“Though the power of a single citizen may be small, a circle of many can yield great power. Even if it may seem unremarkable or tedious, we must continue to pass down – not negate – the unadulterated truth about our past to future generations. I believe that this is what will lead us to the peace which we all seek.
–
2017-12-19
Teramoto Takashi”

“I was in the fifth grade that year. I had been living in a group evacuation site outside of the city. I fell ill that summer and my mother came to pick me up, on August 4. The plan was to head back home to Hiroshima on the morning of August 6, but I begged my mother that we return a day earlier. I hadn’t even considered how exhausted she would have been, trekking all the way to the evacuation site. Indeed, if we had headed back on the morning of August 6 as planned, we would not have encountered the atomic bomb.

We were back in Hiroshima by the evening of August 5. The next morning, I was outside my home in a short-sleeved undershirt and underpants, playing and chatting with a group of friends about the B-29. ‘Hurry up, we’re going to the hospital,’ my mother called. When I went back inside the house to prepare for our outing, a bright light flashed through the back window. Suddenly, everything went dark. I was disoriented, and could not move for a while. When I came to, I saw an eerie glow in the distance. I walked toward it, and somehow reached the main road. A woman from the neighborhood approached me and asked, ‘Who are you?’ ‘I’m Takashi,’ I replied. ‘Oh, Takashi! Here, get on my back. We need to get out of here,’ she offered. The woman carried me on her back and we headed toward the mountains. She later told me that she could not tell who I was because my entire face was covered in blood.

We headed toward an evacuation center in Furuichi. On the way there, an aid truck stopped and offered us a ride to a local temple. It was crowded with injured people, like us. There, I encountered one of the friends whom I had been chatting with moments before the bomb dropped. He was burned badly, with his arms outstretched. Loose skin drooped from his limbs like rags. I heard that he passed away a couple days later.

That evening, I was reunited with my father. ‘Mother is at a camp under the Yokogawabashi bridge,’ he told me. I felt slightly relieved. The next morning, I was sent off to my aunt’s place outside of the city on a crowded train full of burn victims.

On August 15 – or was it the day after Japan’s surrender – I was told that my sister and mother were coming to get me at my aunt’s place. I waited all day in anticipation. Alas, only my sister showed up. ‘Where’s mom?’ I asked. My sister pulled out a small box. ‘She’s in here,’ she told me.

Within 2-3 months, I learned that the kind woman from the neighborhood who carried me on her back and the acquaintances whom I encountered at Furuichi were all dead. Toward the end of the month, I too fell ill – I woke up one day to discover that my hair had fallen out and was stuck to my pillow. My body began to ache all over, and I was bedridden for days. I remember hearing murmurs over my bed as I drifted in and out of consciousness. ‘Those affected by the pika (Japanese onomatopoeia for the atomic bomb) lose their hair and start bleeding from their gums. Some form dots all over their bodies and pass away,’ ‘Will this child be saved?’ Strangely, I don’t recall feeling any fear of death.

By April of 1946, classes were resumed, and I did the fifth grade all over again. Though I could redo grade school, the memory of 1945 I simply cannot erase. Above all, I regret worrying my mother, and begging her to return a day early to die under such harsh circumstances.”