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Part 3 Rescue and Medical Relief

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　At 11:30 a.m., immediately after the atomic bomb explosion, Toyoshima Tokuji, chief of the Nagasaki Prefectural Rescue Unit, ordered Sergeant Minowa from the Special Rescue Unit and one other member, Nagabuchi Denshirō, to quickly check the roads to determine whether the unit could drive by truck to Ōhashi as a rescue measure for the injured in the hypocenter area. They immediately left the Nagasaki Prefectural Air Defense Headquarters in Tateyama by bicycle.
　In his memoir, Nagabuchi describes taking shelter with Sergeant Minowa for a while immediately after their departure, due to enemy airplanes flying overhead, and arriving at the Ibinokuchi Police Station after noon. Only the concrete buildings remained standing at the police station:

When passing along the tram street near the Saiwaimachi Plant, we saw more than ten Allied prisoners-of-war, who had been injured in the atomic bombing, heading somewhere in single file. In the large air-raid shelter in the north cliff of Shōtokuji Temple, over 200 injured had gathered and were creating a commotion calling for help. Many of them were young women wearing armbands from the women’s volunteer labor units. In front of the air-raid shelter, five or six trucks had already arrived and the seriously injured were being carried to the trucks one after another on stretchers.
　The road from Ibinokuchi to Ōhashi was blocked by smoldering debris and rubble and electric wires strewn wildly near toppled utility poles. We made our way through these obstacles by pushing our bicycles, observing factories in the area of Mori-machi on the left, and the completely burned Nagasaki Medical College Hospital on the right. In the vicinity of Urakami Railroad Station, trams had been burned to their steel skeletons. I saw the corpses of about 30 men and women who had died in the atomic bomb explosion while sitting in a row inside the battered car, and I said a prayer to the Buddha. We saw at least four such trams. (It was said that there were four burned-out trams along the tracks between Hamaguchi-machi and Shimonokawa.)
　On our way, we saw bodies lying on the ground and countless seriously injured people sitting at the roadside. We passed approximately 40 young women (seemingly mobilized students) from the women’s volunteer labor units, wearing white armbands and silently sitting in a row with their male teacher along the road near the Hamaguchi-machi Tram Stop. Their black hair was burned off, the skin of their faces and arms inflamed with burns, and their thin shirts scorched. It was painful to simply pass by these poor students.
　By around 1:00 p.m. we arrived in Ōhashi via Matsuyama-machi and Oka-machi. I trembled with fear when I saw, both in the Urakami River and on the banks near Ōhashi, numerous men and women of all ages suffering from terrible injuries. We then headed back, noting the destruction of the line of factories north of Ōhashi.

Sergeant Minowa and Nagabuchi Denshirō returned to Air Defense Headquarters around 2:00 p.m. and reported on the condition of the road as well as the damage to the medical college and factories. This was the first field report of the atomic bombing based on reconnaissance.
　Each report from the Urakami district outlined a greater and greater degree of damage. Nagasaki Prefectural Air Defense Headquarters hurriedly issued a report to the Kyūshū District Government-General on the damage as of 3:00 p.m. on the day of the atomic bombing: “From around 12:30, fires broke out from many places in Nagasaki City. Nagasaki Railroad Station and vicinity, Nishizaka-machi, Zenza-machi and Inasa-machi, as well as the neighborhoods of Hokaura-machi and Ōmura-machi, where the Nagasaki Prefectural Office and district court buildings were located, are burning. The entire Urakami district north of Yachiyo-machi apparently suffered a large number of casualties, and fire is still spreading. The details are under investigation.” The area leading to Urakami had become a sea of fire. Under the circumstances, Nagasaki Prefectural Air Defense Headquarters was dealing with the disaster through concerted efforts by mobilizing the Nagasaki Prefectural Guard Unit, special rescue units, members of each police department and police station in Nagasaki, Nagasaki Fire Department and Nagasaki City Defense Unit. However, the situation was already beyond control. Governor Nagano, the chief of Air Defense Headquarters (Nagasaki Prefecture Guard General Superintendent) mobilized police stations in the prefecture and local government defense units from the south prefectural district for rescue operations. At the same time, he took measures to dispatch medical teams from the medical association of each city. The governor then requested the Kyūshū District Government-General, military and naval forces, and neighboring prefectures, to dispatch relief parties and medical rescue units. The destruction of Nagasaki Medical College was a particularly devastating blow that crippled the medical rescue systems of both Nagasaki Prefecture and Nagasaki City.
　The situation is described as follows in the Nagasaki Atomic Bombing Damage Report tenth report:

Nagasaki Medical College and Nagasaki Medical College Hospital should have played a leading role in medical rescue operations in Nagasaki Prefecture, but both were devastated by the atomic bombing and suffered many casualties among physicians and nurses. In addition a substantial number of private medical practitioners were also killed or injured, crippling the system of medical care in the city. Requests were sent to the Kyūshū District Governor-General for assistance in rescue operations and for the dispatch of medical teams from Sasebo Naval Hospital, Kurume Army Hospital, Western Force District Rescue Unit and other army and naval medical units, and rescue teams from the prefectures of Saga, Fukuoka and Kumamoto.

