The Road

My parents had been married in Japan and so decided to live there. I was born in Hiroshima City in 1937 and after two years later World War 2 began and in 1941 the war against USA and Japan had also started. Wives and mothers were willing to send their husbands and sons to the battlefields when notices came from the government ordering them to report for military services.

Children were asked, ‘What would you like to become when you grow up?’
Boys answered,’ I want to be a soldier.’ Girls answered,’ I want to be a nurse.’
From the time they were very young, they were asked the same question again and again by adults, and their minds were totally controlled. 

It was a very hot day on August 6, 1945. There was an air raid the night before, so everybody had to stay in their shelters; nobody had a good sleep. That morning my father stayed home later than usual, and my mother was preparing breakfast. I casually said to my father that I did not want to go to school on that day. He was a very strict man, but strangely he gave me permission to cut classes. So I was inside, reading a magazine with my brother.

Suddenly father yelled from the yard, ‘I hear the plane!’ My brother and I rushed outside. Father shouted ‘Watch out! It’s not the sound of a Japanese plane. Go into the shelter!’ My brother and I jumped into the underground shelter.

As I landed on the ground, I felt a shock all over my body. At the same time, father jumped in with us. The three of us were buried under the collapsing house. I could see a tiny piece of sky form underneath the debris. My brother and I clung on to my father’s waist, and we crawled out. However because my father was one second too late getting into the shelter, he was badly wounded on the left side of his body. He tore a piece from my clothes and wrapped it around his wound, tightly to stop the bleeding.

All the neighbouring houses were damaged. There was nothing left standing.
We yelled for my mother. Soon the pile of ruins moved, and she appeared with my baby sister in her arms. Many pieces of glass were stuck all over her body. Her right eyeball was out and drooped around her breast like a lump of blood. My father took off my mothers shawl, and used it to tie my sister on my back. He held onto my mother and we started walking. We walked to the river where I, my brother and my father usually went fishing; during that time we saw nobody. It was dead silent as if we were the only ones left in the world. 

Because we’d acted quickly, we were the first one to reach the riverside. Father laid my mother down in the shade of a bush. After sometime wounded people were all around us people badly hurt, people with their flesh melting and drooping because of the burns. They were all crying and yelling. Their faces were so damaged by the heat of the blast that nobody could recognise anyone. Probably it was only my brother and I who had no obvious injuries.

With water from the river, my father washed my sister who was covered with my mothers’ blood. Thank God, she started breathing again. We thought she had suffocated. Father was wild with joy. But my mothers’ milk had stopped. When he dipped a piece of cloth into the water and tried to get my sister suckle it, she just cried in a weak voice. Something had to be done. 

Then I saw a woman who was squeezing the milk from her own breasts. I pointed her out to my father; he begged her to give her milk to my sister. She said, ‘My milk belongs to my child, who just passed away. I shall never give it to strangers.’ Father kneeled down on the ground and begged her again and again. Dying people around us also raised their voices saying, ‘Your dead baby will never come back, but you can save this living baby. Please give your milk to her.’ Finally, the woman, offered to do just that, and my sister was saved. 

We waited and waited but help did not come. Many died as their wounds got infected and other just died with starvation. As thee pile of dead bodies increased everyday, we were soon infested with maggots. They were creeping about not only on dead bodies, but also in living people’s wounds. There was a bad smell all over the place. 

We could not fill our stomachs. I tried to eat the cucumbers that grew on the riverside, but vomited them out before it reached half way down my stomach. After many years, I learned that those who ate them at that time died because of the radiation effects on the vegetables. Night fell, the heat was unbearable. I could not sleep and so kept on watching the blazing flames. In the morning the fire were under control, bit it was a morning of unearthly quite.

The mountain folds on the other side of the river showed no damage. There a friend of my father’s live, so we thought if we could get there, somehow we would be safe. Father went back to the place where our house had been, and dug through the ruins left by the fire, finding nothing. On a piece of unburned wood, he wrote, ‘The Parker family are all alive. I am staying at the house of my colleague.’

My sister was fed by the woman once more. We did not have anything to thank her with, but she had saved my sisters live, so we made a promised to her, that we would send help, to her and the other, once we reached the mountains.

I carried my sister on my back and took the arm of my brother. Father carried Mother on his back. Under a burning sun, we started walking through the burnt out area with bare feet. The bottoms of our feet got burned and our skin stuck to the soil. Our pace was very slow. We always hoped to hear an emergency siren.

‘Mother seems very ill. I have to hurry on. Jane, you come later’. Father said to me.

He put Mother into a baby carriage left on the road and started to run. I felt helpless but kept walking, trying very hard to protect my sister and brother. I kept telling myself that we would make it and that my mother was going to be alright. I didn’t even know what would happen if one of didn’t, I didn’t want to think in those direction. But I couldn’t help it. The familiar sights were all gone. The burned out area went as far as my eyes could see. The water pipes were broken everywhere. Around those places, many dead bodies were piled on top of each other, with lots of maggots on them. Under the crushed houses there were half burned bodies. I tried so hard not to step on the bodies, but I did so many times.

Finally we reached the place where my father’s friend lived. But what I found out there was the most horrifying news in the time of my life. My parents had not arrived. I was really shocked, suddenly I felt really scared. I was really anxious about my parent, they were to be here before us, but now there were missing. I could not think straight. My father’s friend and I went looking for Father and mother, but they were nowhere to be seen. My father’s friend searched everywhere for my parents. He reported to all hospitals and the entire shelter homes and anywhere we could think that my parent could have gone. But we never found a trace.

It is now 1995 and still there is no trace of my parent. After the war my grandparents from America can looking for us, he had seen the message my father had written on the wood and came looking for us. He was divested when he found out about my parent and he too searched everywhere for them, but he too didn’t find any luck.

After a year of searching he took me my brother and my sister with him to America where I currently live. With the help on the Lord my brother and sister are having a healthy live so far. They have a job and a family of there own. But for me it is a different story. I am constantly being ill and the doctors have told me that it’s coming from the radiation exposure when I was little. Now I need regular examinations.

This war has been the story of my life. I kept on hoping for the return of my parent but now there is absolutely no hope what so ever. But I will never forget the road, the road where I last saw my parents.