The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 13 | Issue 26 | Number 4 | Article ID 4336 | Jun 29, 2015

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Surviving the Last Train From Hiroshima: The Poignant Caseof a Double Hibakusha 広島からの終電を生き抜いて　二重被爆者の心打つ物語

Charles Pellegrino

The original title of my proposed book aboutHiroshima and Nagasaki was, “The Last Trainto Nagasaki.” I believed the title conveyed howI would bridge the story of the two cities via thepeople who had survived both atomic bombings– the double hibakusha. In this manner, Ithought I could correct the problem of howhistory all but forgot the second and even morepowerful atomic bomb and its victims. As onesurvivor expressed the forgetting: “It is nevergood to be the second of anything.” I did notknow how extreme the forgetfulness hadbecome. In 2009, my editor discovered thatalmost no one at the publishing house knewwhat the name, Nagasaki, referred to – andthus the title change, to a name familiar toeveryone: “The Last Train from Hiroshima.”

Approximately 300 people are known to havemade the journey, aboard two trains, fromHiroshima all the way to Nagasaki in the wakeof the atomic bombing of August 6, 1945. Ofthis group, approximately 90% were killed bythe second atomic bomb. In “Last Train,” thedouble hibakusha bracket and interweave withthe stories of other survivors, ranging fromconscripted schoolchildren and doctors atNagasaki to the origin of the thousands ofpaper cranes that were sent from the childrenof Hiroshima to the children of New York in2001.

As a child of the “Duck and Cover” drills, Igrew up to eventually embrace what I fearedmost (the very physics that made possible, thethermonuclear inverse to the Golden Rule).During the 1980s, I joined brainstormingsessions at Brookhaven National Laboratory,

where we designed nuclear melt-throughprobes for exploration of new oceans turningup beneath the ice of Jupiter’s moon Europa –in addition to a Valkyrie rocket that couldactually bridge the rest of the Solar System,and perhaps even interstellar space. Along theway, I met survivors of the atomic bombs, andbegan recording their stories. In 2001, I wasworking on forensic physics/archaeology in theruins of the World Trade Center. In a landscapepossibly even grayer than the surface of themoon, thousands of bundles of paper craneswere arriving, becoming the only splashes ofcolor and beauty. I met the Ito and Sasakifamilies when they visited, and I learned fromthem the word Omoiyari – which may berendered as empathy (translated, in America,as the “pay-it-forward” principle)–I learned it asa way of life, and not just a word.

In the New York death-scape, whereexpressions about “nuking” someone rolled tooeasily off people’s tongues, it occurred to methat almost no one really knew what the words“nuke-them” meant. Most seemed to regard theatomic bomb as an antiseptic weapon thatinstantly erased “the bad guys” and allowedthose outside the target area to somehow justwalk away. After I added new hibakushainterviews to my archive, and showed chaptersto colleagues, the most important review Ireceived (or probably ever will receive), camefrom archaeologist Amnon Rosenfeld – who hadbeen very hawkish and believed in pre-emptivenuclear strike. After reading the draft, he saidthat everything he thought he knew about whathappened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was

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wrong, adding that anyone who learns thetruth, and who designs nuclear weapons orplans first use for any reason whatsoever, “hasfound the unforgivable sin.”

My hope is that others will come to theRosenfeld conclusion. My hope is that thisglimpse of the past (through the science ofwhat happened, combined with the humanperspective), will in at least some small wayhelp to prevent the hibakusha experience frombecoming prophecy for much of our worldduring the next thirty years. My hope is thatnuclear war will have ended, forever, at theblack granite pinnacle marking the hypocenterof Nagasaki.

After the first American edition of “The LastTrain from Hiroshima” was published in 2010, Ilearned that one of the Tinian Island aviators Iinterviewed had exaggerated part of his warrecord, and I announced my mistake and theneed for a correction from New York, on theJohn Batchelor Show. This seemed to haveopened the floodgates for e-mailers denying theexistence of “shadow people” and otherthermal effects near the hypocenters, alongwith denial of radiation effects. The e-mailwrecking crew managed to spoof the NY Timesand my publisher by pretending to be everyonefrom famed Hiroshima artist and hibakushaKeiji Nakazawa to veterans threatening masspublic burnings of the book.

The real Keiji Nakazawa was in fact on my sideand took special interest in my attempts tolearn more about the atomic orphans. Hehelped me and Steve Leeper (then Director ofthe Hiroshima Peace Cultural Foundation) tofill in a blank space in our history (theorphans). With Nakazawa’s input, the atomicorphans can finally speak loud and clear- afterseven decades. Real veterans of the 509th nevermade threats to my publisher about pickets andbook-burnings, and in fact veterans and theirfamilies contributed details to the new edition.Nonetheless, the publisher had by then

prevented book burnings (as threatened inemails from “veterans”), by withdrawing thefirst edition and pulping it. In the real world,you will be hard-pressed to find an Americanveteran who endorses censorship. No less anauthority on such matters than Tom Dettweiler(who survived the destruction of the Pentagon’sNavy wing on 9/11 on account of having beencalled away for an eye exam), observed:“Despite past attempts to suppress this history,Charles has succeeded in a detai ledimmortalization of one of the true turningpoints in human existence… [It] should berequired reading for all those making decisionsof war.”

The ultimate accomplishment of 2010’s internethoaxers and impersonators was to bring manynew truths to light. Chief among these was thecoming forth of survivors who had hidden theirexperiences, and who had intended to taketheir stories to the grave. For most, speaking ofit was very difficult, often a very painfulexperience. I cannot thank them more, for theirbravery.

Among these, in the new edition (To Hell andBack: The Last Train from Hiroshima, Rowmana n d L i t t l e f i e l dhttps://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442250581/To-Hell-and-Back-The-Last-Train-from-Hiroshima,August 6, 2015), are four new and morecomplete accounts from the double hibakusha.

I first heard about the double atomic bombsurvivors from the father of a friend, who wastrying to learn what happened to Kenshi Hirataand who (despite his background in the FederalBureau of Investigation), died before findingany clues as to where the Hirata family hadgone into hiding after 1957. Kenshi Hirata isone of the people who came forth after the2010 controversy, and what has emerged is oneof the most touching and improbable lovestories in all of human experience.

We now have, finally, the rest of KenshiHirata’s story. I have excerpted and adapted

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the Hirata history below from the severalchapters through which this family’s story arcweaves – including information about what washappening around him, to provide the contextof time and place.

[Kenshi Hirata [Illustration: CP]

AT A QUARTER-PAST eight on August 6, 1945,near the center of a pomegranate’s volume ofcompressing uranium, the vast majority of thebomb’s energy had radiated from a sparkscarcely wider than the tip of young SetsukoHirata’s index finger. By the time the goldenwhite plasma sphere had spread eighty meterswide—still within only one small part of alightning bolt’s life span—the spark hadgenerated a short-lived but very intensemagnetic field, from which streamers of ironand tungsten nuclei were shot-gunned towardthe ground and toward the stars, at up to 90percent light speed.

Setsuko Hirata was seated in her living room,slightly to the south and almost directlybeneath the magnetic shotgun. Acceleratedfragments of atomic nuclei came down throughtiles and roof beams and either stopped insideher body or kept going until stopped by thefirst hundred meters of sand and bedrock.Neutrinos also descended through the roof.Born of the so-called weak force, their

interactions with the world were so weak as tobe utterly ghostly. Almost every one of themthat encountered Setsuko continued throughthe floor without noticing her, then traveledwith the same quantum indifference throughthe Earth itself. The very same neutrinos thatpassed through Setsuko, drawing a straightline between her and the bomb, and throughnearly 5,000 miles of rock, emerged throughthe floor of the southern Indian Ocean andsprayed up toward interstellar space. Setsuko’sneutrino stream would still be traveling beyondthe stars of Centaurus, beyond the far rim ofthe galaxy itself – still telling her story (as itwere), long after the tallest skyscrapers andthe Pyramids had turned to lime.

When Setsuko’s neutrino spray erupted unseen,near the French islands of Amsterdam and St.Paul , not quite 22 mil l iseconds afterdetonation, she was still alive.1 Ceramic rooftiles, three meters above her head, were justthen beginning to catch the infra-red maximumfrom the flash—which peaked 150 millisecondsafter the first atoms of uranium-235 began tocome apart. The tiles threw a small fraction ofthe rays back into the sky, but in the end, theyprovided Setsuko with barely more protectionthan the silk nightgown her beloved Kenshi hadbought her only a few days earlier during theirhoneymoon at the Gardens of Miyajima.

