“I will.”
“Please,” she said, her hand fluttering out to catch at the bottom of my trousers. “You will not forget me?”
“No – I will not forget you.”
Oh, what a wretch I was. I never had the slightest intention of looking for a handcart, let alone returning to Takuo so that I could wheel her back to her husband.
I did perhaps feel like a brute as I left her there lying on the ground. As a sop to my conscience, I dragged her a few metres to the side of the puddle. But by then I was just saying anything that would allow me to take my leave. If she would have believed it, I would have told Takuo she was suffering from nothing more than mild sunburn. That is my way. Or at least it used to be my way. I would tell lies, any sort of lies, to get out of an awkward situation.
I think that Takuo believed I would return for her. At least she was not crying; I can take almost anything from a woman except her tears.
So that was where I left her. I did console myself that soon enough others would find her. She might even find a trained medic. And what possible point was there in taking Takuo to her husband when more than likely he was dead?
I could come up with any number of cogent, logical arguments about why my behaviour was notanything other than wholly reprehensible. Was I especially beholden to Takuo? Why should I be going out of my way to help her when thousands more were equally injured? And was not my main allegiance to Sumie, who herself might be horribly injured and in genuine need of my help? Who was going to be out there fighting to save my Sumie?
I can dress it up any way I like. But in my heart, I knew that I had lied to Takuo, and that I was probably leaving her to die.
What could I do? What could anyone do in the face of such city-wide devastation?
Still – I said I would not forget Takuo, and nor have I. Even 60 years on, I still squirm at the memory of what I did.
As I walked through the outskirts of Hiroshima, it was like walking into the very centre of hell. Many of its victims have made this comparison. In every way, it was as if hell had been brought to life in the smoking ruins of the city. From the blistered smoking landscape to the thousands of ravaged victims, it exactly captured every child’s first imaginings of hell. Buildings had been smeared to the ground, as if wiped away by a giant palette knife. The trees, those wonderful willows and cherries, had been reduced to nothing but gnarled black witches’ fingers; telegraph poles bowled over like so much kindling and solid concrete bridges blown from their very foundations.
I was walking down the same desolate road that, just an hour earlier, I had been cycling along. With a jolt, I realised that if I had stuck to my usual Monday morning routine I would have been caught in the absolute heart of the explosion. I might even have been in the very hypocenter cycling over the Aioi bridge – and all that would have been left of me would have been a carbonized stump and a grey shadow burned into the pavement. I shivered. If Akiba had not come back exactly when he did; if I had not left his office door unlocked; if he had not sent me back to the warehouse If – if – if. We all dwell on what might have been. But perhaps you can understand why I, a man caught up in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, have pause to dwell on it more than most.
These days, I tend not to think so much about that great infinity of hypotheticals, a single one of which could alter our entire lives. It is utterly meaningless. There is one thing, though, that I never forget: that I, more than anyone else, have been blessed with good luck. I was lucky to survive the bombs and, far more than that, I was lucky to have been in them in the first place and to have been given an opportunity to change my ways. I promise you: there is no greater gift on this earth than the chance of redemption.
All about me as I walked, clambered, climbed, back through Hiroshima were the victims for whom fate had not been so kind. Lying in the rubble-strewn roads were crisped black bodies with no vestige of clothing. You could not tell if they were men, women or even children. Yet somehow they could still move, little jerking twitches with their arms, a last flutter of agonised life before they were spent.
A bus full of charred victims, all crammed statue-like in the same position they had been in when the bomb had burst, one man with his arm still wrapped round the strap-handle; a cyclist astride the wreckage of his bicycle cart, the pair of them tossed against a wall, fused together in a ghastly mass of flesh and metal. And the rivers, Hiroshima’s great arteries that had saved her from being fire-bombed, these were already sprinkled with bloated corpses bobbing in the tide. A few were trying to swim, grey skinless arms flapping in the water. By the end of the day, the waterways would be quite carpeted with bodies.
