From: [email protected] (Gary S. Trujillo)
Newsgroups: alt.activism,soc.culture.japan
Subject: Hiroshima Survivors' Accounts (5 of 16) [was Re: Universal Peace Day]
Date: 4 Aug 90 20:59:56 GMT
Organization: gst's 3B1 - Somerville, Massachusetts

90/07/30 10:39:26 SYSOP    HIROSHIMA_WITNESS_No.2-1


    Mr. Akira Onogi was 16 years old when the bomb was  dropped.
He  was at home 1.2 km away from center of explosion.  The  house
was  under the shade of the warehouse, which protected  him  from
the   first  blast.   All  five  members  of  the  Onogi   family
miraculously survived in immediate fire at their house.

MR.  ONOGI :  I was in the second year of junior high school  and
was  mobilized  work  with  my  classmates  at  the  Eba   Plant,
Mitsubishi  shipbuilding.  On the day when A-bomb was dropped,  I
happened  to be taking the day off and I was staying at home.   I
was reading lying on the floor with a friend of mine.  Under  the
eaves I saw blue flash of light just like a spark made by a train
or some short circuit.  Next, a stemlike blast came.

INTERVIEWER :  From which direction?

ANSWER  :   Well, I'm not sure, anyway, when the blast  came,  my
friend and I were blown into another room.  I was unconscious for
a  while,  and  when  I came to, I  found  myself  in  the  dark.
Thinking my house was directly hit by a bomb, I removed red  soil
and  roof tiles covering me by hand and for the first time I  saw
the  sky.  I managed to go out to open space and I looked  around
wondering what my family were doing.  I found that all the houses
around there had collapsed for as far as I could see.

INTERVIEWER :  All the houses?

ANSWER :  Yes, well, I couldn't see anyone around me but I  heard
somebody  shouting "Help! Help!" from somewhere.  The cries  were
actually  from underground as I was walking on.  Since no  choose
were available, I'd just dug out red soil and roof tiles by  hand
to help my family; my mother, my three sisters and a child of one
of my sisters.  Then, I looked next door and I saw the father  of
neighboring  family standing almost naked.  His skin was  peeling
off all over his body and was hanging from finger tips.  I talked
to  him  but  he was too exhausted to give me a  reply.   He  was
looking  for his family desperately.  The person in this  picture
was  a  neighbor  of  us.  I think  the  family's  name  was  the
Matsumotos.   When we were escaping from the edge of the  bridge,
we  found  this small girl crying and she asked us  to  help  her
mother.  Just beside the girl, her mother was trapped by a fallen
beam  on  top  of  the lower half of  her  body.   Together  with
neighbors,  we  tried  hard  to  remove  the  beam,  but  it  was
impossible   without  any  tools.   Finally  a  fire  broke   out
endangering  us.  So we had no choice but to leave her.  She  was
conscious  and  we  deeply bowed to her  with  clasped  hands  to
apologize  to  her and then we left.  About one  hour  later,  it
started  raining heavily.  There were large drops of black  rain.
I  was  wearing  a  short sleeve shirt  and  shorts  and  it  was
freezing.   Everybody  was  shivering.  We  warmed  ourselves  up
around the burning fire in the middle of the summer.

INTERVIEWER :  You mean the fire did not distinguish by the rain?

ANSWER :  That's right.  The fire didn't subside it at all.  What
impressed  my  very strongly was a 5 or 6 year-old-boy  with  his
right  leg cut at the thigh.  He was hopping on his left foot  to
cross  over  the  bridge.  I can still  record  this  scene  very
clearly.  The water of the river we looking at now is very  clean
and  clear, but on the day of bombing, all the houses along  this
river  were  blown  by the blast with their  pillars,  beams  and
pieces  of  furniture  blown into the river or  hanging  off  the
bridges.  The river was also filled with dead people blown by the
blast  and with survivors who came here to seek water.  Anyway  I
could  not  see the surface of the water at  all.   Many  injured
people with peeled skin were crying out for help.  Obviously they
were  looking at us and we could hardly turn our eyes toward  the
river.

INTERVIEWER :  Wasn't it possible to help them?

ANSWER  :  No, there were too many people.  We took care  of  the
people around us by using the clothes of dead people as bandages,
especially for those who were terribly wounded.  By that time  we
somehow became insensible all those awful things.  After a while,
the  fire  reached  the river bank and we decided  to  leave  the
river.   We crossed over this railway bridge and escaped  in  the
direction  along  the railway.  The houses on both sides  of  the
railroad were burning and railway was the hollow in the fire.   I
thought  I  was  going  to  die  here.   It  was  such  an  awful
experience.   You know for about 10 years after bombing I  always
felt  paralyzed  we  never  saw the  sparks  made  by  trains  or
lightning.  Also even at home, I could not sit beside the windows
because  I  had seen so many people badly wounded  by  pieces  of
glass.   So  I always sat with the wall behind me  for  about  10
years.  It was some sort of instinct to self-preservation.
--
Gary S. Trujillo                              [email protected]
Somerville, Massachusetts                     {wjh12,spdcc,ima,cdp}!gnosys!gst