Overhead, along the lower hemisphere of theblue-to-gold to blue-again globe that expandedfrom the place where the bomb had been, theinstantaneous transformation of matter intoenergy had produced a light so intense that ifSetsuko were looking straight up, she wouldhave seen the hemisphere shining through thesingle layer of roof tiles and wooden planks asif it were an electric torch shining through thebones of her fingers in a darkened room. Andwithin those first two-tenths of a second, shemight have had time enough to become awareof an electronic buzzing in her ears, and atingling sensation throughout her bones, and afeeling that she was being lifted out of her

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chair, or pressed into it more firmly, or both atthe same instant—and the growing sphere inthe sky… she might even have had time enoughto perceive, if not actually watch, its expandingdimensions.

Setsuko’s husband, Kenshi, had been workingas an accountant at the Mitsubishi WeaponsPlant, slightly more than four kilometers away,when through a window came the mostbeautiful golden lightning flash he had everseen, or imagined he would ever see.Simultaneously there was a strange buzzing inhis ears, a sizzling sound, and a woman’s voicecrying out in his brain. He would suppose yearslater that maybe it was his grandmother’sspirit—or more likely Setsuko’s. The voicecried, “Get under cover!”

With all the speed of instinctive reflex, hedropped the papers he was carrying, dove tothe floor, and buried his face in his arms. Butthree long seconds later when the expectedshockwave had not arrived, he was left inadrenalized overdrive—with time to pray.

Outside his Mitsubishi office, in utter silence, agiant red flower billowed over the city, risingon a stem of yellow-white dust.

Kenshi’s prayers seemed to have beenanswered—yet again. He had walked awayfrom the fire-bombing of Kobe on March 16-17,1945 without a single blister or bruise, initiallythinking himself a bit unlucky because heshould never have been there in the first place;and Kenshi would never have been there, hadhe not finished his work in Osaka a day earlyand departed for Kobe ahead of schedule. Twonights after surviving Kobe, he learned thatOsaka, too, had been heavily bombed. Indeedthe very same hotel in which he should havebeen sleeping took a direct hit, with nosurvivors. At Hiroshima, Kenshi owed hissurvival to an instinct to obey an inner voice,and to the fact that the bomb had disappointedits creators, performing at only about half itsintended yield (up to 12.5 kilotons), and

sending forth a blast wave that was all butfractionally spent by the time it reached him.Kenshi’s next instinct did not serve him so wellas his obedience to the voice. When he droppedto the floor, his initial impression was that anumber of huge incendiary bombs wereexploding right on top of the building and thathe would be cremated even before he couldfinish the first lines of a prayer. But nearly fivefull seconds followed the flash, and the lightitself began to fade without a hint ofconcussion—The bombs have not struck thebuilding—

The multiple bombing-raid escapee raised hishead to see what was happening around him. Ayoung woman nearby had crept to a windowand peeked outside. Whatever she saw in thedirection of the city, Kenshi would never know.She stood up, uttered something guttural andincomprehensible, and then the blastwave—lagging far behind the bomb’s lightwaves—caught up with her. By the time thewindowpanes traveled a half-meter, they hadseparated completely from their protectivecross-hatched net of air-raid tape, emerging asthousands of tiny shards. Like the individualpellets of a shotgun blast, each shard had beenaccelerated to more than half the speed ofsound. The girl at the window took at least aquarter-kilogram of glass in her face and herchest before the wind jetted her toward the farwall.

Kenshi did not see where she eventuallylanded. Simultaneous with the window blast,the very floor of the building had come off itsfoundation and bucked him more than a half-meter into the air. He landed on his back, andwhen he stood up he discovered to his reliefthat he was completely unharmed, thendiscovered, to his horror, that he was the onlyone so spared. All of his fellow workers—all ofthem—looked as if they had crawled out of ablood pool.

We must have taken a direct hit after all,

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Kenshi guessed. He did not realize the fullmagnitude of the attack until he steppedoutside. In the distance, toward home, the headof the flower was no longer silent. It had beenrumbling up there in the heavens for more thana minute, at least seven or ten kilometers highnow, and it had dulled from brilliant red todirty brown, almost to black. As he watched,the flower broke free from its stem and asmaller black bud bloomed in its place. It was,a fel low survivor would recal l , l ike adecapitated dragon growing a new head.

A whisper escaped Kenshi’s lips: “Setsuko…”2

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KENSHI MADE HIS WAY toward the center ofthe city. He had no choice. His wife was inthere, somewhere beneath the dragon’s head.Within perhaps a thousand meters of the placehe believed to be home, the streets and fieldssprouted what seemed to be thousands of tinyflickering lamps. He could not determine whatthe lamps might actually be. Neither could anyof the scientists who would hear of this later.Each jet of flame was about the size and shapeof a doughnut. Kenshi knew that he could easilyhave extinguished any “ground candles” in hispath merely by stepping on them; but he was“spooked” by an instinctive sense that it mightsomehow be dangerous to touch the fierydoughnuts, so he stepped around theminstead.3 He thought of Setsuko. He passedmen and women whose backs had been searedby the flash, but it was not the flash-burns thatcaught his attention and stuck in his memory.The people appeared to be growing strangevegetation out of their roasted flesh. Itoccurred to Kenshi only much later thatthousands of glass slivers must have beenpulled from the windows of every building anddriven through the air like spear points. Hethought of Setsuko. Limping, the youngaccountant circumnavigated a giant column offlame in which steel beams could be seenmelting. He thought of Setsuko. Nearer the

hypocenter, not very far from the city’sMunicipal Office, he passed over a warm roadsurface upon which a great fire must haverisen, then inexplicably died. All of the peoplesimply disappeared here, and all of the woodenhouses, on either side of the road, werereduced to grayish-white ash. He thought ofSetsuko. The main street leading toward homeand Hiroshima’s famous “T”-shaped bridgeseemed more like a field than a road. In themiddle of the field, he found two blackenedstreetcars. Their ceilings and windows hadvanished and they were filled with lumps ofcharcoal that turned out to be passengerscarbonized in their seats. The trolleys hadapparently stopped on either side of the streetto pick up more passengers, and two peoplewere about to ascend the steps of one vehiclewhen the heat descended, and caught them,converting them into bales of coal with shirtbuttons and teeth. In every direction, Kenshisaw pieces of people, and horses, and oxen,looking like charcoal. He thought of Setsuko,now blaming himself for their ill-omenedhoneymoon excursion, nearly two weeksearlier, to the Shrine Island of Miyajima.

There was a strange taboo in connection withthe Miyajima Shrine. It had been dedicated to agoddess who was believed by the oldergenerations to become jealous if a newlymarried husband and wife climbed the sacredsteps together. If the taboo was violated, theold people said, the wife would shortly die. ButKenshi’s friend, a local innkeeper who hadarranged honeymoon lodgings for them nearthe island’s gardens, had scoffed at this andsaid it was pure superstition. Since they hadcome all the way to Miyajima together, headvised, surely they should go at once to thefamous shrine. So they did. And now, duringthe journey from his office into the heart ofGround Zero, Kenshi repented of it manytimes.4

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THE STREETS OF HIROSHIMA were full ofintriguing, seemingly impossible juxtapositionsbetween the utterly destroyed and themiraculously unharmed. The roof tiles ofKenshi’s home had boiled on one side and werecracked into thousands of tiny chips, andev ident l y the en t i re s t ruc ture wassimultaneously roasted and pounded nearly ahalf-meter into the earth. A few doors away,evidence of a gigantic shock bubble, in whichthe very atmosphere had recoiled at supersonicspeed from the center of the explosion, couldbe seen in the evidence of the bubble’simmediate aftereffect—the “vacuum effect”that had developed behind an outracing shockwave, pulling everything back again towardsthe center, toward the actual formation point ofthe mushroom cloud, almost directly overhead.The force of the imploding shock bubble hadalso pulled air-filled storm sewers up throughthe pavement. These manifestations only hintedat the forces unleashed when the low-densitybubble, its walls shining with the power ofplasma and super-compressed air, had spreadand cooled to a point at which the press inwardby the surrounding atmosphere started tobecome stronger than the heat and shockpushing away from the uranium storm. At thispoint, the shock bubble was only about 250milliseconds old—just a quarter-second pastMoment Zero and 400 meters in radius. Whenthe bubble collapsed, less than two-tenths of asecond later and nearly twenty blocks wide, theupdraft experienced directly below, in Kenshi’sneighborhood, was amplified by the almostsimultaneous rise of the retreating plasma,which behaved somewhat like a superheatedhot-air balloon. As it rose and lost power, it hadcooled from a fireball to an ominous blackflower head, and had begun to shed debris theway a flower sheds pollen. Bicycles, bits ofsidewalk, planks of wood, even half of a grandpiano, fell out of the cloud, more than 800meters away from the hypocenter.5

