Only three days after the atomic bombing, streetcars began running through the expanse of burnt plain that was Hiroshima City. Those "first streetcars" symbolized hope to the people. This summer, Maso Yamasaki (75 years old, Shikigaoka, Hatsukaichi City), formerly employed by Hiroshima Dentetsu, reopened the memory he had shut away for 59 years, that of driving one of those first streetcars. "I'm proud of what those streetcars meant to people. But I can't forget riding along seeing people buried in the rubble from the corners of my eyes." After the Peace Memorial Ceremony on the 6th, he traveled those roads again.

The 16-year-old Yamasaki was exposed at Koi Station (now, Nishi-Hiroshima Station in Nishi-ku), roughly 2.5 kilometers west of the hypocenter. Roll call following the shift change had ended, and it happened when he climbed to the second story of the station house to prepare to go home. When the building stopped shaking, the streets had become rubble. Soon the platform filled with prostrate hibakusha. His legs trembled at the sight.

On the 9th, sections of streetcar routes opened again. Using as power source the Hatsukaichi Transformer Station, which escaped destruction, one section of the line between Koi Station and the Tenma-cho stop (roughly 1.4 kilometers) began running. Yamasaki's boss designated him trial streetcar driver for that route. Seven or eight army soldiers and others boarded the single-car streetcar for the trial run.

He saw arms and legs poking out of the rubble, people covered in soot pulling carts.. The burnt plain stretching as far as he could see made him gasp. Though his family were all safe in Kouchi Village (now, Saeki-ku), he lost colleagues and friends. It took 15 minutes to get to the Tenma stop. "It felt like an interminable distance."

Immediately after the trial run, the streetcar opened for service, with students from Hiroden Kasei Jogakko as conductors. They could not collect fares from passengers without money. A week after the bombing, Yamasaki suffered diarrhea and hair loss, but continued to drive the streetcar. It was some years later that he heard people say that seeing the first streetcar was "a ray of hope."

In July this year, Yamasaki told his painful story-the memory he had never divulged even to his family- to students at nearby Shikigaoka Elementary School. "Soon there won't be any hibakusha left, so I began to feel that I better to tell this story to the youth now." Suffering intestinal cancer five years ago also motivated him.

When he visited Nishi-Hiroshima Station, his successors at the station took him aboard an idled streetcar. He held the handle for the first time in 19 years. Yamasaki vowed, "While I have life, I will tell this story to the city that has grown back to life from rubble.

(Caption)Yamasaki describes the scenes he saw 59 years ago from the driver's seat of the "first streetcar." (Nishi-Hiroshima Station)