NAGASAKI, JAPAN, 9 AUGUST 1945 an eyewitness view by Tatsuichiro Akizuki Three days after Hiroshima, a second atomic bomb was dropped, this time on Nagasaki. Tatsuichiro Akizuki was working in Nagasaki as a doctor when the bomb landed. "It was eleven o'clock. Father Ishikawa, who was Korean, aged about thirty-six and the hospital chaplain, was listening in the hospital chapel to the confession of those Catholics who had gone to him to confess, one after the other, before the great festival, on 15 August, of the Ascension of the Virgin Mary, which was only a week away, Brother Joseph Iwanaga was toiling outside the hospital with some farm workers, digging another air-raid shelter in the shrubbery in the centre of the hospital yard. Mr. Noguchi had just begun to repair the apparatus used to life water from the well. Other members of staff were busy providing a late breakfast. Some were filling big bowls with miso soup; others were carrying them through the corridors or up the stairs. The hospital was a hive of activity after the all-clear. "'Well, we'll soon be getting our breakfast,' I said to Miss Murai. "The patients must be hungry.' "So was I, but before we had our breakfast we would have to finish treating all the out-patients. "I stuck the pneumo-thorax needle into the side of the chest of the patient lying on the bed. It was just after eleven a.m. "I heard a low droning sound, like that of distant aeroplane engines. "'What's that?' I said. 'The all-clear has gone, hasn't it?' "At the same time the sound of the plane's engines, growing louder and louder, seemed to swoop down over the hospital. "I shouted: 'It's an enemy plane! Look out- take cover!' "As I said so, I pulled the needle out of the patient and threw myself beside the bed. "There was a blinding white flash of light, and the next moment - Bang! Crack! A huge impact like a gigantic blow- smote down upon our bodies, our heads and our hospital. I lay flat - I didn't know whether or not of my own volition. Then down came piles of debris, slamming into my back. "The hospital has been hit, I thought. I grew dizzy, and my ears sang. "Some minutes or so must have passed before I staggered to my feet and looked around. The air was heavy with yellow smoke; white flakes of powder drifted about; it was strangely dark. "Thank God, I thought - I'm not hurt! But what about the patients? "As it became brighter, little by little our situation grew clearer. Miss Murai, who had been assisting me with the pneumo-thorax, struggled to her feet beside me. She didn't seem to have been seriously injured, though she was completely covered with white dust. 'Hey, cheer up!' I said. 'We're not hurt, thank God!' "I helped her to her feet. Another nurse, who was also in the consulting room, and the patient, managed to stand up. The man, his face smeared white like a clown and streaked with blood, lurched towards the door, holding his bloody head with his hands and moaning. "I said to myself over and over again: Our hospital has suffered a direct hit - We've been bombed! Because the hospital stood on a hill and had walls of red brick, it must, I thought, have attracted the attention of enemy planes. I felt deeply and personally responsible for what had happened. "The pervading dingy yellow silence of the room now resounded with faint cries --'Help!' The surface of the walls and ceiling had peeled away. What I had thought to be clouds of dust or smoke was whirling brick-dust and plaster. Neither the pneumo-thorax apparatus nor the microscope on my desk were anywhere to be seen. I felt as if I were dreaming. "I encouraged Miss Murai, saying: 'Come on, we haven't been hurt at all, by the grace of God. We must rescue the in-patients.' But privately I thought it must be all over with them - the second and third floors must have disintegrated, I thought. "We went to the door of the consulting room which faced the main stairway, and there were the in-patients coming down the steps, crying: 'Help me, doctor! Oh, help me, sir.' The stairs and the corridor were heaped with timbers, plaster, debris from the ceiling. It made walking difficult. The patients staggered down towards us, crying: 'I'm hurt! Help me!' Strangely, none seemed to have been seriously injured, only slightly wounded, with fresh blood dripping from their faces and hands. "If the bomb had actually hit the hospital, I though, they would have been far more badly injured. "'What's happened to the second and third floors?' I cried. But all they answered was - "Help me! Help!' "One of them said: 'Mr. Yamaguchi has been buried under the debris. Help him.' "No one knew what had happened. A huge force had been released above our heads. What it was, nobody knew. Had it been several tons of bombs, or the suicidal destruction of a plane carrying a heavy bomb-load? "Dazed, I retreated into the consulting room, in which the only upright object on the rubbish-strewn floor was my desk. I went and sat on it and looked out of the window at the yard and the outside world. There was not a single pane of glass in the window, not even a frame - all had been completely blown away. Out in the yard dun-coloured smoke or dust cleared little by little. I saw figures running. Then, looking to the south-west, I was stunned. The sky was as dark as pitch, covered with dense clouds of smoke; under that blackness, over the earth, hung a yellow-brown fog. Gradually the veiled ground became visible, and the view beyond rooted me to the spot with horror. "All the buildings I could see were on fire; large ones and small ones and those with straw-thatched roofs. Further off along the valley, Urakami Church, the largest Catholic church in the east, was ablaze. The technical school, a large two-storeyed wooden building, was on fire, as were many houses and the distant ordnance factory. Electricity poles were wrapped in flame like so many pieces of kindling. Trees on the nearby hills were smoking, as were the leaves of sweet potatoes in the fields. To say that everything burned is not enough. It seemed as if the earth itself emitted fire and smoke, flames that writhed up and erupted from underground. The sky was dark, the