And yet, amid all this havoc, pieces of bonechina and jars of jellied fruit lay unbroken upon

the ground. Kenshi discovered that trees,although dry roasted and stripped of theirleaves, were still standing upright andunbroken in a 30-meter wide area just outsideof his immediate neighborhood. Along otherpoints of the compass, everything either fellapart, or disappeared. Normally, one shouldnot have been able to see the mountains or theweather station’s transmission tower from thislocation because there were rows of buildingsin the way. But whenever the gusts of smokeand dust pulled apart, it was easy to see thatthe obstructions were all gone, now. The citywas… flat. The whole thing. Little seemedrecognizable, except broken sewing machines,concrete cisterns, blackened bicycles andstreetcars, and piles of reddish-black flesheverywhere, a few vaguely in the shapes ofhuman figures, or occasionally in the shapes ofhorses.

The Mitsubishi accountant would probably haveescaped Hiroshima with no radiation injury atall had he not gone into the center of the blastarea searching for Setsuko. Once he breathedthe dry dust, then cleared the dust from histhroat by drinking brownish-black water from abroken pipe, his cells were absorbing strangenew variations on some very common elements.These new incarnations, or isotopes, tended tobe so unstable that by the time he awoke in themorning most of them would no longer exist.Like little energized batteries, they were givingup their power. Unfortunately, they weredischarging that power directly into Kenshi’sskin and stomach, into his lungs and blood. Thequirk that spared him a lethal dose was theinitial collapse of the shock bubble and the riseof the hot cloud. A substantial volume ofpulverized and irradiated debris had beenhoisted up into the cloud, and most of thepoisons had already fallen kilometers away asblack rain. Even in terms of radiation effects, inits own, paradoxical way, the central region ofGround Zero was sometimes the safest place tobe. It was all relative, naturally: Mr. Hirata’sneighborhood was still hot with radioactivity;

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but places farther away were even hotter.6

By nightfall of that first day, Kenshi hadpositively identified a particular depression inthe ground as his home. Only a day before, thehouse and garden were surrounded by abeautiful tiled wall—and now, chips of thosedistinctive tiles were strewn through theembers. The large iron stove that had heatedbathwater for Kenshi and his bride seemed tohave been hammered into the ground, but itstill appeared to be located in the right part ofthe house. Only a few steps away, he unearthedkitchen utensils, which though deformed byheat and blast looked all too painfully familiar.They were gifts from Setsuko’s parents.

Kenshi had an odd instinctive feeling that theground itself might be dangerous, and that heshould leave the city immediately. The thoughtthat stopped him was Setsuko: If she is dead,her spirit may feel lonely under the ashes, inthe dark, all by herself. So I will sleep with herovernight, in our home.

Around midnight, he was awakened by enemyplanes sweeping low, surveying the damage.The sky, in a wide, horizon-spanning arc fromnorth to east, glowed crimson—reflecting thefires on the ground. Though there was little leftto burn in what American fliers were alreadycalling Ground Zero, flames grew all aroundthe fringes of the bomb zone, creeping outwardand outward.

The planes circled and left. Kenshi put his headdown again, upon the ashes of his home, andlay in the otherworldly desolation of the citycenter. The silence of Hiroshima was brokenintermittently by more planes and byexplosions near the horizon in the direction ofthe waterfront and the Syn-fuel gas works. Asthe ring of fire expanded to the gas tanks, therewere no working fire hydrants or fleets of firetrucks, and only a handful of firefighters wereleft alive to prevent the tanks from igniting.Kenshi heard huge metal hulls rocketing intothe air on jets of flame, crashing back to earth

one by one, and shooting up again. But GroundZero itself was deceptively peaceful, and thenoises that reached Kenshi from the outside didnot trouble him. He was too exhausted and toofilled with worry about Setsuko’s fate. Ifanything, the distant crackle of flames—eventhe occasional pops and bangs—lulled him intoa deep slumber.7

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THE FIRST SOLDIERS to reach the hypocentercame only an hour ahead of sunrise. The WarMinistry had sent them in with stretchers—forwhat purpose, they could not understand.“There was not a living thing in sight,” one ofthem would later recall. “It was as if the peoplewho lived in this uncanny city had beenreduced to ashes with their houses.”

And yet there was a statue, standingundamaged in a place where not a single bricklay upon another brick. The statue was in fact anaked man standing with arms and legs spreadapart—standing there, where everything elsehad been thrown down. The man had becomecharcoal—a pillar of charcoal so light andbrittle that whole sections of him crumbled atthe slightest touch. He must have climbed outof a shelter about a minute after the blast,chased perhaps by choking hot fumes from anunderground broiler into the heart of hell. Thefires killed him and carbonized him where hestood.8

The soldiers found an even more disturbingstatue, covered in gray ashes. It appeared tohave spent the last moment of its life trying tocurl up into a fetal position. One of themprobed it with a rod, expecting it to crumbleapart. Instead, it opened its eyes.

The soldier flinched and asked, “How do youfeel?” There seemed to be nothing else to say.

Instead of saying what he felt like saying—Howdo you think I feel, you moron?—the manreplied that he was uninjured and explained,

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“When I came home from my job, I found thateverything was gone, as you see here now.”The man insisted he needed no aid in leaving,nor did he wish to leave.

“This is the site of my house,” he said. “Myname is Kenshi.”9

Without any further words or fuss, they left,and he began to dig. Even when Kenshirealized that the cloud had risen directly overhis home, he prayed and held out hope thatSetsuko might have somehow escaped harm.When he set out from the dockyard, he hadpacked a few extra biscuits for her. Now, a daylater, he dug on all fours into the compressedashes of his kitchen, descending nearly a half-meter—almost knee-deep. Whenever he pausedto eat a biscuit or to sip water from a brokenpipe, he sprinkled a share of the food and waterceremonially onto the ground—an offering tohis bride of ten days.

As the August sun climbed higher and asnowfall of gray ashes blew through, the pipestopped dripping. Kenshi was soon out of wateras well as running low on biscuits, but hecontinued digging, hoping against knowledgethat his failure to find any bones meant thatSetsuko might not have been home when theflash came. For a while, believing he mighthave dug deeply enough to have found Setsukoif she had died at home, Kenshi left to searchthe nearest riverbank, wishing he might findher miraculously among the living. But hopedied the moment he understood the conditionof the few who were still moving among thebodies. Kenshi would never be able to forgettheir desperate faces, calling for “Water…water… water,” while he cried out for Setsuko.Finally taking some small measure of relieffrom the realization that Setsuko was notamong this suffering multitude, Kenshi Hiratawalked back toward the center of Ground Zero,and continued his excavation of the kitchen.

As exhaustion, thirst—and now hunger—beganto compete with the first mild signs of radiation

sickness, three women from his neighborhoodreturned to the ruins. Like Kenshi, they hadbeen away, sheltered from what they had cometo call the pika-don (the “flash-bang”). Theoldest of them, the head of their neighborhoodassociation, had rediscovered the place whereemergency rations were buried and haddirected the excavation of three large sealedcans of dry rice. Seeing Kenshi, and hearing hispleas for anyone who might have encounteredSetsuko, she went straight off to a nearby pit inthe ground that was filled with glowing redcoals of wood. She mixed some of her ownwater ration with rice and cooked a bowl ofmildly radioactive gruel for Kenshi. He wouldrecall later that he was moved to tears by thekindness of this woman. He never saw heragain.

After he ate the bowl of rice soup, he feltreenergized despite slight waves of nausea andresumed his search for Setsuko.

