THE STARS ARE LOOKING ON
Toshie Fujino
Housewife, then 41 years old.
Hit 1.3 km from hypocenter.
On Adulthood Day of January 15 this year, brand new national flags went up at every door. The young men of my neighborhood went to attend the Adulthood Ceremony. I, counting the age of my long-lost child, crept into the kotatsu to keep myself warm all alone and wept.
If that child were still living, he would have been a college student by now. Would he be smoking cigarettes? Perhaps even be in love with a pretty girl. Lost in such thoughts, I sometimes spend almost the entire day in memories. I check myself by telling myself that I might be schizophrenic, that I shouldn't be like this, that I should try to look at reality and live on; yet my thoughts fly on. Before getting up in the morning, too, I think of him a while, and washing my face with tears, I sometimes forget to wash my face. But I have begun to think these days, isn't time spent lost in memory really the time when I am happiest?
My child, Hirohisa, from the time he was little, was somewhat different from other children. He was an interesting child. When his little head barely appeared above the dining table, he would say that the spoon in the glass of water was bent and wonder over it. And he made everybody laugh when he said with utter chagrin, "The chicken is glaring at me, even though I have done nothing to it."
He was close in age to his sisters, so they used to quarrel a great deal. When he was being taught mathematics and English by his elder sister he acted as a good younger brother, but God help us, once a fight began over some smart remark of his. His elder sister would demand that he return all that she had taught him the day before, and they would crash around. But now even those have become nostalgic memories.
By chance-it was Sunday, the day before the fateful day—all three of them had a holiday together. Close by there is a river called Kyōbashigawa that has clear water and is quite wide. They swam all day and seemed to be having much fun. Having lived for five years in Wakayama, and thus trained by the rough coast of Mizunoki Beach, the children were strong swimmers, and they came home saying that rivers were not much fun. The girls went off to bathe at the public bath-house.
Hirohisa and I roasted beans and spoke of many things as we ate them. All of a sudden Hirohisa said, "Mother, I keep feeling somehow that we are going to die." I said, "You may be right, you know. In this kind of situation we don't know when the time for parting will be, do we? Let's try to be strong." "Feeling hungry day after day and suffering from so much work, it would be better to die quickly, wouldn't it?" he then said. So I replied, "You mustn't say such foolish things. We can't imagine how much suffering the soldiers go through eating roots of trees and roots of grass to fight this war. How inexcusable it would be if we, who are at least at home and free, couldn't bear a little bit of hunger. It's true that once people are born they must also die. But that is why, because we are given a life, mother wants at least to be of some little use to the people of this world before dying." To which he said, "That's true, that's true," and whole-heartedly agreed with me.
After a while my daughters returned, and my husband came home, too. We sat around the table and had our meager meal under the dim light according to blackout regulations. Then, as I was groping around clearing the dishes, there was a call from the second floor. "Mother, come here a second." "How fast he is in learning the Hiroshima dialect," I said, and went upstairs. When I asked where he was, he said, "Here, on the roof. Watch, don't slip and fall." I crawled on all fours and crossed over to the kitchen roof. "I've even brought a cushion for you, Mother," he said. "Thank you, thank you. My, it's like a theater box that costs a fortune. What a splendid starry sky! Isn't it beautiful, as though there is no war at all!" "That's why I called you." "Hiro-chan, do you know the North Star?" "Of course I know that much. But do you know where Orion is, Mother?" I said, "No, I don't." "There it is. There it is." And as I gazed beyond where his finger was pointing, two airplanes lit with red and purple lights were flying high above going southward, southward. Probably to bomb Okinawa.
I felt then that the healthy, youthful face of my eldest son Yoichiro, who was about to graduate from the Air Force Officers School, was floating out there beyond the stars. When I thought that that child would soon have to die, I couldn't help being overwhelmed with sadness. With the same thoughts, Hirohisa suddenly sniffled.
"Mother, my big brother is going to die very soon, isn't he? I feel so sad." And with that he began to cry.
