakusha's own special injuries—deep psychic wounds, terrifying disease, social discrimination, and poverty—have remained deep and painful...

...She came to hate all reminders of the bombing because of the pain it had caused me and her fear that I, too, would succumb...

...I got weaker and thinner and felt like a ghost...

...on the wall of the water tank, now completely dry...

...I was hesitant to have another, but we wanted children very badly...

...At the hospital doctors were sure I would die from the terrible, mysterious symptoms which had already claimed so many lives...

...The Telephone Exchange was located within 500 meters of the hypocenter of the A-bomb explosion, and I was one of the few people who survived in this innermost zone...

...Now I had joined the ranks of the seriously ill Hibakusha, many of whom had been operated on for uterine cancer, myoma, or cystoma [ovarian cyst...

...Over the years, the scattered Hibakusha have formed associations in all of Japan's prefectures to grapple with some of these problems...

...In 1967, two women affiliated with the largely male Osaka Association of A-bomb Victims met, and suddenly the prospects for Hibakusha women began to brighten...

...My face was swollen beyond recognition, the burnt flesh of my arms, hands, and fingers was hanging out of my sleeves and drooping down my fingertips, and I was temporarily blind...

...My hair fell out...

...My daughter Maki is troubled by anemia and low blood pressure...

...The instant I looked up at the city, my face was pierced by an intense flash of light and I felt my whole body shrink...

...We Hibakusha are the only living proof of the disastrous effects of nuclear weapons," says Toyoko Fujikawa, who heads the Women's Section...

...There, when the doctor removed the tightly sticking bandages from my face, the pain was so severe that it made my eyes water...

...My daughter completed high school and took courses in cosmetology...

...She was in such fear that she would not part her hands from mine, even for a moment...

...A legacy of feudalistic thought, customs, and social structures often limits them to supporting roles in Japanese organizations...

...Shi-zuko Takagi, a native of Osaka who was attending college in Hiroshima in 1945, and Kazue Miura, a Hiroshima native who joined relatives in Osaka after the rest of her family perished in the bombing, had borne their troubles alone until they met and began to talk...

...My husband searched for me in all the makeshift aid stations, and fortunately, when at last on August 9 he saw my misshapen figure, he spotted my wedding ring...

...But through the kindness of a family friend, who took me to his quiet home by the sea and fed me fresh fish and oranges, I miraculously began to recover...

...Dazed, we dug up six more skulls, and my children's butterfly badges with them...

...My memories are inexhaustible...

...December 8 of that year was an especially busy day, on which Japan declared war against the Allies...

...Our suffering will not have been in vain if it can help eliminate the threat of annihilation...

...Here, my doctor tells Toshiko Nakamura was a housewife and mother of six in Nagasaki in 1945...

...I wanted to accompany her, but had to undergo long hospitalizations after blood appeared in my phlegm...

...My daughter and I are managing now, but she says thoughtfully, "I feel kind of guilty when I think of my happy life with you, mother, while all my sisters and brothers were killed by the A-bomb...

...Someone must have helped me to reach a temporary first aid station...

...The next morning I was able to return to the place where my house had stood so sturdily...

...The rest was sheer darkness...

...They decided it was time to put an end to the years of silent suffering...

...The city of Osaka gave the group a small grant and a meeting room, from which it launched various projects: counseling of both male and female Hibakusha, research into their condition, and, eventually, a campaign for world disarmament...

...An important part of the work has been a memoir-writing project...

...I went to the Nagasaki City Office to secure my notebook, and the official in charge said to me sarcastically, "We envy you Hibakusha...

...I decided instead to go with my companion to her home in the north of the city...

...I am determined that the cruelty of war never be repeated...

...The rest of my life will be for this girl, I resolved...

...TOSHIKO NAKAMURA Iwas cleaning our family's tiny underground air raid shelter on a hillside near our two-story home when I saw a sudden flash and felt something pressing hard against my cheeks...

...To my happiness, the Women's Section published my life story, Survival at 500 Meters in Hiroshima, in December 1979, and I hope that it may serve to prevent any other human being from experiencing the horror of nuclear war...

...Taking part in the meetings of the Women's Section has come to be the main purpose of my life...

...I held her in my arms, and led her out of the building...

...I desperately wanted to make my way home, 400 meters from the hypo-center, but the heat from the burning houses was too intense...

...To my joy he shouted in my ear, "Are you Fumiko...

...FUMIKO NONAKA Iwas working in downtown Hiroshima a little after 8 a.m., when a woman near me cried, "Here comes a B-29 bomber...

...Although I am relieved by this pension, my blood boils in anger whenever untutored children gazing at me say, "Hey, look at that woman's face...

...I am worried by her weak health, and am determined not to die until she opens a beauty shop of her own, and meets a good young man to provide for her continued happiness...

...I went to the home of relatives, who told me that my face was scorched black and covered with scabs...

...After a momentary silence, the shrill voices of my workmates rose to a mournful chorus...

...she asked...

...That was the saddest and most heartbreaking moment of my life...

...This was partly for what the doctor called "ugly looks caused by serious burn scarring...

...How often I thought of killing myself...

...How could I, after my miraculous survival through the holocaust of the bomb...

...The women found they grew stronger by putting their thoughts on paper...