The War Orphans of Hiroshima: Part III

by Sarah Terzo

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This post is a continuation of a series. Read Part I and Part II.

The United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945. Tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians, died in the initial blast, and many more succumbed to radiation poisoning in the weeks and months after the bombing. Many children were killed, and others were orphaned.

The account in this article comes from a 1951 book by Arata Osada, PhD, called Children of Hiroshima, which was a collection of interviews from children who survived the bombing. All quotations come from the 1980 edition.

The Dropping of the Bomb

Yuriko Kohno was only seven when the United States bombed Hiroshima. She was sitting in her classroom at school when it happened:

Just as I had entered the classroom and was sitting at my desk waiting for the teacher, the windows suddenly turned bright red and then with a terrific boom and clatter all the windowpanes broke. I sat there dumbfounded.

Yuriko was so stunned and shaken that she didn't even realize she'd been cut by flying glass. She looked down at her hand and was surprised to see it bleeding. Fortunately, she wasn't badly hurt. But she was very frightened and stayed in the classroom until a soldier found her and carried her home to her mother.

Losing a Loved One

Yuriko's mother and her two younger sisters seemed safe, but her father had been in his office, much closer to the explosion's epicenter. As day turned into evening, her father hadn't returned.

Six years later, Yuriko remembered the conversation she had with her father before he left that morning:

[M]y father had said, "I don't want to go to work today."

Then when he said he was hungry, I said to him, "Daddy, I'm full, so eat mine."

"Thanks! For that, I'll bring you something when I come home," was his answer.

"Goody!" I shouted.

She never imagined this would be the last conversation she would have with her father.

Eventually, some friends of her father came and told them he had died.

Yuriko said, "My heart seemed to stop, and I couldn't say anything. Mother and we, three children, stood crying for a while at the front door."

Pain in Perspective

Over the next few days, the massive scale of the tragedy became clearer to Yuriko. The city was full of horribly burned and injured people, and tens of thousands were dead. Schools were being used as makeshift hospitals, and bodies were piling up and being cremated everywhere. Many children had lost their parents.

Yuriko said:

…I was not the only one to suffer. Here, there, and everywhere the soldiers were carrying other children's mothers and dads to a kindergarten, where they treated and looked after them. I felt sorry for them and cried.

Then I went to my mother, "Mom, there are others worse off than us, aren't there?"

"Yes," was all she said in reply.

Yuriko's mother never gave up hope that her father could still be alive. Night after night, they searched the ruins of the city. Yuriko said, "I called, 'Father! Father!' into the pitch dark night every step of the way. But there was no reply."

They went to the hospitals and searched through the lists of survivors but never found her father’s name.

Finally, the family accepted that he was gone, and that they would never recover his body or know exactly where or how he died.

A Tragic Illness

Soon after Yuriko started school, going into the second grade, her mother became ill with radiation poisoning. Soon, she was very sick. Yuriko said, "[I]n spite of how bad she felt, though, she still did all she could to take care of us."

But Yuriko's mother became sicker and sicker and soon was bedridden. Yuriko, still only seven, took over the cooking, cleaning, shopping, and caring for her younger sisters while still going to school. But she frequently had to miss her classes.

The little girl became so exhausted that she herself got sick. While she was recovering in bed, her mother told her:

Yuriko, I hope you get better right away. With you in bed, too, there's no one to take care of the house. Both Yoko and Motoko are too small to help out. There is only you. So do the best you can. I'll be getting better soon.

Yuriko's mother then asked her to go shopping, as there was no food in the house. Yuriko got up off her sickbed, went out, and bought some sweet potatoes for the family.

As hard as it was for Yuriko, she was willing to help her family. She said, "Little by little, I got used to the work and I made up my mind that I would take good care of Mother… From then on, I tried harder."

Even when she was able to attend school activities, she had to go alone or just with her sisters. She missed having her mother with her and had a hard time seeing friends with their parents. When she got back, her mother would ask her about the event and whether she had fun. According to Yuriko, "I would always nod and say 'Yes.'” But it made her unhappy.

Yuriko’s Life Changes

Then Yuriko's entire life changed. She recalled:

[O]ne day Mother said, "Yuriko, you and your sisters are going to go live at a place where they'll take good care of you."

She said this so suddenly that I asked, "Why… What for? Do we have to be separated from you?"

Then mother said, "No, it's not like that. I'm very sick so I have to go to the hospital. When I'm better, we'll be able to live together again."

Then a lady from the Child Welfare Department came to take us away. Mother was lying in bed, and she cried as she said, "We'll meet again, dears."

Yuriko and her sisters were sent to an orphanage. Yuriko said she was "heartbroken" to leave her mother, but she still believed her mother would recover. Sadly, however, her mother died shortly after Yuriko and her sisters entered the orphanage.

Six years later, Yuriko was still living in the orphanage. Instead of being bitter and resentful over the loss of her parents, Yuriko was deeply grateful that she and her sisters survived the bomb, and she was determined to grow up to be a good person:

I am so thankful to God… From now, I will work hard to become a better girl… I have made up my mind to become a good, honest, cheerful person, the kind of person that everyone will respect.

Symptoms of Radiation Sickness

Some of the symptoms of radiation poisoning include nausea; vomiting; fatigue; weakness; bloody diarrhea, saliva, and urine; ulcers in the mouth and throat, which sometimes progress to gangrene; and red spots on the skin called petechiae, which are caused by blood leaking from blood vessels. These are the symptoms Yuriko’s mother would have suffered from.

The victims of radiation poisoning eventually die from massive internal bleeding. The exact manner of death depends on where hemorrhaging first occurs and which internal organs are affected.

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 Children of Hiroshima is available in e-book format under a slightly different title on Amazon (Kindle) or Barnes & Noble (Nook) for $4.99. Both versions can be read in an app on your smartphone, tablet, or computer.

For more of Sarah Terzo’s writings, see Sarah Terzo’s Secular Seamless Garment.