ground was scarlet, and in between hung clouds of yellowish smoke. Three kinds of colour - black, yellow and scarlet - loomed ominously over the people, who ran about like so many ants seeking to escape. What had happened? Urakami Hospital had not been bombed - I understood that much. But that ocean of fire, that sky of smoke! It seemed like the end of the world. "I ran out into the garden. Patients who were only slightly hurt came up to me, pleading for aid. "I shouted at them: 'For heaven's sake! You're not seriously wounded!' "One patient said: 'Kawaguchi and Matsuo are trapped in their rooms! They can't move. You must help them!' "I said to myself: Yes, we must first of all rescue those seriously ill tubercular patients who've been buried under the ruins. "I looked southwards again, and the sight of Nagasaki city in a sea of flames as far as the eye could reach made me think that such destruction could only have been caused by thousands of bombers, carpet-bombing. But not a plane was to be seen or heard, although even the leaves of potatoes and carrots at my feet were scorched and smoldering. The electricity cables must have exploded underground, I thought. "And then at last I identified the destroyer - 'That's it! I cried, 'It was the new bomb - the one used on Hiroshima!' "'Look - there's smoke coming from the third floor!' exclaimed one of the patients, who had fled for safety into the hospital yard. I turned about and looked up at the roof. "The hospital was built of brick and reinforced concrete, but the main roof was tiled, sloping in the Japanese style, and in the middle of the roof was another small, ridged roof, from whose end a little smoke was issuing, as if something was cooking there. Almost all the tiles had fallen off, leaving the roof timbers exposed. "That's odd, I said to myself, not heeding what I saw. "The smoke from the hospital looked just like of a cigarette in comparison with the masses billowing above the technical school, Urakami Church, nearby houses, and the Convent of the Holy Cross, which were now blazing with great ferocity. The sky was dark, as if it were threatening to rain. "'As soon as we have some rain,' I said, 'these fires will quickly be extinguished.' So saying, I began to dash about in the confusion. "The fire in the hospital roof spread little by little. It was rather strange how the roof was the first thing in the hospital to catch fire. But the temperature at the instant the bomb exploded would have been thousands of degrees Centigrade near the hospital. Wooden buildings within 1,500 metres of the epicentre instantly caught fire. Within 1,000 metres, iron itself melted. The hospital stood 1,800 metres away from the epicenter. Probably, coming on top of the scorching heat of the sun, which had shone for mrore than ten days running, the blasting breath of hundreds of degrees Centigrade had dired out the hospital timbers and ignited them. The attics under the roof were wooden and used as a store-house; the fire now spread through them. Upset as I was, at first I wasn't to concerned, thinking it was only a small fire. But before long the main roof of the building was enveloped in flames. "About ten minutes after the explosion, a big man, half-naked, holding his head between his hands, came into the yard towards me, making sounds that seemed to be dragged from the pit of his stomach. "'Got hurt, sir,' he groaned; he shivered as if he were cold. 'I'm hurt.' "I stared at him, at the strange-looking man, 'Then I saw it was Mr. Zenjiro Tsujimoto, a market-gardener and a friendly neighbour to me and the hospital. I wondered what had happened to the robust Zenjiro. "'What's the matter with you, Tsujimoto?' I asked him, holding him in my arms. "'In the pumpkin field over there - getting pumpkins for the patients - got hurt . . .' he said, speaking brokenly and breathing feebly. "It was all he could do to keep standing. Yet it didn't occur to me that he had been seriously injured. "'Come along now,' I said. 'You are perfectly all right, I assure you. Where's your shirt? Lie down and rest somewhere where it's cool. I'll be with you in a moment.' "His head and his face were whitish; his hair was singed. It was because his eyelashes had been scorched away that he seemed so bleary-eyed. He was half-naked because his shirt had been burned from his back in a single flash. But I wasn't aware of such facts. I gazed at him as he reeled about with his head between his hands. What a change had come over this man who was stronger than a horse, whom I had last seen earlier that morning. It's as if he's been struck by lightning, I thought. "After Mr. Tsujimoto came staggering up to me, another person who looked just like him wandered into the yard. Who he was and where he had come from I had no idea. 'Help me,' he said, groaning, half-naked, holding his head between his hands. He sat down, exhausted. 'Water . . . Water . . ..' he whispered. "'What's the trouble? What's wrong with you? What's become of your shirt?' I demanded. "'Hot - hot . . . Water . . . I'm burning.' They were the only words that were articulate. "As time passed, more and more people in a similar plight came up to the hospital -- ten minutes, twenty minutes, an hour after the explosion. All were of the same appearance, sounded the same. 'I'm hurt, hurt! I'm burning! Water!' They all moaned the same lament. I shuddered. Half naked or stark naked, they walked with strange, slow steps, groaning from deep inside themselves as if they had travelled from the depths of hell. They looked whitish; their faces were like masks, I felt as if I were dreaming, watching pallid ghosts processing slowly in one direction -- as in a dream I had once dreamt in my childhood. "These ghosts came on foot uphill towards the hospital, from the direction of the burning city and from the more easterly ordnance factory. Worker or student, girl or man, they all walked slowly and had the same mask-like face. Each one groaned and cried for help. Their cries grew in strength as the people increased in number, sounding like something from the Buddhist scriptures, re-echoing everywhere, as if the earth itself were in pain."