He excavated the entire kitchen, knowing thathis wife loved cooking more than almostanything in the world, and that she fanciedherself a top chef who could turn even the mostmeager rations into the most subtle flavors bycoaxing spices and herbs from what mostpeople called termites and weeds and citrusants. The kitchen, he decided, was where hewould most likely have found her at 8:15a.m.—planning how to bulk up a cup of stalesoybeans and turn it into what she hadpromised to be “a taste like walking on acloud.”

When the dust of the kitchen had produced notthe slightest trace of her, Kenshi began tograsp again, ever so slightly, at hope. He wassoon joined by ten men who worked in thecity’s sawmill. They knew the couple well andhad heard of Kenshi’s distress.

They moved from the kitchen to the livingroom, excavating almost knee deep, and not asingle trace of bone was found.

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“She is not here,” Kenshi said. “She is still alivesomewhere.”

“In order to make sure, we must dig a littledeeper,” one of his friends said.

Minutes later, hope died again. His friendunearthed what seemed to Kenshi to be only abit of a seashell.

“We both love conches and giant clam shells,”Kenshi insisted. “Setsuko uses them as tabledecorations!”

But already he knew in his heart that it was afragment of human skull. The men quietlystepped back. Suppressing an uneasy feeling,Kenshi excavated gently with his fingertips,slowly widening and then deepening the areafrom which the “shell” had come. He touchedlittle white scraps of spine, and found in them apattern that indicated to him her final moment.She had been sitting when… it happened.

From the kitchen he excavated a metal bowl,singed but otherwise completely undamaged.Kenshi recognized it as the very same bowl heand Setsuko had brought with them from herparents’ home on the train to Hiroshima, onlyten days before.

Ten days, he lamented, and this poor girl’sbones are to be put in this basin that she hadbrought with her from her native place.

He was thirsty under the broiling sun ofmidsummer. Sweat had formed long streamersdown his back and his trousers were soaked.He felt faint. His friend from the sawmilloffered him water and he drank, then sprinkledsome of the water over the basin—in the senseof giving his wife the last water to the end ofher short life.

“The lumber mill is gone and there is noguessing what will become of us now,” hisfriend said, then announced that he and hiswife had been hoarding a small ration of fine

white rice and dried fish, just in case thegradually worsening conditions came down towhat westerners called “a rainy day.”

“Well, it’s been raining fire and black ice andhorse guts,” the mill owner said. “So, this mustbe the day.”

He invited Kenshi home for a late but heartylunch, and offered a place to stay until hedecided where to go next.

Kenshi had already decided. As a survivingmember of Mitsubishi management, he wouldbe able to get priority seating on any trains stillrunning. “If I can get to Koi or even all the wayout to Kaidaichi Station,” he said, cradling thebowl of bones close to his chest, “then I will beable to find a way to bring Setsuko home to herparents.”

“Then all the more reason for you to have agood meal before you leave,” his friendinsisted.

On the outskirts of the city, the mill owner’shouse had survived behind a hill with only afew roof tiles dislodged. Nausea came andwent, which made it easier for Kenshi to eatslowly and to keep his portions small. He didnot want to take too much of the last good mealin town for himself, and away from his friends.All the while, the bowl from his own kitchen layat his side. From the bones of his wife, isotopesof potassium and iodine were being liberated.They settled on Kenshi’s trousers, and on hisskin, and in his lungs.

While they ate, a young soldier came to thedoor with news that Hiroshima Station mightnever run again, and all of the high-priorityseats at Koi Station were already taken for theafternoon of August 7. No trains were runningout of Kaitaichi, owing to what the sixteen-year-old message-runner called “the most amazingtrain wreck ever!”

He explained excitedly how a train leaving

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Hiroshima during the flash had been fried soseverely that even its deadman switches musthave failed: “The thing shot right throughKaitaichi and just kept on flying. They say itwas doing at least a hundred-and-fifty K when itfinally hit a truck in a crossing and went off therails!”

Kenshi merely thanked the boy for his reportand asked him if any trains would be leavingKoi tomorrow.

“Yes,” he said. “There’s one leaving at 3 p.m.,and you have provisional seating—which meansyou’re on it, as long as you can get there.”

Kenshi decided to make an early start. Manyroads and bridges had ceased to exist, and howlong the walk to Koi would take was anybody’sguess. He filled his canteen and put twobiscuits and a few grains of rice into his pantspocket, then cut some strings and wrapped acloth tightly over the top of the basin so thatSetsuko’s bones would not spill if he tripped onthe debris that filled the streets.

Before he left, Kenshi asked his friend forpermission to pick a flower from his garden.Then, saying his thank-yous and good-byes, hewent down to the river, where he threwofferings of a flower and rice grains into thewater and bowed three times, in accordancewith a Buddhist tradition that acknowledges aplace of the dead.

Bodies were now being pulled from both sidesof the river, and on the road ahead, masscremations had already begun.

How, Kenshi wondered, was he going to tellSetsuko’s parents what happened to her? Hecould think of nothing else. He did not know yetthat he would soon have much else to thinkabout . I t might even be said that hisrendezvous with history these past two dayshad been merely the twilight before the dawn.

Kenshi Hirata reached Koi Station with time to

spare; and at three o’clock on the afternoon ofAugust 8, he set out to bring Setsuko’s boneshome to her parents, aboard the last Nagasaki-bound train to depart Hiroshima.10

A Hiroshima survivor named Kuniyoshi Satowould later record that, aboard the night train,he sat across from a pale figure who wassweating profusely. Kuniyoshi would relate,decades later, that the anonymous fellowtraveler was holding a cloth-covered bowl onhis lap, and this he jealously guarded, as if itwere filled with gold.

“What are you holding, there?” Kuniyoshiasked.

“I married just last month,” the strangerreplied. “But my wife died. I want to take herhome to her parents.” And then, after a pause,the man lifted the cover from his bowl.

“See? Do you want to look inside?” He spokethese words in a tone that also said, See? Thisis what you get for sticking your nose into otherpeople’s lives.

The bowl was filled with scraps of human bone.And, though the train was very crowded and itseemed very unlikely that Kuniyoshi would beable to find another seat, he stood and hurriedaway.

Far behind Kuniyoshi, beyond the man with thebowl, the atomic bomb had left a child foreverperplexed about why, following the cremationof his father’s body, he found “numerousshards of glass among his bones.” It left asoldier who walked nearer the hypocenter thanthe foundations of Kenshi Hirata’s house,unable to quite explain the positions into whichpeople inside a bank had been frozen. Itbecame possible to imagine that a demon fromDante’s hell had waltzed through the building,touching everyone with instant death, andposing them.

Being among the first soldiers into the

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hypocenter, Junichi Kaneshige was alreadyabsorbing dangerous levels of radiation by thetime he entered what he believed had oncebeen the Geibi Bank. Afterward, he would writeabout finding people thoroughly carbonized onthe upper floors and near the windows. Theyfell apart at the slightest touch. Moving deeperinto the ruin, he discovered a particularlyhorrible shock-cocoon – a space in the buildingthat had been left disconcertingly intact,preserving a moment that was more or lessfoss i l ized in the midst of symphonicdevastation: “Descending the staircase to thebasement,” he recorded, “we found a certainfemale. She sat squarely upright, clad in ayukata dress amidst [what must have been]plenty of shower water coming down from thewater tap installed above. Her face was pale,with her long hair hung over her shoulder downto her breasts. Although the surroundings hadbeen burned down, the woman died in adignified posture under the shower water. Thisscene was rather more emotion-stirring andprovocative than the charred human bodies.”

Junichi would eventually recover from theravages of radiation poisoning, but never fromthe image of the woman within the incineratedbank.11

#

KENSHI HIRATA ALMOST DOZED off, but asudden bump in the train tracks and a brightflash outside his window snapped him to fullalertness. Off to one side, an orange glowbegan blooming against the sky, spreadingthere, brightening. The city of Yahata wasdying under what he guessed to be at least afifty-strong B-29 raid.

He thought of Setsuko.

Kenshi’s intestines still did not feel quite right,and he noticed bleeding under the skin of hisfingers – and though he felt weak and achy, hewas afraid that if he started to doze off again,he would drop the bowl of precious bones lying

on his lap.

