I helped people while wearing a blood splattered white gown

Nobuko Hayashi (17 years old at the time of the bombing)

Location of the time of the bombing: Japan Red Cross Hospital

I was born in 1927 and I became a nursing student at the Red Cross Hospital in 1944（ninth generation student）.  At that time, even nurses received ‘red letters’ or draft notices to go to the field hospitals.  As such, a few qualified nurses remained in the home hospitals and so student nurses coped with the difficult situation of nursing many patients between them.

On the night of August 5th, because the air raid siren went off twice, I was busy carrying patients up and downstairs to the shelter and didn’t get any sleep at all.  The morning of August 6th dawned.  It was my turn that morning to go to the dirty utility room to wash gauzes.  As I was tidying up, I suddenly witnessed an indescribable strong light.  I got a strong shock to my head and lost consciousness.  When I came around, I noticed that it was already afternoon.  I felt a strong sense of responsibility to help the patients and so ran upstairs.

Some patients sitting by the window were dead, in the same position they had been while waiting for breakfast.  One face looked like a pomegranate with the flesh scraped out.  Another face had a diagonally opened mouth.  All the people had shards of glass piercing their bodies.  I will never forget that scene.

Fortunately, because the Red Cross Hospital didn’t suffer any burning inside, injured people from all over the city asked us for help.  Yelling out, they dragged themselves to the hospital and fell in front of the door.  However, everything was such a mess.  And there was no medicine or medical appliances. There was nothing I could do.

People who were in a collapsed wooden student dormitory cried out for help but many were buried alive.  We tried to remove the wood and listened to their cries until they gradually could not be heard anymore.  Some people could not be helped because of the spreading fire.  We eventually pulled one student of the same grade out of the debris.  Her face was torn diagonally, she had lost an eye ball and her burns looked like the inside of a pomegranate.  I couldn’t do anything for her.  She passed away a few hours later.  Another friend died after suffering from pain and screaming for three days.  I tried to cover the victims with a blanket but they pushed it away.  I couldn’t imagine how much they were suffering.  Perhaps they were feeling something even worse than fear.

At night, the lights did not work. There was no electricity and so water that was usually pumped could not be pumped.  I took water from a broken water pipe outside to patients in the hospital but there was barely space to walk through the entrance due to the many victims blocking the doorway.  These people cried out, “Water please!” “Please give me water” and clung to my legs so I couldn’t pass through.  I gave them water little by little.  I clearly remembered their screams of “Water please!” However, almost everyone that I had given water to had passed away by the next morning.  They must have thought that because they had reached the hospital that we could do something for them.  However, there were few survivors.

Dead bodies were cleared away without knowing their names.  I took them to the girls’ school next to the hospital and cremated them every day.  Dead bodies were piled high.  I couldn’t bear to look at them.  I tried to care for the living but there were no medicines or bandages.  We couldn’t wipe their bodies as whole bodies were burned.  Some of the victims looked like young soldiers.  I felt deeply for them.  Dead bodies continued to be brought by the trucks. We (nurses) lined them up and burned them.  I put their bones in X-ray boxes and lined them up on the shelf.  There were so many.  Because I kept on working, pushing through the mound of bodies, phosphorous was burning in the back of my shoes by night time.

I camped in the hospital courtyard for a week.  There was a breakout of mosquitos and flies and maggots appeared around the wounds.  The miserable situation caused some nurses to go mad but I’m proud of the strong sense of duty and responsibility we fostered as we wore our white gown splattered with blood for three days without sleeping or returning home.

Anyway, all nurses contracted atomic bomb disease to a greater or lesser degree.  Blood came out of gums and the nose and various parts of the body turned purple.  Finally, they passed out a bloody stool.  At first, I didn’t recognize it as atomic bomb disease.  I thought it was dysentery or typhoid fever.  Everybody thought the same.  Without doing anything, blood appeared and a fever started. I took my temperature and it was 38.5C.  However, I couldn’t cure myself.  As I could still move, I continued helping others.  In mid -October when I went home, I had a fever of 40C. After about a month my fever subsided and I got better. Other symptoms didn’t appear. It is a wonder that I have been able to live until today. However, I was shocked to learn after the war that a classmate who was bullied about a scar on her face committed suicide.  Thanks to the people who sacrificed their lives, peace now prevails but there were many tragedies like this of my classmate.

When an atomic bomb is used, everything is burned and nothing remains.  I cannot forget the memory.  It is impossible to describe in words the fear that I experienced.  A minister said that the dropping of the bomb could not be helped.  However, I disagree.  Such a cruel tragedy should never be repeated again.  Education is important to prevent war.  It is the young people’s duty to keep peace. I want them to live having a strong sense of responsibility to keep peace.