Woman recounts deadly U.S. bombings of Chiba 80 years ago
"If the attacks had hit slightly different places, I wouldn't be here," Fumiko Takayama, a former schoolteacher, said. The airstrikes burned down about 60% of the city's urban areas.
The first bombing came on the morning of June 10, 1945. A warning siren went off after she finished her breakfast that Sunday. Soon after she started preparations to evacuate to a shelter, the siren changed into an air raid alert.
Just as she was about to put on her shoes, a cloud of dust from a blast made it impossible to see anything. Takayama dropped to the ground, covering her eyes, nose and ears with her hands, as she had been taught to at school. Her family hid in a closet and was safe.
A few days later, Takayama noticed that part of her protective head covering had been burnt off. "I would have been dead if I hadn't got down," she says.
After a bomb hit a nearby hospital, dead bodies were placed on a vacant lot of land in front of her house and she saw corpses with bent arms and legs in a scene that left a lasting impression on her about the destruction of war.
Takayama and her neighbors paid respect to the dead as a military truck took away the bodies.
The second air raid struck in the small hours of July 7, 1945. Her heart started pounding as she thought "it's another bombing."
Her father told his family to evacuate to the sea. As she walked west along the waterfront, the sky was red, and sparks of fire kept falling.
Takayama kept walking while soaking her head covering into the seawater again and again so that her clothes would not catch fire.
She learned later that people who evacuated in the opposite direction along the seafront were gunned down by U.S. warplanes and died.
About 10 years ago, Takayama started to talk about her experience, mainly at elementary and junior high schools, at the suggestion of a former work colleague.
"War destroys things, and kills people and hearts," she says. "There's nothing good about war."
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Japan Times
3 hours ago
- Japan Times
The horrors of Nagasaki, in first person
Hours after the U.S. dropped the world's most powerful bomb over Nagasaki on Thursday, Aug. 9, 1945, a 17-year-old boy pulled a pencil and a dusty pocket diary from his baggy work trousers and began to write. Koichi Tagawa had survived the blast because he had been building airplane torpedoes in an underground tunnel. His mother, Wasa, and about 74,000 residents died after 'Fat Man,' a 10,300-pound plutonium bomb, exploded over the city. Koichi's diary entries, written in precise kanji and hiragana characters 80 years ago today, are unique first-person evidence of the explosion's aftermath. Koichi shared his diaries with me while I was researching my book, 'The Martyr and the Red Kimono.' The book was published in Japanese last month with the title 'Following the Footsteps of the Saint of Auschwitz: A Story of a Hibakusha and a Sakuramori.' 'Something inside me urged me to write,' Koichi told me. 'Was it my mother? God? Another force? I don't know, but the words flowed.' For two months, the teenager recorded his heartbreak and confusion amid the unprecedented destruction. Aug. 9, 1945: 'All of a sudden, at about 11 a.m., all the lights in the tunnel went off and an incredible roar and forceful wind made us all deaf. I went outside with three colleagues and we started walking toward the Mitsubishi armaments factory. All the houses were gone, there were dead people everywhere and endless fires. We didn't speak. We kept walking. I was so worried about my mother.' In the diary and in numerous interviews over several years, Koichi recounted the horrors of Aug. 9 and the days that followed. His diary also included a map and drawings of the journey he made in search of his mother. In a field across from the road that ran in front of the torpedo factory tunnel, a taxi burned. Its lifeless driver sat close to his upturned vehicle, his shirt torn, his arms burnt red-raw. Flames leapt through the roof of a luxurious mansion near the tunnel. What had caused this annihilation? Koichi wondered. He said he felt as if he had slipped into a dystopian nightmare. Koichi Tagawa and his mother, Wasa. | COURTESY OF KOICHI TAGAWA Koichi, who was born in northern Korea, a Japanese colony at the time, had come to Nagasaki four years earlier after becoming gravely ill. His mother was originally from the city and his family were Catholics. His father had died in Korea. As a Christian, Koichi had always assumed that heaven was above the clouds. That hell was deep down below. No more. He was witnessing hell on Earth. In shock, Koichi and his three colleagues clambered up a hill to get a clearer view of their city. From the top they could see across