“I experienced, first-hand, the bombing of Hiroshima and its revival from a city reduced to ashes. At present, hibakusha are on the verge of extinction. I plan to preserve this body, even a year longer, (as long as I am alive), to continue recounting the “truth, reality, and sensory experience” of the atomic bomb. For the future of mankind.

(At the time of the bombing: first grader in elementary school, age 6, male, currently age 78)

H 29, December 22
Kajiya Fumiaki”

“That morning, my older sister and I were at an impromptu classroom set up inside a local resident’s home, 1.8km away from the hypocenter. She was in the third grade; I was in the first grade. We had washed the floors of the foyer, and were arguing which one of us would take out the bucket of dirty water. My sister – completely out of character – quickly agreed to take it out. As soon as she turned the corner to head out back, the powerful air blast hit us. I was knocked off my feet and buried under the house. With much effort, I crawled out from under the rubble and reached the main street. I joined the hoards of people, running with all my might. My sister did not even cross my mind. All I felt was fear.

My sister had died instantaneously under the house, I was told. Still, my father pulled her body out of the rubble, and took her to the higashi-renpeijo (eastern military training grounds).  My mother, who was at home not far from our classroom, later joined my sister at the camp. Glass shards had struck my mother in the left eye and inflicted a 10 centimeter-long cut across her cheek. Some shards were buried so deep in her skin that she could not pry them out. Moreover, upon discovering my sister’s death, my mother suffered a psychological wound that never quite healed after the war.

It must have been about two decades after the bomb attack. My mother had sobbed every year on the anniversary of the bombing. I finally told her one day: ‘Mother, you’ve suffered enough. You don’t have to cry anymore.’ That was when my mother confessed, ‘Your sister would have been alive, if it weren’t for me.’

During the summer of 1945, my sister was sent to an evacuation center outside the city, according to my mother. About a week before the bombing, my mother visited her to bring her a change of clothes. Upon seeing my mother, my sister begged, ‘Please mom, take me back home with you.’ My mother refused. ‘What if there’s an air raid? I cannot take you back to Hiroshima.’ My sister clung onto my mother’s arm, desperately. ‘Watashi wa okaasan to issho ga eenja! (I just want to be with you, Mom!)‘

They struggled for a while, but my mother eventually gave in. ‘Fine. If we die, we die together,’ they promised each other.

‘If only I hadn’t taken her back with me,’ my mother lamented. ‘I had wronged her, my poor, poor child –’ Suddenly, it hit me. After returning to Hiroshima from the evacuation center, my sister was on her best behavior. She did her chores and avoided getting into fights with me so as not to inconvenience my mother, who granted her request to come home. That was why she had agreed so quickly to take out the dirty water, which cost her her life.

Meanwhile, I was somehow allowed to survive.”