After some time he said, "Mother, I think I shall become a doctor. Then even if my brother comes home crippled I'll treat him and make him well. And we want to make him happy the rest of his life, don't we? Don't we, Mother?" What a tender-hearted child he is, I thought. Perhaps a little unmanly, but I was cheered by the compassionate child and encouraged him with the words, "Yes, indeed. Your brother is really lucky to have such a tender-hearted younger brother, isn't he?" The young boy continued to speak. "I wonder why wars are ever fought? I wish they would stop the war. Couldn't materials that Japan doesn't have be brought over from America, and things that the Philippines doesn't have be sent over from Japan, and the whole world live in harmony? Then the whole world could be one nation, and we would be Ueyanagi Section of Hiroshima Village, Japan Prefecture, Asia State, the World." His chatter wouldn't come to an end. "Listen, Hiro-chan, you must be careful when you write compositions at school. If you write those sorts of things the Military Police will come to get you, you know," I told him.
From some time before, Kure City was being bombed every night, Boom, boom, boom...came the eerie sound, and the skies above that city were burning as bright as day. In fact, it seemed strange that Hiroshima was being spared. Eventually we went to bed praying for that night's safety and placing our rucksacks beside the pillow and lining up our shoes on a sheet of newspaper. But all night long the air-raid warning kept on so that we could hardly sleep.
The day of August 6 dawned, and it brought us clear and fine weather. "Listen, all of you. The air-raid warning is all clear. Better hurry and be off." I said to urge the children on their way. "Mother, come here a second," he called, so I left my half-eaten breakfast to go out on the porch. "Watch me, I'm much better and faster at my leg wrappings." So saying, he lifted one leg on the porch and demonstrated for me. "You are very good at it indeed, but it looks like you're wrapping the cloth on a thin rolling pin," I said. He replied, "We aren't given much to eat, you know," and went on his way. He looked so sweet in his field service cap and leg wraps that I said to my husband, "With his fair skin, he is almost like a little prince."
My elder daughter, Keiko, was a fourth grader at the Prefectural Girls' High School, and was working at the factory due to the mobilization. But she had swum too much the day before and had a fever so I decided to keep her in that day. My second daughter, Suzuko, followed the boy and left. My husband was working as a Preservations Officer at the Communications Bureau, but he was given double duty as Technical Officer as well. Being extremely busy, he left for work as usual shortly after seven. After seeing them all off, I asked Keiko to look after the house, thinking of going to Hiroshima Station to buy a ticket in order to send some things to my mother who had been evacuated to Kyushu. Just as I put my handbag under my arm and picked up the parasol to leave, I saw the newspaper sticking out of the letter box.
I said to myself, "Oh, my husband left without even looking at the paper," and went around to the garden. The August sun was blindingly hot, and I looked up into the sky thinking, "Oh, isn't that a B-29?" But the sun was glaring so bright I couldn't see very well. "Oh well, it doesn't matter since the air-raid is off," and with that thought I stepped up on the porch where my daughter was sleeping. Then, FLASH. The whole world turned completely yellow, and my right shoulder was vibrating as from an electric shock. I rose wondering what to do, when a thundering noise reverberated as though heaven and earth had come crashing down. I remember being startled, but at that instant I lost consciousness.
When I came to because of a pain in my nose, I was buried beneath the broken mud walls. Hardly able to keep my eyes open because of the dust, I crawled towards the light. "Oh, I've been saved, I've been saved," I thought but looking around, I saw that the house was half destroyed with the second floor totally caved in and the pillars crashed down. "Oh, my daughter...." I remembered. I strained my voice to the utmost and called my daughter's name. I heard a faint reply. She's alive, she's alive. I clapped my hands. My daughter came out toward the sound of the clapping. She looked like a white haired old woman. "How lucky, how lucky we've been spared." We rejoiced with each other. I saw blood spurting from Keiko's knee. And she kept vomiting yellowish water. The instep of my foot had been hurt badly, and it was throbbing with pain.
"Let's go to the First Aid Station, let's go and have the First Aid Station treat us with medicine." So saying I supported my totally weakened daughter and came to the little knoll in our garden, but, what a dreadful state! We couldn't possibly be fussing over First Aid at this point. As far as could be seen, buildings of the entire city of Hiroshima had fallen in and were flattened. Red dust had risen some four feet above the ground, and beyond that the blue of the ocean was visible. What a terrible happening. What on earth could this be? What about my husband, Suzuko, and Hirohisa? How have they escaped? And with such thoughts my heart dropped in my chest.