Two additional swarms of night-raiders helpedhim to keep sleep at bay. En route to Nagasaki,he witnessed the fire-bombings of two moretowns: Tobata and Yawata. It was difficult forhim to believe the situation had deteriorated tosuch an extent that B-29s were being sent farafield of the cities, to target even the smalltowns.12

About mid-morning, Kenshi reached hisparents’ home, on what was to become theshadow side of a tall hill. By then than an hourseparated him from his second Moment Zero,barely more than 3.3 kilometers from the nexthypocenter.

As he approached the steps, Kenshi’s parentscame running through the door with tears intheir eyes. At that same moment, an air-raidsiren began to signal what was likely justanother in a seemingly endless series of falsealarms. False or not, he was not taking anychances. Mindful that a second flash mightappear, he told his parents to come inside withhim quickly and to stay away from thewindows.

Kenshi’s father was shocked at the sight ofhim—pale, with shaking hands, and withperspiration running down his cheeks, hischest, and his legs. He looked like a man halfstarved to death.

“Have you eaten?” his mother asked.

“Not hungry,” he said. “I can’t seem to keepanything down.” He cradled the wedding bowlto his chest and rocked it gently, and his fatherbowed his head.

“I knew you were alive,” Mrs. Hirata said.“Even when no more word was coming out ofHiroshima, I knew you were still in this world.”

“And Setsuko?” his father asked, almost at awhisper.

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Kenshi lifted the bowl and bent his head towardits rim, and kissed it. “This is all that’s left ofher,” he replied.

“We already knew this,” his mother said.

“How can that be?”

“Because early this morning,” she explained,“Setsuko’s mother arrived at our door with thenews. She knew her daughter was dead inHiroshima because Setsuko has been visitingher in dreams.”

His mother’s words brought no comfort, onlymore agitation. He remembered how, when thepika-don came to Hiroshima, a woman’s voicehad cried out in his brain and had made himstay under cover while everyone else stood upand was either grievously injured or killed. Atfirst, he had thought it might have been hisgrandmother’s spirit—then he thought, later,that it must have been Setsuko, urging him tolive. Now he knew it was her. Knew it.

Kenshi held back his tears, stood, and said tohis father, “We must go at once to Setsuko’sparents, with this bowl, and bring her home.”

When they stepped outside, though only a fewminutes had passed, the day had becomenoticeably drearier. Thick clouds now coveredmore than half the sky.

The air-raid siren wound down and blasted theall-clear signal. Another false alarm, Kenshireassured himself. The Hiroshima blast hadcome out of a perfectly blue and clear sky.Dreary days were good news, in these times.The Americans never dropped bombs if theycould not see the ground. Everyone knew this,and took it for a fact.

Passing a row of houses and a Buddhist shrine,Kenshi and his father drew some small comfortfrom the thickening cloud cover, and Kenshi’sstomach spasms abated ever so slightly. Hebelieved that he might even be able to drink a

little water now, and to keep it down. All heneeded was a little breathing space. All heneeded was for Nagasaki to be safe today.13

Now, however, by aid of jeep-sized portablecomputers and radar mapping machines, cloudcover was not an obstacle. This time, Kenshiactually heard one of the planes straining toturn around and fly away from the bomb,sounding at one point as if it were flyingstraight at him.

“Nooo!” he cried out to his father.

Under the mushroom cloud, within only afew minutes, a mountain of flames tallerthan the pyramids emerged fromUrakami’s “lake of flames.” Just short ofone kilometer from the detonation pointand the growing cyclone of fire, on anoverlook where every living creatureperished during the first five seconds, thedelicate arch of the Sano Tori Shrine stillstood on one leg, with the other legknocked away. [Illustration: CP.]

Once again, he was slightly more than threekilometers away from the center of theexplosion, on the opposite side of Kompira Hill,

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near one of the Nagasaki suburb’s mostprominent landmarks, a large, oval-shapedstadium. The first time, distance combined witha voice in his head and an instinct to stay awayfrom the windows until the blast wave passedhad kept Kenshi alive. This time—in thepresence of a bomb up to three times morepowerful—what saved Kenshi was not so mucha matter of distance and response as theshielding provided by Kompira Hill. Despite thegreater fury of the plutonium device, Kenshifound the blast and roar “not so terrible asHiroshima.” He would not be aware for sometime to come how a small mountain (standingonly 366 meters high) had shadow-shielded himfrom the heat rays and shock-cocooned himfrom the blast. Not very far from where Kenshiand his father stood, at the same radius fromthe hypocenter—and all within those same fewseconds—people down in the shipyard weresimultaneously flash-grilled, uplifted,shotgunned by flying glass, and hurled throughwalls. Only a short distance away, on the otherside of Kompira Hill, almost everyone whowitnessed the pika was either grievously grilledor dead. Only two miles further north, thepeople on the streets were now steam andphosphorus, ashes and radioactive fallout.14

Walking through a neighborhood that if not fora mountain would no longer have existed,Kenshi was buffeted by a harsh wind and sawonly a few roof tiles loosened. And after thewind had passed, dragonflies still flitted about,seemingly unshaken. But the bones—Setsuko’sbones, to which he had made offerings offlowers and rice and which he had held close tohis chest for most of two days—the bomb hadripped the cover from Kenshi’s wedding bowland flung the bones out of his hands.

“All this way,” Kenshi said to his father,weeping. “All this way, and her bones arescattered who knows where—and to whatpurpose?”

There was no purpose. No dignity in it, either,

Kenshi told himself. No purpose. No dignity. Nopurpose.

Except, Setsuko might have said, to bearwitness.15

A recovery from symphonic destruction:Upper Nagasaki’s Sano Tori Shrine the dayafter (in 1945) and in 2010. The differencebetween then and now is that in 21stcentury nuclear warfare, there is noguarantee of people coming from outsideto rebuild. [Illustration: CP]

#

WEST OF KOMPIRA HILL, at Kenshi Hirata’ssame distance from the hypocenter, fellowHiroshima survivor Kuniyoshi Sato had beenwaiting with a crowd of people on the OohatoPier when, like Kenshi, he survived his secondencounter with the atomic bomb. He knew,

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long before two planes began counting downthe last five miles to the new hypocenter, thathe would forever be haunted by the image ofthe man on the train, transporting a bowl-full ofhis bride’s skull fragments to her parents inNagasaki.

During the minutes before the bowl of boneswas knocked out of Kenshi’s hands, KuniyoshiSato prepared to board a ferry that would bringhim to the main office of Mitsubishi HeavyIndustries, on the west bank. He had no way ofknowing that across the r iver, at hisdestination, fellow engineer and double-survivor Tsutomu Yamaguchi had just beenreprimanded for losing contact with him inHiroshima, and failing to convey him safely tothe office. What Sato did know, to a certainty,was that Hiroshima had been destroyed by asingle bomb.

“We have heard rumors of this,” a shipyardworker said. “The whole city? One bomb?”

“I saw it,” Sato affirmed. He began to describethe kaleidoscope of strange colors in the pillarof fire and smoke, and the city stamped flat,when a B-29’s engines let out “a high-pitchedsqueezing noise,” somewhere over UrakamiCathedral, nearly 3.5 kilometers upriver.Instinct moved Sato; and before anyone else onthe dock could respond, he dove into the water,and stayed under. A great wing of searingwhite light cut across the sky. The blastwavepounded down and passed in less than a halfsecond, taking with it almost everyone who hadbeen standing – standing afire on the pierabove. The water thoroughly shielded theyoung engineer, though he did not yet fullycomprehend how, or from what.16

#

KENSHI HIRATA had escaped the fire-bombings of Kobe, Osaka, and now, after onlythree days, his second atomic bomb. It musthave seemed to Kenshi that the American B-29crews were seeking him out personally.

At Nagasaki, he had been completely shieldedbehind one of his neighborhood’s many hills.The neighborhood itself was mysteriouslycocooned against harm. The grasses remainedgreen and the cicadas, though silent, were stillalive. The blast wave had done little more thanloosen roof tiles, yet it kicked the wedding bowlout of Kenshi’s hands. With his father, he spentthe first few minutes after the blast searchingfor the metal bowl and tracking down everypiece of bone they could find, all but obliviousto the cloud rising overhead, and the strangeobjects falling out of it, including a horse andcarriage that crashed into a tree, from which ithung like a Christmas ornament.