With regard to private medical practitioners in Nagasaki, half the 146 physicians had been conscripted into the military, 20 of those remaining behind had been killed in the atomic bombing and 20 injured, leaving less than 30 able-bodied physicians to treat the victims.
　Despite the ardent requests submitted to the Nagasaki Prefectural Air Defense Headquarters, the arrival of most rescue units was delayed due to the need for preparations, air raids and transportation difficulties.
　On the day of the atomic bombing, despite the severe situation described above, various forms of emergency rescue and medical relief commenced inside and outside the hypocenter zone immediately after the bombing.
　Efforts to rescue the injured workers commenced almost immediately in the devastated Mitsubishi factories, the injured being carried out of the city by relief trains and police department trucks. It is even said that fishing boats joined in the efforts to rescue the injured. Needless to say, every available means was implemented to transfer the injured during the period from afternoon to night. The relief trains also made an important contribution in terms of transportation volume. The relief trains will be discussed later.
　Medical relief activities were conducted in relief stations set up at Shinkōzen, Katsuyama, Irabayashi and other elementary schools, Mitsubishi Hospital and relief centers in Inasa, Ōura and other sites. The medical relief activities picked up sharply at the Irabayashi Relief Center after the arrival of a rescue unit from the Isahaya Naval Hospital. In the hypocenter zone, physicians from Nagasaki Medical College—situated on the hill behind Nagasaki Medical College Hospital—conducted relief activities along with physicians from Mitsubishi Hospital Urakami Branch and Urakami Daiichi Hospital in the air-raid shelters built at Urakami Daiichi Hospital in Urakami-machi (present-day Midori-machi). The rescue teams from Ōmura Naval Hospital and Sasebo Arsenal treated the injured on the bridge over the Mifune River near the Ibinokuchi Police Station and at the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Steelworks.
　At the barracks of the naval harbor front guard unit located at the time in Ōura-machi, a military physician named Dr. Itakura and several medical orderlies were giving first-aid treatment to injured unit members and the increasing number of victims fleeing from the devastated neighborhoods. The hundreds of people who had been injured or burned soon overwhelmed the barracks, and a first-aid station had to be hurriedly established at the Mitsubishi Takashima Dormitory in Matsugae-machi. The physicians working there placed the injured on fishing boats gathered in the harbor and transferred them to the naval hospital in Sasebo. It is said that Dr. Itakura treated more than 800 victims that day.
　In surrounding areas, the reserve navy physician Dr. Miyajima Takeshi began volunteer medical treatment and converted his home in the Hiramune district of Nameshigō into a temporary clinic. Large numbers of injured people also received first-aid treatment at other facilities including Togitsu Village Tasaki Clinic, Ka Clinic, Mangyōji Temple, Togitsu Elementary School, Togitsu School for Youth, Nagayo Village Banshō-en, Nagayo Elementary School, Kōda Branch School in Nagayo Elementary School, the emergency relief center in front of Michino’o Railroad Station, Nagasaki Administrative Division of the Moji Railroad Control Division, Yagami Village Mori Clinic, Yagami Elementary School, Toishi Village Nakazato Clinic, Koga Village Office, Kikitsu Village Nakamura Clinic, Ikiriki Village Enmanji Temple, Fukuda Village Tanaka Clinic, and Jōmanji Temple.
　As early as shortly after 12:00 noon on the day of the atomic bombing, the seriously injured were transferred to Ka Clinic in Togitsu Village, and the Mangyōji Temple in the same village began accommodating the injured within three hours after the atomic bombing. Although medical relief activities were conducted from afternoon to night, there was no end to the procession of people arriving from the wasteland. Some were searching for fathers, brothers and sisters who had been working in factories; others were the parents of sons and daughters engaged in labor service as mobilized students.
　The following is a memoir entitled “Looking for Seven Missing Family Members” by Matsuo Mitsue:

