II: Instantly Hell
Everywhere "A Direct Hit"
The point directly beneath the burst, designated on "hypocenter," was some 70 yards southeast of the A-Bomb Dome, the then Industrial Promotion Hall. All wooden structures within a mile and a quarter were destroyed. A great many concrete buildings collapsed. Fires broke out everywhere, window glass was shattered for ten miles around and the shock wave reached as far as 37 miles. Destroyed were 27 trains, 24 tram cars, 10 buses, 182 trucks and 56 horse or bullock carts. (From the Prefectural Police Report.)
"We've taken a direct hit!" The blinding flash and sudden roar convinced many people that a bomb had gone off right beside them. Others thought the Ujina gas tanks had exploded or the ammunition dump had gone up. However, the majority had no time to wonder about what had happened; the conflagration was upon them and they fled for their lives.
Eyewitness on Etajima Island
Those farther away were better able to witness the fire ball and flying debris that rose in the shock wave. Some eight miles from hypocenter, on Etajima Island, Tomio Shibata, a one-man submarine trainee, was waiting with fellow students for his next class at the Konoura Training Center when "Pika!" a blinding blue-white flash stabbed their eyes. "We all looked up at the naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling," he writes. " 'Must be a short circuit.' 'No, too strong for that!' There was just time for such exclamations before 'Don !' a hundred thunders sounded at once, shaking the earth on its axis.
"The window glass shattered and we threw ourselves flat on the floor, expecting a second bomb to fall directly on us at any moment. Every nerve in our bodies seemed concentrated in our backs. When no second explosion com we got up and ran outside to see what had happened.
"Over Hiroshima an unbelievably huge cloud rose into the air, spreading at the top like an umbrella. Monstrona it hung over the people as though threatening them with immediate war. The column of smoke directly beneath swirled upward like a whirlwind around a center of flame From here and there in the city, now nearly obscured by a black mist, smaller columns of flame shot upward from time to time. It seemed impossible that such a scene could have been created by a human agency, but now from between the clouds appeared a B-29, sunlight glancing from its wings."
A Dearth of Hospitals
In the blink of an eye, the military city of Hiroshima was annihilated, leaving only the Ujina Army Shipping and Embarkation Center. 18 hospitals and 32 first-aid centers were destroyed or rendered useless for a time. 90% of the doctors were either killed or injured, and most of the nurses died.
The Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital, a ferro-concrete building lying a mile from hypocenter was left a debris littered shell. Window glass and frames, inner walls and movable objects leaped through the air and scattered. Those occupants who survived were covered with dirt and blood and utterly confused, but nurses and probationers, forgetting self, did what they could for the patients, pulling down curtains and tearing up sheets for bandages.
The Mitsubishi Shipyard Hospital lying 2.8 miles from hypocenter lost a third of its roof and all of the windows, but the wooden building fortunately did not burn. Neither did the Ujina Army Hospital, two miles from the center, though it was badly battered. The Hiroshima Communications Hospital, less than a mile from the burst, became a shambles within, a mere shell without.
Rescue Work Begins
Thirty-five minutes after the explosion, the Army Shipping Depot Command at Ujina began to mobilize and direct rescue teams of Corpsmen. Fire was spreading so rapidly that they could not get through by land, so they entered the city upriver by boat. At first it was impossible to approach the area around the hypocenter which was blazing fiercely, but by afternoon a few managed to enter, and more that night.
Teams ferrying across from Etajima Island were unable to land on the beaches, so packed were they with the suffering. Some turned back but others, forcing their way ashore, met such unbelievable sights that two or three boy marines fainted and had to be returned to their base.
Then from the Kure Naval Station, from the military convalescent center at Saijo, and from Onomichi, doctors, nurses and rescue workers came into Hiroshima. On that first day they were unable to communicate but about five o'clock a Prefectural Air Defense Unit was set up at Hijiyama Tamon-In Temple. About eight o'clock, police coming in from Matsunaga Town swelled the rescue force to fifty or sixty, and some organization became possible. Such had been the confusion, however, that now for the first time, twelve hours after the catastrophe, they thought of requesting doctors, medicines and other help from neighboring prefectures and the National Ministry of the Interior.