When they reached the house, Setsuko’s five-year-old brother appeared at the door, and sawthe bowl of bones. The child called out for hisparents, noticing that his brother-in-lawseemed to be very ill, and scarcely noticing theblizzard of charred paper and clothing that wasfalling along the street.

The parents gazed with amazement, at Kenshiand the bones.

“Oh, you had a hard time,” Setsuko’s fathersaid, in a calm and uniquely Japanese mannerby which multiple feelings and complexmessages could be represented by only a fewwords.

“You had a hard time,” Setsuko’s motherrepeated, and Kenshi understood, immediately,the real meaning of this: We are not blamingyou. We sympathize.

Then, in one of history’s quintessentialexamples of how, in Japan, what was saiddirectly and on the surface often conveyed anocean of meaning, Setsuko’s father said, “Youwere not registered yet with the city, as acouple. Please don’t worry.”

The words shocked Kenshi. Setsuko’s parentswere using a legal technicality as a tool forreleasing him from what happened to their

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daughter and from any obligation to her – past,present, or future. They wished him to moveforward with his life and, without looking back,to find love again one day, and to raise a family.

Kenshi did not say anything. He simply left theporch; and even in this silent response, anocean of emotions was communicated. He wasvery thankfu l to the parents for notreproaching him with blame, for insteadunderstanding his situation, understanding hislove, his sympathy for Setsuko. And at the sametime, their words meant that this was themoment in which their relationship with himwas to be terminated. Unspoken, yet said:Because your marriage was not officiallyregistered, we can restart everything. You haveyour life. We can continue to live together asneighbors, and we will never talk about thecontract of marriage.

According to the traditions of Kenshi Hirata’sgeneration, the wife’s family was permanentlybound with the husband’s family because, bytradition, the parents of the wife eitherencouraged or discouraged the marriage. Wedon’t blame you, Kenshi, Setsuko’s father hadtried to say. Blame the parents for the hastenedmarriage, and for this sadness. We release you.

“Please don’t worry.” In that simple phrase washidden a lifetime of meaning.

“The true sadness of the moment wasunfathomable to most people,” Kenshi wouldtell history, as the sixty-fifth anniversary ofSetsuko’s death approached. “I felt very sorryfor the parents, because they had to say,‘Please don’t worry.’ I felt so sorry forSetsuko.”

The words, “Please don’t worry” signified, as arule, the end of all communication between thetwo families. And yet, after Kenshi Hirataeventually remarried, and after a newspaperreport mentioned that his children werefathered by a man exposed twice to radiation,Setsuko’s parents would help him to protect his

children from a widespread prejudice thatbegan rising against atomic survivors and theiroffspring. They helped the Hirata family todisappear, and to stay out of history’s way.

Even during the 1970s, when an American whostudied the physical effects of the atomicbombs applied all of his skills as an FBI agentto finding where Kenshi Hirata had fled withhis family, he failed to turn up a clue, andeventually died without knowing that Kenshihad disappeared in open view. Setsuko’s family,and Kenshi’s parents, and all of theirneighbors, would protect his identity and theidentities of his children so well that he neverhad to move from the neighborhood.

In the end, the same man who slept on theground where his wife had been vaporized inHiroshima, desiring only that her spirit wouldnot feel abandoned, never lived more than halfof a city block from the stone pinnacle whereSetsuko’s parents had buried her bones. Evenafter sixty-five years passed, Kenshi continuedto make offerings of water at the shrine,keeping his own private promise that Setsukowould never be left behind, or forgotten.17

#

ELSEWHERE ALONG THE FRINGE of GroundZero, Takashi (Paul) Nagai had been one of thefew physicians to survive the much morepowerful Nagasaki bomb. During the year inwhich Setsuko’s parents built a shrine on thefringe, Dr. Nagai established a researchoutpost deep within the fringe, overlooking thehypocenter. There, he recorded short-livedmutations in gardenias and clover during agradual but labored recovery of nature, in aregion where the gamma rays, neutron spray,and fallout dosing were many multiples greaterthan anything to which Kenshi Hirata had beenexposed. It became possible for the physicianto believe that nature would heal the wound inthe Earth, and that everything might somehowbe okay; but he had grave doubts. In a tunnelair raid shelter nearer the hypocenter than Dr.

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Nagai’s makeshift monitoring station, a youngmother-to-be had already learned thateverything was going to be “far, far from okay.”At Moment Zero, she was underground, double-checking a small hoard of emergency rationsand clothing for her relatives, in the houseabove. In barely more than a lightning bolt’slifespan there was no longer a house above, norany living thing, and the Nagasaki gamma-shine had reached into the shelter, and into herwomb.

Whether or not he was reading a cautionarytale into a merely coincidental line of ancientscripture, it was plain from what Dr. Nagaiwitnessed in the deformed flowers, and in whatcame afterwards, that too much of whathappened under the atomic bombs echoed aprophecy recorded in the twenty-fourth chapterof Matthew: “But woe to those who are withchild and those who are nursing babies in thosedays.”

F o r t h e w o m a n i n t h e s h e l t e r , t h edevelopmental pathway that led to growth ofthe brain’s frontal lobes was cut short. Randomfacial features and major pathways to limbdevelopment were sped up and slowed down.

The child was born male, with scarcely morethan an ancestral, reptilian framework of abrain, abandoned in mid-construction. His armsand legs were as the limbs of an amphibian,and he moved much in the manner of theovergrown salamanders that waddled on theirbellies across the pre-Triassic/Jurassic mudflatsof central Japan’s Gifu Prefecture.

As recorded by Nagasaki memorialist KyokoHayashi, “When he grew to twelve or thirteen,he developed sexual desires. Not knowing howto control himself, he threw himself on hismother as led by his instincts.”

Still loving the being as a child, but perplexed,the mother harnessed him and leashed him to apillar in the living room, where he howledunbearably like a wild beast and tried to gnaw

through the leash. A doctor finally suggestedthat he needed to be calmed down like a geldedanimal, and near the end, she consented tosurgical removal of the boy’s testicles.

In her warning to future generations, Hayashiwould write that, after his gelding, the child ofgamma rays and fallout-borne alpha particles,“became a ‘good’ boy with dulled responses, aquiet boy who did no harm to healthy people. Inthe spring of his fifteenth year, he wasovercome by intense convulsions, and diedafter quivering all day long. The only human-like response the boy had ever demonstratedwas his unrestrained sexual desire before theoperation.”18

#

IN THE SUBURBS of Nagasaki, an entireneighborhood helped Kenshi Hirata to hide inplain sight, and to rebuild his life. SetsukoHirata’s parents chose to regard the rebuildingas a tribute of their daughter’s love for Kenshiand to what she would have wished for him.After their sorrowful release of Kenshi, lovehad come again for him. By 1955, Kenshi wasremarried, and had become the father of twohealthy children. After the MitsubishiCorporation allowed its records of his survivalreport to be published by an Americanjournalist in 1957, he had no choice but tod i s a p p e a r w i t h h i s w i f e a n d t h e i r“contaminated” offspring. Setsuko’s familyparticipated in the hiding of the Hirata family’sidentity so well that the children themselvesdid not know exactly who they were.

Kenshi’s daughter, Saeko, grew up to studyjournalism in college and was working for theNagasaki Broadcasting Corporation when shelearned, quite by accident, that she was born ofwhat had turned out to be her father’s secondmarriage. Though curious, and wantinganswers, a young Japanese woman could not, inthose days, simply ask her father whathappened. Instead, she asked her mother, whoexplained for the f irst t ime about the

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remarriage, and about her father’s first wife,who had died in a terrible fire-bombing.Saeko’s mother did not mention “doublehibakusha,” or even the word, “atomic.” Shetold a strange story about how the second truelove of Kenshi Hirata’s life was actually his firstlove, and how his first love (Setsuko) wasactually his second.

At age twenty-three, about the time Japanengaged America in war, Saeko’s father hadbeen sent to the battlefield. He returned withhis legs all but destroyed by malnutrition anddisease, and was thereafter assigned to a deskjob.

