Hiroyasu Tagawa, at the tender age of 12, witnessed both of his parents’ premature deaths within a span of just two weeks. On Aug. 9, 1945, the U.S. dropped a plutonium atomic bomb code-named Fat Man on Nagasaki, Japan, and Tagawa’s parents were in Urakami, near the blast’s hypocenter.
Not long after, Tagawa’s father died of painful complications from his feet being amputated with a carpenter’s saw at a makeshift medical facility, while his mother died of radiation poisoning.
Tagawa, himself a “hibakusha” (explosion-affected person), witnessed the blast, but from slightly further away, in Narutaki-machi, with a small mountain between him and the explosion’s hypocenter. That probably saved Tagawa’s life. “Suddenly everything turned orange,” he remembers. “I quickly covered my eyes and ears and laid down on the ground. Soon dust and debris and pieces of glass were flying everywhere. After that, silence.”
Nagasaki was the second city in 1945 upon which the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb. Three days earlier, on Aug. 6, Hiroshima had been obliterated by one. Nagasaki’s death toll was nearly 74,000 people by the end of 1945. Another 75,000 were injured.
Last week, I met up with Tagawa for an interview – appropriately enough, at the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum. Despite being treated for cancer three times, the most recent being kidney, Tagawa, now 85, looks strong and fit. During an hour-and-a-half chat through a Japanese translator, he related experiences that for decades had been too painful for him to discuss. In fact, now Tagawa has become a Japanese “storyteller,” one who recounts his or her bomb survival experiences to help prevent nuclear weapons from ever being used again.
For the record, Tagawa does not hate Americans. Rather, he is grateful for their help in deterring nuclear war and protecting Japan in modern times.
Hiroyasu Tagawa’s Story
“In 1945, I was in sixth grade at the Shinkozan National School. I lived in the center of Nagasaki city with my sister and parents. However, from April of that year due to forced evacuation, my parents had to move to the Urakami area while my sister and I decided to stay with my aunt in Narutaki-machi, which was toward the mountains but only a short distance from Nagasaki city.
During my summer break, I would always finish my homework early so I could spend the rest of the time playing tag and baseball with my friends. On Aug. 9, I remember staying home. The Pacific War, which had begun on Dec. 8, 1941, had gradually worsened, and from 1944 air raids began to spread all over Japan. Moreover, U.S. bombers were flying frequently over Nagasaki. The B-29 was a state-of-the-art plane, so each time I heard a roar, I would rush out to look at it out of curiosity. On Aug. 9 at around 11 in the morning, I heard what I thought must be a B-29, so I rushed out to the garden. When I looked north of my house, I saw a plane approaching from over the mountains. As soon as I said, ‘I found it,’ a small white parachute fell from the plane. It wasn’t a bomb, but a radiosonde, a machine that examines various atmospheric data.
Suddenly everything turned orange. I quickly covered my eyes and ears and laid down on the ground. This was the position we practiced daily at school for times like this. Soon dust and debris and pieces of glass were flying everywhere. After that, silence.
The plane that dropped the bomb had taken off from Tinian Island in the Marianas. Kokura was the primary target but the plane headed to Nagasaki, the secondary target, because Kokura’s sky was obscured by smoke and clouds. When the plane reached Nagasaki, the sky was also covered by clouds but a break appeared at the last minute and the bomb was dropped from an altitude of about 30,000 feet, then exploded at 1,640 feet.
A few hours after the explosion, thick black smoke rose and formed a cloud. The sun, which could not be seen directly, could now clearly be seen amidst the black smoke. Somewhere I heard someone scream, ‘The sun is going to fall.’ After a while, there were raindrops of oil and grease. When I got back home, our living room and kitchen were in a state of collapse. But luckily my aunt and older sister were safe.
Although I had suffered some bruises to my head, I had no other obvious injuries. After that, I thought my parents would be coming from Urakami to help us, so I waited. Even after the next day came, my parents had not appeared. I began to wonder why. Was it because this area had been so severely damaged that they could not come close?
Two days after the bombing, I encountered a man on the street. His upper body was burned, his charred skin peeling off and hanging down. I asked, ‘Sir, where have you come from?’ ‘From Shashi,’ he said. When I asked how is Urakami town, he replied ‘Urakami naka,’ which in local Nagasaki dialect, means gone. He meant that Urakami had been obliterated.
I was shocked! The entire place where my parents lived and worked had been wiped out. I feared they were never coming back. So on the 12th, I set out to look for them. Unfortunately there was no transportation available. As I walked along the street car route and crossed the hill, I would usually see the Nagasaki station. However, the whole station was burned down when I reached it. I saw corpses, one piled on top of another, inside a burned train. Corpses were everywhere.
Finally, I reached Urakami. People were looking for their family members. Using long bamboo sticks, they were turning over one corpse after the other as they floated down the river. There was an eerie silence and an overwhelming stench. The smell of dead, burnt bodies blanketed the city…”
(In the next two parts of of this personal account of the Nagasaki atomic bombing, Hiroyasu Tagawa takes us through how his parents’ died from effects of the bomb, why for decades he could not speak about his Nagasaki experiences and why world peace is so important for the future. Stay tuned to the Forbes channel.)