"Namu-Amida-Butsu, Namu-Amida-Butsu." For the first time in my life I prayed earnestly to Buddha. "Okusan, Okusan, are you all right?" my next-door neighbor called. How gracious. "You are all right, too," my heart welled up, but the words would not come out. "I am going to run away. You had better run away quickly, too. Fires have sprung up all over, and if you don't hurry you will be burnt to death." So saying, he started running off. I took my daughter's hand and ran out, but thinking that it would be bad if fire started from our house I turned back by myself and placed a large pan full of water on the fire range, dashed water all around it from the rainwater cistern, then ran into the air-raid shelter, pulled out a blanket, soaked it in the cistern, and wrapping it over us, helped my daughter crawl over destroyed houses until we finally reached the Sakae Bridge.
I noticed that fire had sprung up around the Station and flames were beginning to leap up. Looking behind, we could see fire springing up all over. For fire, look for water; I realized that the safest place would be the river. "Let's seek refuge in the river," I said, and so urging Keiko we descended to the river.
There were about a hundred people there. The face of a maid who worked near us had changed in appearance. Among others there were people whose skin had peeled off from the shoulder to the back. I was struck with strangeness and wondered why they were like that. The fire was raging even more than before and hot wind mixed with a repulsive odor was blowing around, coming and going, going and coming, until it became a cyclone. Sucking up the river's water and sand sky high for hundreds of feet and scattering it around, it would then beat it mightily to the ground. We covered ourselves with the blanket and ran around trying not to get caught in the cyclone. As time passed, flames covered the heavens, and the houses on both banks tumbled in the river but continued to burn as they went downstream. The water began to rise and reached our waist. "Oh, we've been saved so far but how can we escape this? How is my husband and how are the two children? If we all die, poor Yoichirō will become an orphan." Filled with such thoughts tears flowed without end.
My daughter was saying, "Mother, I am lucky, aren't I? I don't feel a bit frightened because I am with you," when someone shouted, "A lot of timber is floating here, everybody." Indeed, many boards and pillars and new timber were drifting towards us. I grabbed at a log. "If worse comes to worse we'll go downstream with this." And with that pathetic determination my daughter and I clung to the log.
Then, "Hey—it's soldiers, their boats are coming,"—a shout was heard. I looked up and saw in the distance soldiers rowing boats towards us, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight... Before I could count them all, the first boat was already stopping in front of my daughter. The joy at that moment, the joy. "Come on. Four in a boat, and don't be afraid." So saying, they put the boat at the opposite shore where the fires had already died down. We repeatedly said thank you, thank you, and I wanted to give them something in gratitude, but while I was still thinking in confusion, the soldiers' boat had already left the shore.
I watched the boats go with a worshipping heart, then putting on a child's wooden clog that I picked up in the river, and walking on the other foot on tip-toe, we headed for the Parade Ground. On the way there were many soldiers on the ground, and an officer who was firmly holding his commanding sword while hardly breathing. His face was smiling and cheerful, but that didn't seem to be his true feeling. Horses tied to leather ropes showed hinds that were bright red from burns, and their blood-shot eyes seemed to plead with me for help. Women whose intestines had burst out, and groups of writhing people, all were suffering from burns.
We made camp at a safe place. Everybody smelled foul and lay on the ground. My daughter's vomiting continued and wouldn't stop. I was surprisingly well and calm. "Okusan, please give me water." "Okusan, give me a drink." Everybody was asking for water. I found a small bowl and went over again and again to dip for water. Truly this must be what they call hell on earth. Thinking of my husband and children would almost choke my breath. That night, gazing out from the top of a hill, Hiroshima looked like a pillar of fire scorching the moon. We were lying on the grass worrying and the night dew was falling on us.
By the time the eastern sky grew light, people who had been moaning all night had become quiet. When the brightness of dawn came we saw that they were all dead. I began to feel uneasy about our home. When it occurred to me that someone might have come home after we had taken flight and might be dying there, I could no longer stay still; so leaving my daughter on the hill, I went down myself. Houses that had collapsed were completely burned up, and the roads were covered with electric and telephone wires lying as though they had been dragged down. White smoke was rising all over, and people could be seen here and there.