Before the war, Saeko’s mother, and Setsuko,and Kenshi had grown up in the sameneighborhood. Kenshi knew Saeko’s motherfrom the time they were toddlers, and almostfrom the start they had become inseparablechildhood sweethearts. Yet when Kenshiapproached Saeko’s grandfather in 1943 with aproposal for his daughter’s hand in marriage,he was refused. No one knew for certain whythe father had blocked the marriage; but in themilitaristic atmosphere of the day, men fightingand dying in the Pacific arena gained honor,while a man at home safely behind anaccountant’s desk would likely have beenviewed with dishonor, even if the desk job wasborn of Pacific injuries.

Two years after the refusal, love came toKenshi Hirata a second time, and he marriedSetsuko, and brought her from Nagasaki to thecity where she died.

More than a year after Kenshi lost Setsuko andJapan lost the war, Saeko’s grandfather had achange of heart and allowed Kenshi to marryher mother. Saeko learned that Kenshi weptand “confessed” to her mother everything thathad happened to him, including the story ofSetsuko, and how he recovered some of herbones and saw them placed in a tomb that hecontinued to visit.

Saeko’s mother had told the story – minus thepart about her father sleeping on Setsuko’sradioactive grave in Hiroshima, minus mentionof the city’s name and the part about thesecond atomic bomb – noting that she believedKenshi had needed to “confess,” out of someinner shame. But his first love did not hold himto any blame at all for loving Setsuko, or forlosing her to a fate that seemed as muchbeyond all human control as it was beyond allprior human experience. Saeko’s motherexplained that she had long ago accepted theseevents. Indeed, it occurred to her mother thathad Grandfather allowed her to becomeKenshi’s first wife, fate would have dealt themall a very different hand. She came to regardSetsuko as a sister, as the gentle kind-heartedwoman who traveled to a doomed city and diedin her place. And so she made regular visits toSetsuko’s tomb, honoring her.19

#

IN JANUARY 2010, one of Kenshi Hirata’sMitsubishi colleagues, a fellow double-atomic-bomb-survivor named Tsutomu Yamaguchi,succumbed to what appeared to be the fate ofmost hibakusha: a prolonged battle withcancer. He survived years with a form ofstomach cancer that was often lethal within sixmonths of discovery; and long ahead of thecancer, as far back as his daughter Toshikocould remember, his hair fell out every summerand the flash-burn scars seemed to temporarilyworsen, and two or three times each winter, asimple common cold progressed to pneumonia.

In a suburb of Nagasaki, Kenshi’s daughterSaeko was, at the time of Yamaguchi’s passing,working for a TV news organization. She wasboth moved and fascinated by the story of adouble hibakusha who had lived nearby. Shedid not know, yet, that another survivor of bothatomic bombs lived much nearer, and that hewas her own father.

About February 25, 2010, documentary film-makers Hidetaka Inazuka and Hideo Nakamura

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(who had befriended Tsutomu Yamaguchi andtaken up the search for the Hirata family),finally located Saeko, and gently revealed toher who her father had been.

“Had been,” it turned out, was not the correctterm. Kenshi Hirata was still alive. He wasninety-one years old; but like many of thesurvivors, he did not want to remember. Eventhose who did speak of it, as Yamaguchi hadspoken, did so with great difficulty. Especially,Kenshi did not want to speak about Setsuko.

Nagasaki historian Tomoko Maekawa—whowas doing all that was humanly possible torecord and archive the stories of survivorsbefore their generation vanished utterly—hadvolunteered for one of the world’s most heart-wrenching jobs. She understood why KenshiHirata, like so many others, wished not toremember.

“When I listen to the stories of the survivors,”the historian explained, “I can see that it is verytough for them—very saddening to rememberand to tell of their experiences, almost as ifthey are bleeding from their hearts when theyspeak about it. I do not think I would be able totalk about it as they do if I experienced asimilar thing.”

Only slowly, between March and August of2010, did Kenshi Hirata begin to reveal whathe had hoped, for most of his life, no one wouldactually learn about him. He did not want toremember.

“Being a double survivor was a shamefuldishonor,” he said enigmatically; and for manyweeks afterward it appeared that he wouldnever say anything more about it. HideoNakamura and historian Tomoko Maekawatried to comprehend what sort of survivor’sguilt must have accompanied being shieldedfrom the atomic bomb twice while his wife andmore than 200,000 people died all around him.

In time, Kenshi explained that part of his shame

came from the demands of Japanese societyduring the 1940s. Even remarriage of awidower, in those times, came under theshadow of “the district gossip committee,” andwas considered a dishonorable act thatsomehow stained the children: “So, I was notonly trying to protect my children fromradiation discrimination; I did not want societyto carry rumors and scandals about mydaughter as a second marriage daughter. Andso I el iminated the secondness of themarriage.”

“How can you keep it in your heart?” Saekoasked her father. “I’m amazed that you kept itsecret, like a clam, for sixty-five years.”

“I am relieved to finally speak out,” Kenshisaid.

“I am sorry for him to now have to expose thissecret after so many years,” Saeko recorded forhistory. “In that inferno, my father was tryingto find his wife. Sacrificing everything –without complaining about the pain – to findher. I am amazed. For two full days, he wassearching for his wife. This is something he hasbeen hiding for a long time. But I am delightedto see my more real father.”

“I did not wish to be a double hibakusha,”Kenshi emphasized. “This is not my wish. It justhappened, because they built the bombs. So,everyone has to think about it. If we reallythink about each other, this should not be.Nuclear arms are not [compatible] withcivilization. I think such a thing should not beexisting.”

And he concluded, “This is the first and lasttime I will speak to the world about it. Theseare my last words on the subject. Do with themwhat you may.”20

Charles Pellegrino is the author of twentybooks, including the New York Times bestsellerHer Name, Titanic, and Ghosts of

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the Titanic, which James Cameron used assources for his blockbuster movie Titanic andhis 3D Imax film Ghosts of the Abyss. WithBrookhaven National Laboratory physicistJames Powell, he designed the Valkyrie anti-proton-triggered-fusion configuration for spaceflight (introduced in AAAS 1986 SymposiumProceedings and animated in 2009 by JamesCameron for the Avatar films, in whichPellegrino served as a scientific consultant).With Powell he also worked closely withSenator Spark Matsunaga on the U.S./RussiaSpace Cooperation Initiative during the 1980s,as a means of helping to reduce the probabilityof nuclear war. Pellegrino is probably bestknown as the scientist whose “dinosaurbiomorph recipe” became the scientific basisfor the Jurassic Park series.

The second American edition of “Last Train”(other editions have already been published ina dozen languages since 2010, most recently inArabic and Chinese) will be published byRowman & Littlefield in August 2015, underthe title: To Hell and Back: The Last Train fromH i r o s h i m a(https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442250581/To-Hell-and-Back-The-Last-Train-from-Hiroshima).

Recommended citation: Charles Pellegrino,"Surviving the Last Train From Hiroshima: ThePoignant Case of a Double Hibakusha", TheAsia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 26, No. 4,June 29, 2015.

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• Vera Mackie, Fukushima, Hiroshima,N a g a s a k i , M a r a l i n g a n(https://apjjf.org/-Vera-Mackie/4281/article.html)

• Daniela Tan, Literature and The Trauma ofH i r o s h i m a a n d N a g a s a k i(https://apjjf.org/-Daniela-Tan/4197/article.html)

• Robert Jacobs, The Radiation That Makes

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• Mark Selden, Bombs Bursting in Air: Stateand citizen responses to the US firebombinga n d A t o m i c b o m b i n g o f J a p a n(https://apjjf.org/-Mark-Selden/4065/article.html)

• Sawada Shoji, Scientists and Research on theEffects of Radiation Exposure: From Hiroshimat o F u k u s h i m a(https://apjjf.org/-Sawada-Shoji/3952/article.html)

Notes

1 The f irst hundred mill iseconds overHiroshima: The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey,The Effects of Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima andNagasaki, internal report, Chairman’s Office,June 30, 1946, pp. 1–33; E. Ishikawa, et al., pp.21–79. The next half-second, throughoutHiroshima, was reconstructed in accordancewith U.S. high-speed film footage of tests nearand below 15 kilotons, on structures andanimals. Tests: Hot Shot, How, Sugar, Fizeau,Fox, and Stokes; at Bikini Atoll, Test Able; atEnewatak Atoll, Tests Seminole and Sequoia.Collectively, footage and results coveredvarying distances from the hypocenters. NOTE:The direction of neutrinos through Setsuko’sbody is determined, not by a straight-line pathfrom the bomb’s detonation point through theEarth’s core, but via an angle dictated by thelocation of the Hirata house, relative to thebomb (location verified by the Hirata family,2010).