That night, President Truman announced by shortwave radio that the bomb dropped on Hiroshima had been a nuclear weapon, but the victims heard nothing of this. At the time, the seven rivers of Hiroshima were choked with corpses. Around Kamiya Cho, at the center of the city, the flames continued for many hours but finally subsided, and two days later, on August 8th, a rescue directive center was set up there.
Burned, Slashed and Flayed
Because of the summer heat, wounds soon festered. Maggots swarmed on living bodies, something never seen before. At night armies of mosquitoes assaulted the victim who had no defense other than to spread newspapers their nakedness. On August 29th, American military plan sprayed DDT over the city, but until then, flies and mosquitoes tormented the injured continuously.
Akio Nishije, a naval medical orderly, has described the scene at one of the many first-aid centers. On orders, he arrived at the Misasa Credit Union Building on the morning of August 8th. By that time the streets had been cleared of dead bodies and the odor of burning flesh was overpowering. Long lines of sufferers waited to be treated. His team from the 31st Detachment tried to care for the more severely injured first, encouraging the others, "Just be patient a little longer," but from the lines came harsh voices "Some day we'll get even !" and, "Avenge us, Soldier, won't you ?" He was not surprised that even women and children should give free expression to the rage in their hearts. "Shit! Remember this, you American skunks !" and, "We'll never forget !"
Makeshift Treatment
On the 8th, 1,000 people were treated, and the following day about 1,800. Few could hope for attention a second time. The patients were covered with serum from broken blisters which in many cases glued the clothing to their bodies. Sesame or other cooking oil, or sea water, was mixed with potassium permanganate and used to dissolve the serum and to wash and disinfect wounds. A mixture of zinc oxide and acrinol solution was applied to burns, but since the supply was severely limited, it was used only on faces and very serious wounds. To arms, legs and trunk, sesame oil was applied. Bandages and even cloth were scarce and therefore used sparingly. Medicine was in such short
supply that those who were burned over more than a third of the body were considered hopeless and simply abandoned.
Many patients had scores of splinters of glass embedded in their bodies. These had to be removed with pincers but for lack of time, only the larger pieces were pulled out and the cuts painted with Mercurochrome. Ordinarily, such treatment without anesthetic would be unbearable, but the injured gritted their teeth and endured. After treatment patients who could not move were laid inside on the floor, but they soon overflowed into the street and the station area. Inside, most of those lying on rough straw mats on the concrete were so ill that they merely waited for death to take them. Many were nearly naked; high school girls predominated, and the student orderlies, only fifteen and sixteen years old, themselves, could not bear the sight. They brought straw matting, or even sterile nursing materials to cover them and the girls were pitifully grateful.
Toileting was a major problem, for the patients could not move to the facilities, so the orderlies searched the ruins for any vessel that would serve, and putting aside their own embarrassment, helped the patients to use these. When orderly Nishiie went upstairs on an errand, his breath caught in his throat. In the small, concrete-floored room lay fifteen or sixteen dying patients. Excrement flowed everywhere and the people were soiled indiscriminately with their own and their neighbors'. Bathed in this powerful effluvium, they groaned and writhed in an extreme of agony.
Near the door lay a girl of eighteen or nineteen, nearly naked. As he approached, she seemed ashamed. How sad, he thought, that this girl at the point of death, should suffer embarrassment, and for the first time, tears came to his eyes.
Last Rites
Disposal of bodies began in front of Yokogawa Station on the ninth. Countless people seeking water had crept to the river bank and died. Their chilled bodies became ice pillows for others, keeping them barely alive. Almost naked bodies floated by the hundreds in the river, and them proved a formidable task. Volunteer wardens clutch a hand only to have the skin come away; there was no firm place to grasp. Of necessity abandoning human dignity, they finally used gaff hooks to lift them onto trucks Many of the bodies escaped the hooks, however, and floating down river were lost to the sea.
By the tenth most of the bodies of those who had died immediately had been gathered up, principally by the Akatsuki Military Corps, but there was a lack of fuel to cremate them, so zinc roofing was often laid over the half burned bodies and they were left to be consumed by the remaining heat. By the twentieth the military and police together had disposed of 32,959 dead, but no one knew how many had floated out to sea. For four or five months these continued to wash ashore in Hiroshima Bay.