I dragged and dragged my hurting foot, and brought along a straw mat that I had picked up on the hill. When I came to our house, all, except the foundation and concrete sink and bathroom, had burned up and red flames still remained in the tatami mat. In a pre-occupied state of mind I entered the air-raid shelter. Strangely enough nothing had burned in the shelter and it was cool inside. I spread the straw mat and lay down. Everything that had occurred since a day before seemed like a dream. Somehow all the strength was leaving my body and I had no energy to get up. Come to think of it, I had eaten nothing since breakfast the day before.
Going into the garden, I broke open a scorched black pumpkin and found the inside yellow and steaming. I scooped it out and ate it and found it delicious, like baked chestnuts. There were six or seven others lying around so I put them in the shelter. Tears were streaming down my cheeks. How are we to live from now on? How sad my mother, living in my home town, will be when she hears of this. With everything burned up we will have to go and depend on her, and instead of going back home with brocaded finery, we will be going in rags. Oh, I don't want to give my parent such a desolate and sad feeling. As I was thinking such thoughts, I heard footsteps coming in my direction. They stopped right in front of our air-raid shelter. I stood up wondering who it could be, and saw my husband peering in.
"Oh, you are alive! How about Keiko?" he said in a choking voice. For a while I could not utter any words. "She is alive. I left her on the hill. What a blessing that you are alive!" "Three of us are alive. What a blessing, what a blessing!" We rejoiced with each other. He told me to take strength and brought out a handful of hard biscuit from his pocket to give me. "Last night I doused myself with buckets of water from cisterns and made my way here, but everything was burning so I thought you were dead and said my prayers and left," he spoke with tears. My foot was round and swollen from water that had entered the wound.
I said, "I want to drink hot water," and my husband collected some bricks to make a small fire range and found our kettle among the ruins to boil water for me.
From the distance a voice was heard weeping, "Father, father." My husband shouted, "Oh, it's Suzuko." I was so happy, so happy I could hardly control myself. I flew out of the shelter. There was Suzuko crying, with her arms wide open, coming towards us. Oh, there's nothing wrong with her face, nothing wrong, and with that relief I was hit by exhaustion.
What a blessing, what a blessing, we rejoiced with each other. "With four of us safe everything will be all right; our son has quick feet, so he must have run far; tomorrow he will surely appear unharmed and healthy," my husband said. And, with that, my strength returned so I went to get our daughter from the hill. That night the four of us slept in the shelter. When day broke on the eighth it was again sunny from early morning, and my husband went out to look for Hirohisa. Our neighbors began to return one by one, and seeing the figures tearfully rejoicing with each other here and there saying, you are alive", and "you too are safe", was like watching a play. And they were saying, "so and so has not returned", "so and so escaped" "so and so died", and "so and so didn't come out so they must have burned to death". They were stirring the ashes, and four corpses were found together in a heap nearby. I simply looked on absent-mindedly.
Before long my husband came back and said, "It seems hopeless. He seems to have been at the center of explosion." The image of Hirohisa with such gentle eyes kept swimming before my eyes, and I felt that he was looking for his mother. "Oh, come on, come on, he is alive," I said, and supporting my aching foot with a cane I walked to the Middle School.
How ghastly it was from about Kamiya-chō to Shirakami Shrine. Somehow even the foul odor was different. Fearfully, I went into the grounds of the First Middle School. I asked everybody who passed what had happened to the first graders, but no one knew. Surely someone ought to know and tell me, I thought, and began to lose my temper. There were many corpses lying around, but they were either grown-up, or too small. "That's strange. Well, they are all healthy so they must have run away," I tried to think positively. I went to the pool. Lying there on his stomach was a child who looked like a first grader. I turned him over. On his shirt it read Göhara. It seemed to me I had heard this name before. I thought for a minute and realized, "Yes, isn't he the one who took my child to school that first day when he transferred from Wakayama Middle School? He probably is the one," I wiped his face with a newspaper. There didn't seem to be any sign of suffering, and even his hat was on properly. How his parents must be searching for him. When thought how they must be almost out of their minds like me, I felt that I couldn't bring myself to leave the spot. I finally left weeping and weeping.