Those that could walk were trudging aimlessly through the streets, rendered into shambling grey ghosts. I saw every imaginable deformity. The first a poor monstrous thing, shuf- fling towards me with arms outstretched; I never knew if it was man or woman. The victim’s clothes were hanging loosely off its red torso in shreds. With a shock of disgust, revulsion, I saw that these tattered strips were not clothes at all. The skin from its arms had been sheered off at the elbow and hung loosely down over its hands like a pair of grey gauntlets. Unseeing eyes stared right through me as the being silently staggered on its way.
I will never forget the crushing weight of the silence in the initial aftermath of the bomb. Later, as the firestorm took hold and people realised the urgency of their plight, there would be many frantic calls for help. But, in that first 30 minutes, it was as if the whole population was suffering from combined shellshock, too stunned to say a word. Those that could walk soundlessly trudged back to their homes to die with their families. As they walked, they seemed to cluster into groups, as if fearful to strike out alone. Those that could not walk would lie on the still hot asphalt, whimpering in formal Japanese, “Help. Please be so good as to help me.” Everywhere, it was the same.
Unwittingly, I had walked close to the very hypocenter, the wooden buildings not just destroyed, but atomised, as if crushed by a mighty grinder. All around me, bits of the debris were starting to catch fire. They said later that this was due to all the charcoal burners which had been fired up for breakfast that morning. The bomb’s heat had dried out all of Hiroshima’s wooden houses turning them into nothing more than piles of crackling tinder. Even the beams were too hot to touch. All it needed was the slightest spark and within minutes these houses had become flaming infernos.
There were a few Western-style concrete buildings that had been able to withstand the shockwave. But their walls were slewed away from the blast, like a sapling in a gale. Even these were starting to catch fire.
It was shocking. Awful. But nothing could touch me. Later, I would regret bitterly my indifference to this wash of wrecked humanity. But on that day, I was cloaked in an icy shroud of heartlessness, and I hugged it close about me.
Pathetic little scenes spring to mind, so vivid that they still make me weep. A little girl sitting on the porch of what had once been her home, nestling the burned body of her baby brother. Her tears drip onto the boy’s upturned face as she pleads with him, “Please do not go. Please do not leave me.”
A man padding down the street towards me, his bare feet little more than black nubs of charred flesh. His arms are so burned that I can see white bone through the flesh. He is carrying some sort of blanket, clutching it close to his chest.
He spots me as I pick my way through the debris and his juddering gait becomes more pronounced as he breaks into a shambling trot. His face is horribly burned, dusty blood oozing from a wound on his forehead, his wild hair singed and standing upright. As he gets closer, I catch a whiff of a smell that takes me back to my childhood. It is the distinct tang of burned feathers, exactly how it was when my grandmother used a candle to burn off the last feathers of a duck.
The man thrusts out the bundle towards me, pushing it into my arms. “Take her,” he says. “Please take my daughter. Her name is Setsuko. She is all that I have.”
I look at the slight bundle in his hands. The child could barely have been more than four months old. She is quite dead, her skin already grey and her black eyes tinged with that opaque glaze of death.
“I... ” For a moment I shy away from taking the dead girl.
“Please!” His voice is suddenly shrill to the point of cracking, his wild eyes wet with tears. “You must take her! Her name is Setsuko!”
Grudgingly, I accept the girl’s body. The very moment that she is in my hands, the man buckles at the knees. I believe he is dead before he has even hit the ground.
I stand dumbfounded, staring at the dead child in my hands. The father’s body is huddled into a foetal ball, his head almost touching his knees.
In a rare moment of delicacy, I return the child to his arms, the pair of them locked together for all time. You have never seen such a pitiful scene in all your life. And the horror of Hiroshima was that this was commonplace; all about me children were dying in their parents’ arms. Perhaps they were the lucky ones. Thousands of children were orphaned that day, left alone in the world to be tended by strangers.
Of all those incidents on my way back to Sumie’s boarding house, there is one that especially haunts me. I was walking past the same building that, just an hour earlier, was being pulled down by a lively band of schoolgirls. The poor girls on the roof must have been killed instantly, blown into the street. But many others who had been labouring inside the house were now trapped in the smoking rubble.