Nagasaki and beyond. Koichi looked toward his home in the Urakami district, where the dominant landmark was a Catholic cathedral, the largest in Asia. Nagasaki was the home of Japan's largest Christian community. The whole area was a blanket of fire. The cathedral was nowhere to be seen. Koichi was horrified. His house was amid the flames. His mother, Wasa, was at home. Alone. His only thought was to find her. That morning, Koichi had eaten breakfast with Wasa — a tiny portion of strained soybeans and a bowl of brown rice — at 7 a.m. As he left for work, he'd shouted, 'See you later, mother!' Koichi now walked among the dirt and the dust of the demolished buildings. There were few signs of life. Mitsubishi's Ohashi factory was a mass of smoking rubble. Mud-covered corpses littered the site. He heard a shout. 'Help, please!' A teenage girl was trapped beneath piles of debris. After about 20 minutes, a few survivors pulled her out and put her on a makeshift stretcher. But when one of the stretcher bearers heard the growl of a distant plane, the men abandoned the girl. Koichi walked alone into a wooded area, where scores of people were screaming in agony. It was about 3 p.m., four hours after the blast. Leaving the woods, he approached the Urakami district, where fires still raged. He wandered toward the Moto-Ohashi Bridge that crossed the Urakami River. The bridge had disappeared. Scores of corpses floated on the water's surface, their black hair swaying in the current. A burned and half-naked mother clasped an infant. Koichi heard feeble cries. 'Help... water... !' He ignored them. Years later, he learned that the bridge was less than a kilometer from the bomb's epicenter. Anyone living nearby would have been exposed to temperatures of several hundred degrees. Severely burned, the residents had dragged themselves toward the river to deaden their pain. It was late afternoon by the time Koichi reached the vicinity of his home. A walk that usually took 30 minutes had taken about five hours. His home, which had been about 500 meters from the bomb's epicenter, was in flames. 'Okachan! Okachan!' (Mother! Mother!) he called, again and again. No one answered. Koichi wandered back toward the tunnel factory. He had not eaten since the morning. He propped himself near the tunnel entrance, exhausted. Amid the black smoke, an orange sun set into the mountain to his far right. It felt strange that on a day when his known world seemed to have vanished, the sun remained, slowly sinking beyond the horizon. As darkness fell, he scribbled more observations. Aug. 9, 1945: 'What a tragedy. My home has disappeared, engulfed in endless flame. I think only of my mother but could not find her injured body or corpse. I am covered in choking smoke. What a horrendous battlefield.' Koichi crept into the tunnel and lay down to sleep. As he drowsed, Wasa, his mother, appeared. 'Where are you, mother? I need you.' She smiled sweetly and was gone. The following morning, Aug. 10, Koichi again returned home. On the blackened land, there was no house, indeed virtually no debris. It began to sink in that he would never see his mother again. She had been his sole anchor for 10 years since his father died, nurturing and supporting him through his difficult teenage years. Now, in a split-second, he had become an orphan. Aug. 10, 1945: 'My house, which stood problem-free until yesterday, doesn't exist today. My mother has gone, even her body.' Koichi heard a familiar voice. It was Shuichi Yamaguchi, who lived in an adjacent house. The Yamaguchis were Wasa's relatives. Shuichi had survived the blast because he had been at work. Four members of his family were missing, but he had rescued six others, including his three daughters. Tagawa's drawing of what he saw in the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki | COURTESY OF KOICHI TAGAWA Shuichi decided the family should head toward Mount Shiroyama, a wooded mountain to the north. During the climb, Koichi saw a scene that would haunt him forever: a standing corpse that was now a piece of charcoal with blackened eyeballs and a blackened tongue protruding from a skull. The eight-person group camped near the mountaintop, where it was relatively cool. For the following 18 days, Koichi lived on the mountainside, scavenging for food and water, tending the injured — and watching agonized children and adults die. First, 6-year-old Kumiko's hair started falling out and purple spots spread over her body. After suffering from diarrhea, high fever and fatigue, she died on Aug. 13. Four-year-old Rumiko died the next day, showing the same symptoms. Koichi found three wooden drawers in the remains of a house nearby. He placed Kumiko in one and Rumiko in another. He left the third for 10-year-old Reiko, knowing she would be next. Koichi collected old newspapers, straw from tatami mats and wooden sticks to create a pyre, on which he placed the drawers. 