Putting My Hands On My Chest, I Shouted "Mother Mary, Mother Mary"

On that day we were going to church for confession. We had one more week until the happy celebration of the ascension of Mother Mary

The air raid warning was given, then after a while the all clear was sounded. Just as we decided to go to church, my uncle came and said, "Let's continue to dig the air raid shelter which was begun in Takano." Although I didn't feel like doing it, I went out to dig with my family. We went up the road behind the church and came to Takano. After resting a while we looked down at Urakami, spread out picturesquely below us. After we had been digging for about ten minutes, the bell of the air defense position on Mt. Konpira rang furiously.

"Oh! An enemy assault!" As soon as we heard this, we jumped into the air raid shelter we had been digging. There was a strange light, then a terrific "Boom!" We thought the bombs had been dropped directly on us. Then, something blue gas came into the shelter. How strange it was! It was so eerie and so hard to breathe that intuitively I thought I would die. Putting my hands on my chest, I shouted "Mother Mary, Mother Mary." At that time I thought I was going to die. But after a while, somebody called from the outside, Hey! Are you alive? Are you all right?" It was my uncle. He was standing with a hoe, and his forehead was bleeding.

"Uncle! What happened to you? Are you OK? What are you going to do with that hoe?"

"I'm fine, —- The hoe? Oh, I was thinking the air raid shelter had collapsed.

I brought it along."

When I looked away from him to the foot of the mountain, I found everything had changed. The houses had fallen down, trees also. The street was full of tiles, stones and trash. The community was a sea of fire. I could not do anything except look. I was dazed.

"Oh! My house——is on fire—-but, I cannot do anything." Other people were just looking

down. "That is my house. That house is such a friend's." We could see that Urakami Church was on fire and falling down. "... Oh, my church! If only the church could be undamaged!" But I could not do anything but look.

All around me everything was burning. —— Endless suffering.

I felt hungry. My relatives brought a little rice for us so we could eat. That night we stayed in the shelter. Everybody had to find his own bed place by using only one match and had to sleep sitting up. But while the children were sleeping, their parents were shooing the mosquitoes away. Somebody found and brought a mosquito net, so we hung it and put mats down on a vacant spot in front of the air raid shelter and slept there. This bad sleep and painfulness were beyond comparison.

At that time, a woman whose hair was disheveled like a madman's and whose face was swollen up like a balloon came to us with tottering steps. We could not guess who she was. But when she came before me, I found she was my aunt who had been injured by the blast. We did not have a place for her to rest.

A man who had run away from another town cried, "The injured people are lying on the roads like stones. I could not do anything for them. I left them on the roads —- it was so pitiful—-,"

From that day we lived on the mountain for about one week. When the jerry-built houses were begun little by little on the ruins of the fire at the foot of the mountain, everybody heard the war had ended. When I heard it I didn't know if I was happy or sad, because I thought the foreigners might come to do violence to us. But in spite of my worry, they were kind to us and took care of us very well.

After a while my house was almost finished being built, so we moved into it from the shelter. I think we lived in the shelter for fifteen days After we took a rest, we cremated many dead bodies and consigned them to the grave. Our next job to find our missing acquaintances. An uncle who was our neighbor has been away from home for many days, and his wife has been waiting for him. But he did not come back.

"Uncle has come back home!" One day we heard it, so we ran to the house. But it was his remains. I also cried. His family broke down crying. In my house we prayed for him.

I thought, "I will not make war again in my life." I just pray for "World Peace" and "Urakami Reconstruction."

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