HIROSHIMA - the NAKAMURA FAMILY

At 8:15 on August 6, 1945 Japanese time, "the largest bomb ever used in the history of warfare" flashed above Hiroshima. When figures were tallied, an estimated one hundred thousand lives would be lost in the name of democracy. Survivors, like Mrs. Nakamura and her three children, would live with the memory of radiation sickness and death through-out their lives.

The widow of a tailor killed in the war, Mrs. Nakamura scraped together a life for herself and her family as a seamstress. After the bomb was dropped, she unthinkingly plunged her symbol of livelihood into the receptacle which for weeks had been her symbol of safety - the cement tank of water in front of her house, of the type every household had been ordered to construct against possible fire raid.

As the horror of events unravelled, her children - five-year-old Myeko, eight-year-old Yaeko, and ten-year-old Toshio - would ask questions. "Why is it night already?" asked Myeko. "Why did our house fall down?" Mrs. Nakamura, confused because the "all-clear" alarm had sounded, could not offer answers. Instead, she gathered the children together and prepared to follow orders.

Her family and others - many of them burned or bleeding with severed limbs or cuts, all of them shaken and many vomiting - poured into Asano Park. There, amidst a haven of bamboos, pines, laurel and maples, surrounded by the estate's exquisitely precise rock gardens, Mrs. Nakamura and her children sought refuge. They settled by the river bank and because they were thirsty, drank without thinking from the water. At once they were nauseated and began vomiting, and they retched the whole day. Later they would try swallowing a bit of pumpkin a minister had found, but alas, they could not keep it down.

Spending the night at the park was difficult because medical help was scarce. The children had trouble understanding the severity of the situation. Toshio Nakamura got quite excited when he saw his friend end up in the river in a boat with his family, and he ran to the bank and shouted wildly, "Sato! Sato!"

The boy turned his head and shouted, "Who's that?"

"Nakamura."

"Hello, Toshio!"

"Are you safe?"

"Yes. What about you?"

"Yes, we're all right. My sisters are vomiting, but I'm fine."

---

Hiroshima was off-limits for weeks; refuge had to be found elsewhere. The Jesuits offered shelter to Mrs. Nakamura's family and some fifty other refugees in a chapel at the Novitiate. In bed that night, Toshio would awaken with a start.

"What is it, Toshio? What's wrong!" his mother asked.

The trembling child whined, "Hideo, Hideo!"

She cradled him in her arms. Hideo Osaki was a hero of Toshio's, but the nineteen-year-old mechanic had been a victim of the atomic blast. The child dreamt of seeing Mrs. Osaki come out of an opening in the ground with her family, and then he saw Hideo at his machine, the one the child had watched him work at in the factory.

"Shhh," Mrs. Nakamura whispered. "It will be all right."

But she knew it wasn't all right. Her sewing machine was ruined in the blast; it would cost money she didn't have to restore. Plus, her hair and her daughter Myeko's hair was falling out. They had no way of knowing this indicates radiation sickness, and when their fevers began to rise in the forthcoming weeks, they could only hope to get better. "The atom bomb," Mrs. Nakamura would later write, "is the size of a matchbox. The heat is six thousand times that of the sun. It exploded in the air. There is some radium in it. I don't know just how it works, but when the radium is put together, it explodes." As for the use of the bomb, she would say, "It was war and we had to expect it." And then she would add, "Shikata ga nai," a Japanese expression which means, "It can't be helped."

Though destitute, Mrs. Nakamura summoned her strength and began contemplating ways to regain a livelihood. One year after the bombing, she figured she could either work as a domestic for the Allied forces or borrow about five hundred yen, a little over thirty dollars, from her family to repair her machine. Though rusted, it could be fixed and she might be able to resume work as a seamstress.

From the Magazine Writing class with Journalism Professor John Burks, San Francisco State University, 1984