'I kept saying 'Gomen-ne, yurushite' (I'm sorry, forgive me) to the girls while burning them,' he told me. 'That was the first and only time I burnt human flesh like that. It took me all day. Body parts such as heads, arms and legs burn quickly and easily but the bellies don't because there are organs inside. I had to poke the bellies with a bamboo stick to let the water out.' After the bodies were burned, he went with Shuichi to the Yamaguchis' family grave in Urakami for burial according to Japanese custom. Shuichi's youngest brother, Katsumi, soon developed the same symptoms. He died on Aug. 15, the day Japan announced its surrender and the day the Pacific War ended. Shuichi's other brother, Eiji, died the following day and his father, Kohei, succumbed two days later. Aug. 18, 1945: 'Kohei has gone to heaven today. He has died a glorious death. He was an earnest Catholic. He went to Mass every day and received Communion. I am convinced he has gone to a good place. I would like to die like him.' Trying to shake his despondency, Koichi walked along the ash-strewn streets to the hill where Urakami Cathedral had stood. He camped there for several nights. Only the stars sparkled with life. Aug. 23, 1945: 'The enemy planes dropped just one newly created bomb. What ghastly damage it brought. I've been left alone in this world. No longer can I see my mother, my only consolation. Without her, life is meaningless, nothing to look forward to. How am I going to live from now on? All that beckons is a mountain of hardships. All I see is endless destruction and death.' Aug. 27, 1945: 'How I hate my misery. The world where I had some freedom has turned into darkness. Looking at the moon, I yearn for my mother. Everything else — water, mountains, trees, the sky — reminds me of her. Why did I live?' Alone at night, the sights and sounds of the people that Koichi had failed to help on Aug. 9 loomed ever larger in his mind. Why didn't I help them, he kept asking himself. How can I face up to my ugly side? Koichi tried to concentrate on happier times. He remembered his visits in spring 1944 to a mountainside monastery on the outskirts of Nagasaki. It had been built in the 1930s by a Polish priest called Father Maximilian Kolbe. Kolbe had returned to Poland in 1936. Koichi had often told his mother that he planned to study theology there. On Oct. 8, 1945, Koichi climbed the steep hill to the Franciscan friary. The buildings were almost intact, shielded from the atomic blast by the mountains. Koichi knocked on the wooden door. One of Father Kolbe's longtime confidants welcomed Koichi inside. After two months of tension and terror, Koichi had found a new home. The author, Naoko Abe, interviews Koichi Tagawa in 2019. | PAUL ADDISON After becoming a friar, Koichi changed his name to Tomei Ozaki. As he settled into the religious community, Ozaki learned that Father Kolbe had died during the war, but the Polish friars who ran the monastery had no details of how or when. It wasn't until September 1946 that they heard Father Kolbe had volunteered to give up his life in August 1941 in the Auschwitz concentration camp to save that of another prisoner. In the most extreme of circumstances, Kolbe had shown that pure selfless love for others could conquer ego and hate. From that moment, Ozaki decided to dedicate his life to that of Kolbe. He visited Poland, including Auschwitz, 10 times to contemplate the ordeal that Kolbe had undergone at the death camp. For decades, Ozaki was traumatized by his failure to help his fellow humans on the day of the Nagasaki bombing. So he committed himself to telling the world about his experiences, becoming a kataribe (storyteller). In 2008, shortly after his 80th birthday, Ozaki switched from writing a diary to penning a blog. 'I can never forget the day of the bomb,' he wrote in May 2016. 'I kept walking through the destruction, the fires and smoke, filled with fear. Such a horrendous scene should never recur.' 'Nuclear weapons are no ordinary bombs,' he wrote in another posting, shortly before he passed away in April 2021, aged 93. 'I will keep crying out for their abolition. We who have survived nuclear hell would not want to die before witnessing a peaceful world without such arms.' While they may not have been there physically when he died, I'm certain Koichi's mother — and Father Kolbe — were with him. Naoko Abe is a Japanese journalist, nonfiction writer and the author, most recently, of 'The Martyr and the Red Kimono' (2024), published in Japanese last month with the title 'Following the Footsteps of the Saint of Auschwitz: A Story of a Hibakusha and a Sakuramori.'