Two of the girls, their smocks, hair and faces grey with dust, trotted over to me. “Please help us, Sir,” the smaller one said, pulling at my hand. Her face was red and burned, but still she smiled at me, her teeth beaming white against her grey skin. “Our friends are trapped.”
I allowed myself to be led by the hand to the building. It was carnage, a huge heap of smouldering wood and tiles that looked as if it were about to burst into flames at any minute.
I surveyed the scene. A number of half-clad girls were labouring at the debris. I noticed one in particular. She was younger than the others, perhaps ten-years-old, and sat on a piece of rubble staring vacantly ahead of her. A few scraps from her trousers lingered round her legs, red weals all across her front and face.
It was impossible to know where to start. It would have taken a full day to clear it and I needed to get back. And anyway what did I owe those girls?
Truly, my selfishness that day ran so deep that it was like drawing water from the sea.
The two girls that had taken me to the rubble were now hanging onto my arms, one on each hand. Some of the other girls had stopped their work to stare at me.
I cleared the dust from my throat. “Are you sure anyone could have survived this?” I asked.
“Yes, Sir,” pleaded the smaller girl. “We have heard two of them. They are trapped in the corner. I will show you.”
Still holding my hand she led me up onto a clump of fallen tiles and woodwork. In parts it was over two metres high. I picked my way over to the corner. From far down I could just make out a little squeak, “Help us. Please help us.”
I tried, but my heart was never in it. I did not want to be there and at that stage I did not care whether those trapped girls lived or died. The job seemed insurmountable.
Other girls in the group had rallied round me. All of them were now digging at the same spot, clawing at the struts and tiles with their bare hands. “We are coming for you!” called out the smaller girl, as she wrenched at another shattered plank. “We are nearly there!”
She smiled at me again as I threw another tile over my shoulder. “This is so very kind of you, Sir. Thank you, Sir.” Then she started talking inconsequentially, chatting away as young girls will do when they are trying to distract themselves. “My name is Kiyoko. And this is my friend Etsuko. And over there is my friend Fumiko. We have been pulling down the houses on this street all week – and now... now all our work is done. Oh, but now with you here, I am sure we will be able to get them out.”
“Yes,” I said. “I am sure you will. You are doing very well. Very well indeed.” I plucked at a tile and threw it onto the road. “But I’m sorry – I have to be going. I have friends whom I need to check up on and –”
“Oh, but please stay,” said Kiyoko, the girl with the scorched face. “We will not be able to do it without you.”
“I’m sorry.” By now I had retreated back to the tarmac. All the girls had stopped work to stare at me. “I’m sorry. I don’t have the time. I can’t stay.” I cupped my hands in prayer and bowed.
Two of the girls started to cry, suddenly aware that they were all alone in this brave new atomic world, and that now not even the adults would not step in to save them.
“Please –” called out the girl – and her plea was still ringing in my ears as I backed away from that motley cluster of schoolgirls. Unable to bear a moment more of their accusing glances, I started to walk off.
But the worst of it was when the girl who had been sitting all alone, the one with only a few scraps of clothing left on her legs, suddenly awoke from her trance. She got up and began to stumble after me. The smouldering ruins must have been cruel on her feet. “Please help me,” she said. “Please help me.”
She came tottering towards me, convinced that I was her only salvation. How sad she looked, staggering blindly after me in the smoke. And, to this day, I can still hear her awful words ringing in my ears: “Help me. Please help me.”
It made no difference – I would no more have helped her than a rat would help another of its own. Unable to bear any more of her cries, I turned my back on the girl and started to lope away. Anything was better than to be forced to listen to her pleading. As I rounded a corner, I looked back for the last time. She had stopped moving and stood with her arms stretched out to me in supplication. Then very slowly, like a tree toppling full length, she fell forwards. She never broke her fall, arms jolting sideways as she connected face first with the rubble. I did not wait to see if she ever moved again.