2 Robert Trumbull, Nine who SurvivedHiroshima and Nagasaki (N.Y., Dutton, 1957),p. 24, referenced Kenshi Hirata’s prior nearmiss of the Osaka and Kobe fire-bombings ofMarch 13 and 17, 1945 [p. 38]. Mr. Hirata at

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Hiroshima, Aug. 6, 1945: 8/9/55, translation ofK. Hirata report for Mitsubishi, Nagasaki, inTrumbull, pp. 23–27, 34–35, 64–71, 76; NormanCousins, personal communication (1987);Henshi Hirata and family, interviews via HideoNakamura and Hidetaka Inazuka (2010). Onthe Hiroshima bomb as a 10–12.5 kiloton“disappointment” (as opposed to 20 kilotonsofficially announced by President Truman):Smithsonian Timeline #2—The 509th(Composite Group), The Hiroshima Mission, p.3: “8/6/45; 8:15:17–8:16AM—Little Boyexploded at an altitude of 1,890 feet above thetarget. Yield was equivalent to 12,500 tons ofTNT.” (For comparison, the Nagasaki bombwas in the range of 24 kt (nomenclature,Sigurddson, Sheffield, Shoemaker, Pellegrinobased on Nagasaki yield, in, “Ghosts ofVesuvius,” Harper, N.Y., 2004, p 62.)

3 See note 2.

4 Implosive effects, heavy machinery, air-filledstorm drains “vacuumed” up through thepavement, in U.S. Strategic Bombing Surveys,Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Washington D.C.,June 30, 1946). Tsutomu Yamaguchi pulled by aco l l aps ing shock bubb le (persona lcommunication, 2008 and unpublished report,“I Live to Tell My Story,” translated by HideoNakamura, 2009). Carbonization of people:Testimony K. Hirata – “shadow people” and“statue people,” July 2010; testimony of Dr.Hiroshi Sawachika, p. 1; Japan SocietyConference 5/21/10; testimony of TakehishaYamamoto, p. 2 (and personal communication,2010). Shadows and ash bodies: Yoj iMatsumoto, in personal communication and viahis daughter Kae Matsumoto (2010); testimonySetsuko Thurlow, May 2015. Conditions andviews near the Hirata House: Morimoto(Mitsubishi account, 1945, 1946), translated inR. Trumbull (see note 2).

5 See notes 1, 4.

6 Residual radiation effects at the location of

Kenshi Hirata’s home in Hiroshima: E.Ishikawa, et al, Hiroshima and Nagasaki: ThePhysical, Medical, and Social Effects of theAtomic Bombings. Originally published inJapanese, (Tokyo, Iwanami Shoten Publishers,1979); English Translation, (N.Y., Basic Books,1981), pp. 73–79.

7 See note 2. Further details about the firstnight, including planes and towers of smoke:Sumiko Kirihara’s family, in Youth Division ofSoka Gakkai, Cries for Peace, (The JapanTimes, 1978), pp. 78–80; Masahiro Sasaki,personal communication (2008).

8 “Statue people,” see note 2.

9 Kenshi Hirata and the soldiers, see notes 2, 4.

10 See notes 2, 6. Notes on the train that pickedup speed, fanning the flames as it raced pastKaitaichi Station toward a collision with atruck: Nancy (Minami) Cantwell and theHiroshima nurses of Dr. Fujii’s crew (personalcommunication, 2008). Their first rescue effortwas in fact at the site of this famous trainwreck. Some details on flavorings added toextreme rations: N. Cousins in personalcommunication (1987); Tokusaburo Nagai inpersonal communication (2008); HirokoNakamoto in personal communication (2010)and in her book, My Japan: 1930–1951 (N.Y.,McGraw Hill, 1970), pp. 50–51.

11 Kuniyoshi Sato was a friend of fellow double-survivor Tsutomu Yamaguchi, who affirmed(first during interview, July 19, 2008, p. 9), thatit was indeed Kenshi Hirata seen by Mr. Satoon the train from Hiroshima. K. Sato’sdescription of the man on the train, bringinghis recent bride’s remains in a helmet-shapedbowl to her parents in Nagasaki, and Sato’sdouble-survival: Translations [in] Richard L.Parry, London Times (August 6, 2005). K.Sato’s story of survival in Nagasaki wasrecorded and translated by H. Nakamura,personal communication, 2010. On a crematedbody full of broken glass, and the people

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Junichi found in a bank near the hypocenter:The Asahi Shimbun Messages from HibakushaProject (accessible via C. Pellegrino home pagea n d h e r e(http://www.asahi.com/hibakusha/english/));Junichi Kaneshige, Case 20003, 2010.

12 Kenshi Hirata, “the night train”: See note 2.

13 See note 2.

14 On the greater power of the Nagasaki bomb,including flash-dessication of leaves out to aradius of 80 km (compared to 12 km forHiroshima): M. Shiotsuki, “Doctor atNagasaki,” Koesi, Tokyo (1987), p108; ClarenceGraham (radius 63km) in T. Brokaw, “TheGreatest Generation Speaks,” Random House,N.Y. (2005), Ch. 1. See note 1.

15 See note 2 (Trumbull, p. 119). Note: NormanCousins was quite familiar with the Hiratah i s t o ry up t o t he po in t o f H i ra ta ’ sdisappearance about 1955 (personalcommunication, 1987).

16 Kuniyoshi Sato’s late arrival at the ferry, forthe meeting at which Tsutomu Yamaguchi wasbeing upbraided for having lost track ofengineer K. Sato in Hiroshima: Interview, Aug6, 2005, R.L. Parry, The Times of London(chapter 5, footnote 18). T. Yamaguchi on K.Sato, personal communication July 2008.Events at the pier, on the opposite side of theriver from Yamaguchi: K. Sato interview, HideoNakamura, 2010.

17 Further notes related to the first threeminutes: Nagano in Nagasaki MuseumArchives, Testimony of Atomic Bomb Survivors#14. Dr. Nagai (on the Urakami firestorm), inThe Bells of Nagasaki, pp. 28, 32, 41; Nishioka,in Trumbull, p.113. The Nagai children, Dr.Akizuki and other eyewitnesses described a

large variety of objects raining down from thecloud, some being whipped up into the air bycyclones of flame springing from an immenselake of fire, as in Tasuichiro Akizuki, Nagasaki1945 (London, Quartet Books, 1981), p. 27.Tamotsu Eguchi, in “Nagasaki,” in Hiroshima inMemoriam and Today (Hitoshi Takayama,editor; Peace Resource Ctr., U.S., the HamatGroup, Hiroshima, 2000), pp. 58–60; AsahiShimbun (Charlespellegrino.com), “HibakushaVoices,” Disk #6, Witness #256. Kenshi Hirataand Setsuko’s family: Interviews with KenshiHirata, his daughter Saeko, and SetsukoHirata’s brother, July 2010 (Hideo Nakamura,Hidetaka Inazuka).

18 Dr. Nagai: Tokusaburo Nagai, personalcommunication (2008); discussions with FatherMervyn Fernando (Subhodi Institute, SriLanka), about what Dr. Nagai was trying tolearn and to teach (2007). The mother whoseunborn son was fiercely irradiated in the womb,and the incomparable tragedy that followed, isonly one episode in Nagasaki memorialistH a y a s h i K y o k o ’ s e s s a y , “ M a s k s o fW h a t c h a m a c a l l i t , ”(https://apjjf.org/-Hayashi-Kyoko/1668/article.html) translated by Kyoko Selden The Asia-PacificJournal: Japan Focus, 2014.

19 Kenshi Hirata, his daughter Saeko, and whathappened after Kenshi disappeared (about1955) to protect his family from anti-hibakushadiscrimination [pp. 334–35]: Interviews withKenshi Hirata, Saeko Hirata, and Setsuko’sbrother, by Hideo Nakamura and HidetakaInazuka, March, July, 2010.

20 Tsutomu Yamaguchi and his family, personalcommunication, 2008 – 2015. Kenshi Hirata,after the war: see note 19. Tomoko Maekawa,personal communication (2010, 2014), HideoNakamura, Hidetaka Inazuka, personalcommunication, 2010 - present.