5 hours ago
80 Years On: Hiroshima Museum Continues to Receive A-Bomb Artifacts
News from Japan Society Aug 8, 2025 16:00 (JST) Hiroshima, Aug. 8 (Jiji Press)--The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum continues to receive a steady stream of atomic bombing-related donations, with about 50 artifacts contributed each year by families and survivors seeking to preserve memories of the August 1945 blast. Donors often share their personal motivations when presenting such items to the museum. "I want to leave proof that the deceased once surely lived," explained one contributor, while another expressed hopes that the donations will serve "for the shared memory of humanity." Museum staff carefully document these stories alongside each artifact, incorporating both the items and their histories into exhibitions and related programs. As Japan marks the 80th anniversary of World War II's end this year, the urgency of preserving such testimonies has intensified. With each passing year, fewer hibakusha atomic bomb survivors remain to share their firsthand accounts. The donated materials are therefore increasingly vital for communicating both the devastating impact of the bombing and the human stories of those who lived through it. In June, 66-year-old Hiroshima resident Yo Hosokawa contributed to the museum about 40 items that belonged to his aunt, including a personal diary. His aunt was just 13 years old when she perished in the atomic bombing. [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.] Jiji Press
Japan Times
7 hours ago
- Japan Times
Police officer recounts handling 1985 JAL jumbo jet crash
A senior official of the Gunma prefectural police recounted his experience as a rookie officer tasked with identifying remains from the 1985 crash of a Japan Airlines jumbo jet, recalling that he wanted to return the bodies to bereaved families as swiftly as possible. Hideji Kenjo, now 60, was stationed at a police box in Gunma Prefecture at the time of the accident on Aug. 12, 1985, which claimed 520 lives. He dealt with bodies brought in from the mountainous crash site to a gymnasium in the city of Fujioka that served as a morgue from the day after the accident. The jet crashed on the Osutaka Ridge in the village of Ueno, Gunma. At the gymnasium, in sweltering heat, in which even large blocks of ice melted quickly, bereaved families expressed their anger toward Japan Airlines employees, according to Kenjo. On his first day dealing with the accident, Kenjo collected information from families about clothes worn by victims at the time of the crash and records of hospital visits. He then contacted hospitals, stores and others based on the information to gather medical and shopping records that could be used in identifying the remains. Kenjo then spent much of his time at the autopsy booth, where many severely damaged bodies arrived. He logged information on surgical histories provided by doctors, and cleaned muddied items of the victims. The police official recalled the words of a man who lost his daughter in the crash. The man told Kenjo that he had told his family he might not be able to bring his daughter's remains home as she had been in an airplane accident, and thanked the officer for returning her. "I didn't think I would be thanked," Kenjo said. "He seemed like a person of firm character." Kenjo worked at the gymnasium for over a month, starting the day after the crash. "I don't think the Gunma prefectural police had ever worked on a case for such a long time," including investigations at the crash site, he said. He added that he feels the lesson about the importance of supplies, learned while dealing with the accident, is being put to good use. He noted that the prefectural police are now providing sufficient supplies for long-term investigations. Susumu Oki, 59, who also worked on identifying the remains as an officer stationed at a local police box, gave a lecture to new police officers late last month about the accident. In addition to explaining the circumstances of the crash, Oki, currently serving as chief of a police academy in Gunma, shared lessons about investigating the causes of incidents and accidents, such as the importance of collecting aircraft fragments left at the crash site. "I feel that we have to pass on our experiences, as the accident occurred in Gunma," Oki said.