"When there is an air-raid we run to Hiji Mountain, you know. The other day we had a practice run and, boy, it was tough. Really tough." I suddenly remembered him saying this. I went to the side of the bridge and searched. I no longer had much strength and was squatting at the foot of the bridge. There were corpses here and there but not really very many. "He's run to the mountain after all, or perhaps he's home already," I thought and got up with renewed energy. A woman of mid-thirties was standing there. When I asked her whether she was looking for someone, she said, "No. But I saw people running here on the sixth, and it was a terrible sight." I told her, "My child is a student of the First Middle School, but he hasn't returned yet so I am searching for him." She said then, "Oh, then you might as well give up. I saw hundreds and thousands of Middle School boys and girls with their arms held up half way come by here, the girls' blouses and trousers pulled and torn, the boys with pants on but half naked with their skins hanging as though they had covered themselves with wiping rags, all of them with swollen faces. It was so pathetic. Reaching this spot there were some whose strength gave out jumping in the river, and others fainted on top of each other. Those with enough energy went on and on towards the mountain. There was a child who shouted ‘Long live the Emperor' as he fell, and another child who recited the Military Order, a child laughing hysterically, and a child doing physical exercise shouts, and a child crying ‘Mother, mother,' though he could barely breathe. I could never finish telling you what it was like. That scene keeps swimming before my eyes so that until today I have found it difficult to swallow any food."
Couldn't the child crying "Mother, mother" have been my own? It nearly drove me crazy thinking about it.
I wept and wept as I walked. There was a crowd of people lining up for a hand-out of rice balls, so I joined the line. I had nothing to put them in so I used my air-raid head covering. I returned to our shelter and we ate the food together, but since the sixth we had not had any salt so we couldn't eat much of these saltless rice balls. We kept thinking about licking salt. How we wanted to! What a joy when the people in the next-door shelter gave us one pickled plum. We ate it reverently.
The next day our nephew came from Okayama out of concern for us. He was overjoyed that we were safe and took the two girls back with him. When our girls were not with us, our sadness increased a hundred times, and that night, in the shelter, I started a terrible argument with my husband. Some time before I had thought that since our child was not very strong it would be best for him to enter the Higher Elementary School in the countryside until the war situation improved. And after talking it over with my husband, we made arrangements with Mother. When the packing was finally done, and it was time for him to leave, my husband said, "It is too pitiful. If we must die it would be better for all of us, parents and children, to die together," and opposed his going. "That's why this thing has happened. It's just as if you killed him!" I accused him now. My husband yelled, "What are you saying! It's fate, it's just fate!" I was angry and upset and said, "And who created that fate! You did, didn't you You put him in such a fate, didn't you?" I was almost out of my mind. "An Imperial Prince is dead. The Director is dead, too. Even that young Director of Communication is dead. Our child cannot be counted as a great loss beside those," he said. "I don't care how many Directors die just as long as our child doesn't." And I wept out loud.
That night I felt a chill so I felt my face and found that a frog had climbed onto my forehead. "It's only a frog and yet it's living," I thought, and threw it against the ground in the darkness. But then when I listened I could hear someone crying. Through the veil of moonlight I saw that my husband was not inside. I very quietly went outside. As far as I could see out into the burned wasteland, everything was dreadfully desolate, and the stars were twinkling. My husband, kneeling in the ruins of what had probably been the children's study, was saying something and weeping. He was probably asking forgiveness of our dead child. From the depths of my heart I regretted the too harsh words I had uttered that afternoon. Thinking that it might be better for him to cry it out to ease his heart, I very softly went back into the shelter. And wept. I realized this sadness was not only ours. Tens of thousands of people were asking after their parents, searching for their children, separated from their brothers and sisters, and looking up at the starry sky full of utter sadness.
I wonder why Hirohisa started to talk so much of the stars that night before. Each word uttered by Hirohisa pressed against my heart with poignancy. Although the beautiful starry sky was not a bit different from the night before, overnight the earth had changed completely into a burned wasteland. The suffering moans of people who had barely managed to hang on to life filled the place. "I wish they would stop the war, I wish they would stop the war." I recalled all that my child had said the night before-how he wished that war would be banished from the earth. Those are not words of a fourteenyear-old child; they are words of God, I thought.
From then on I have never failed to look up at the starry sky. It has seemed to me that the spirit of Hirohisa, his friends of the First Middle School who died with him, and the countless people of Hiroshima who died that day, have all gone up to the heavens and turned to stardust, and are softly looking down at us every night, so that such a catastrophe will never be repeated on earth.