ブックタイトルeigo13

概要

eigo13

The longest day in my life（生涯で一番長い日） (289)Michiya Doi（土井 通哉）“I saw a flash which was almost completely white. At that verymoment, I thought it must have been an incendiary bomb. I could afford thetime to think so. Soon I was blown off my feet by something enormouslystrong. My memory stopped there.” This is the momentary description aboutwhat I experienced when I was bombed. I wonder why I thought that it musthave been an incendiary bomb. I have never thought about the reason why Ihad thought so. And I happened to find the answer in my dream. Iremembered a scene of our training at school against an air attack. Thetraining consisted of the visual aid education and the practice such asbucket-brigade. Especially an old memory of studying about different kindsof bombs, their aims and effects came back again in my dream.Incendiary bombs can be broadly divided into two kinds, a whitephosphorus incendiary one and a grease incendiary one. The aim of a whitephosphorus incendiary bomb is to spread white phosphorus as far as possiblewith the explosion and to burn down as many wooden houses as possible.When I saw the video, many yellow rays came out from the bomb, and it waslike very big fireworks which exploded on the ground. At that time, I sawnot yellow rays but white ones. But the shapes of the rays were very similar.That was the reason why I had thought so. I found the reason and satisfiedmyself. And now I will go back to describing the situation just after thatmoment.Though I am not sure how long I was unconscious, I think it was forthree to five minutes. When I came to my senses, I could not see anythingaround me, and above my head, I felt something flying over like a tornado.So I couldn’t set my head up. And I could not hear anything. I thought that Ihad become deaf. In such a situation, I thought that I could have had anarrow escape. I tried to find out what had happened by creeping on theground for a few minutes. Touching my skin, I felt nothing. But I thought itwas not so serious, just that I had only gotten injured by a blow.Suddenly, my sense of hearing came back to me, and the dust settleddown．I was then able to see around me. It seemed that I had been blownaway about fifty meters to the edge of the school ground. When I looked up,our school buildings were demolished and began to burn. I tried to stand up