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Features

My Life: Interview with Sunao Tsuboi, Chairperson of the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, Part 6

Classmates

by Sakiko Masuda, Staff Writer

Encouraged by classmate, reaches Ninoshima Island

After being injured in the atomic bombing, Mr. Tsuboi managed to get to the west end of the Miyuki Bridge (now part of Naka Ward) and prepared to die. Then he chanced upon a classmate from his college.

My classmate said, “You really got hurt bad, didn’t you, Tsuboi? But you can’t let the war get the best of you. Hang in there.” He kept encouraging me, saying things like that. He was going to look for his sister, so he soon went on his way, but I had regained consciousness. Apparently, he never found out what had happened to his sister.

Mr. Tsuboi began to lose consciousness again, but a military truck arrived, and he came to his senses. A soldier was shouting, “Young men only get on! Everyone else has to wait!” No women, children or elderly could get on the truck.

A girl of 6 or 7 tried to get on, but a soldier angrily turned her back. Crying, the girl ran off into the burning city. I was angry at the injustice of it. Only young men, who were useful in the war effort, were treated as human beings. But I couldn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t stand much less walk. Trucks came and went several times, but I didn’t have the energy to get on.

But a civil defense volunteer put a shirt on me, put me on his back and then onto a truck. I had the sense that he had taken his own shirt off and given it to me. I asked him his name, but he wouldn’t tell me. He just said, “If you get well and kill even one enemy soldier, that will be thanks enough for me.”

The truck headed for the Port of Hiroshima (now part of Minami Ward). During the ride Mr. Tsuboi was only half conscious. The port was overflowing with many dead and injured.

I got off the truck and collapsed right there. When I came to, it was dusk. As luck would have it, another of my classmates found me. He was also badly burned on the front of his upper body. He suggested we go to the temporary field hospital that had been set up on Ninoshima Island (now part of Minami Ward) and get treated there, but I couldn’t move. I said to him, “If you survive, kill my share of the enemy for me.”

But he said, “We’re friends, aren’t we? Let’s go. I’ll carry you.” I was filled with gratitude for friendship and couldn’t stop crying. Seeing me crying on and on like that, the people on the boat to Ninoshima Island perhaps thought that with gutless young men like me we’d lose the war.

(Originally published on January 23, 2013)

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