ブックタイトルeigo13

概要

eigo13

Protected by my mother’s love（母の愛に守られて）(238)Etsuko Kanemitsu（金光悦子）At 8:15 August 6, 1945, I was in the schoolyard in Minami Takeya-cho,1.5km away from the place where the atomic bomb was dropped. I wasfourteen and in the second grade at a girls’ high school.Warnings of bombings had been canceled and my sister and I had leftour house in Nishi Kaniya-cho. There was not a cloud in the sky. It was areally hot day in the middle of summer.At that time, the General National Mobilization Law had been madeand students were forced to work for the country instead of studying. As soonas I entered a girls’ junior high school, I had to join the volunteer laborservice. On that day we had to get together at our school in order to go andsort things out after houses were demolished. We were waiting for ourteacher to come. Someone said “A plane!” All the students there looked up.In the blue sky there was a B29 flying with a contrail. I thought, “Why isthere a B29 in the sky without any warning?” Soon after that a strong lightturned everything around us yellow. I was so astonished that I lay down onthe ground with my eyes closed and my hands covering my ears. After awhile, I looked up. It was black all around me. I thought I must have beenunder the school building so I tried to move my body. Then, when I was ableto move my body, I noticed I was not under the school building. However soonafter that I fainted. I’m not sure how long it took to recover consciousness.When I came to myself, I found people crying and shouting. It wasn’t blackany longer and I was able to stand up and look around. I couldn’t believe myeyes. All had changed.All of the houses had collapsed. All of the people were covered in blood.Their clothes were burnt, so they were almost naked. A man bleeding from ahead wound was running and shouting, “Where is a doctor?” Some peoplewere trying to get out of collapsed houses. Some people were walking withlots of broken pieces of glass stuck into their bodies. A woman was calling herchild’s name and tried desperately to save him. I was really shocked at thisscene, it was like Hell.I felt my back stinging with pain. I looked for my classmates who hadbeen with me, but I couldn’t find any of them. I was standing alone on thesandy ground. It seemed that I had been blown away by the bomb blast.