I was living at the time in Iwakawa-machi, Nagasaki with my family. The teachers at Zenza Elementary School recommended that we evacuate our children from the city in view of the worsening situation of the war. Agreeing that the safety of our children came first, I moved to Togitsu Village with my four children in early June. My husband decided to stay with the family of our married daughter in Hashiguchi-machi.
　At 11 a.m. on August 9, two months after our evacuation, I was thinking of preparing lunch because the air-raid sirens had fallen silent. Just at that moment I heard an explosion and felt a lukewarm blast of wind rush inside, tearing up straw mats and blowing rain doors off. I knew that something had happened, but I was not very frightened because no danger was apparent. I took my children outside and fled to the orange grove at the rear and waited, looking around. Then I saw thick smoke and a strange billowing cloud rising from an area in the direction of Nagasaki.
　As time passed, a mass of blackish clouds spread from south to east. I felt uneasy and prayed for the safety of my husband, daughter and other family members. I waited to hear from them in Nagasaki, expecting them to have survived even if their house had burned down.
　It must have been around 4:00 p.m. that a messenger came to Togitsu and asked the local defense unit to send people to help the victims in Nagasaki. Then I finally realized the seriousness of the situation. After that I could not rest for worry, and felt a strong desire to run to Nagasaki.
　One evacuee cautioned me that it would be dangerous for a woman to enter Nagasaki alone. I reluctantly gave up, thinking that if my husband and my daughter’s family did not arrive that night, they must have died. However, I also felt some hope, conjecturing that they may have fled to the house of an acquaintance in Nagasaki. I had not seen the situation myself and so had no idea what to imagine when I heard reports about the devastation. I could not sleep. I snuck out of bed at 2:00 a.m., prepared my children’s breakfast, and left home at daybreak — 4:00 — leaving a note.
　It was around 5:15 when I arrived at Michino’o Railroad Station. When I stood at a crossing and looked in the direction of Urakami, I saw that many houses and factories, which had been there the day before, were all gone. I could not distinguish rice paddies from crop fields. Utility poles were broken off, electric wires scattered and roads blocked by roof tiles, galvanized plates and wooden debris that had escaped burning. Since the only thing that clearly showed the direction was the railroad, I set off along the tracks toward Urakami Railroad Station.
　When I finally arrived at Urakami Railroad Station, I could see the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Steelworks iron framework twisted like taffy. I was grieved to behold the devastated carcass, as if it signified Japan’s defeat, and I knew by intuition that my husband had been killed. He worked in the design section at the steelworks. I walked around the ruins in a daze and met a few surviving workers, but I could not find any clue about my husband. Everyone encouraged me and promised me that they would search the next day. I searched for my husband and daughter in every nook and cranny of the wasteland at Iwakawa-machi and at a site that seemed to be my sister-in-law’s house, places that were still hot with residual heat.
　Wandering about looking for a way to Hashiguchi-machi, I finally reached my eldest daughter’s house. What I saw there was only a pile of tatami mats and a radio turned over. There was nothing else, no pillars or beams, much less a roof. I saw no one in the neighborhood either, and I remained standing there for a while.
　Before long, my canteen ran empty. I then trudged home worrying about my children and still embracing a glimmer of hope that my husband, eldest daughter and her family members would be waiting for me when I arrived.
　However, what welcomed me were the depressed faces of my children. Resisting the desire to give up and collapse, I tried to keep smiling. Again I could not sleep that night. I left for Nagasaki again the following day. That morning, however, there were many men and women, injured beyond recognition, lying along the tracks. They had emerged from somewhere with ragged seaweed-like clothes hanging off their burned bodies. The scene of hell on earth sent a chill up my spine: people breathing their last on the railroad ties, people dying, and mothers on the brink of death trying breathlessly to comfort their babies. Considering that the seven family members that I had been searching for could have been lying on the ground among these people, I checked their faces one by one. It would have been impossible to keep going if this carnage was confined to just my family members.
　I passed the area near Ōhashi and crossed the railroad tracks to search for my family in the direction of Hashiguchi-machi, as I had the day before. But I did not find any clues. Many people with severe burns had gathered at the river flowing between Hashiguchi-machi and Matsuyama-machi. Most of them had already died, some were taking their last breaths trying to drink water, and some were naked. The people who were still alive grasped my legs and begged me to help them. Since it was difficult to just turn them down I lied to them, telling them not to worry because I had called a doctor for them, and passed by.
　Then I went down the tramline and looked into two or three stalled trams. The interiors of the cars were filled with bodies, mostly of mobilized students and members of women’s volunteer labor units and cooperation units, from 15 to 17 years of age. When I saw the bodies of these young people, I was at a loss for words and stood rooted to the spot, swallowing my saliva.
　After the atomic bombing, a long spell of hot days without rain continued and the dead bodies began to give off a strange smell. After walking for a few hours, the heat and dust from the devastated fields made me sweaty and dirty. Around noon on August 12, an aircraft flying overhead sprayed the ground with machine-gun fire, but I survived by slipping into a pile of bodies.
　Every time I went to Nagasaki, the city was filled with piles of burned bodies and people suffering agonizing pain. I continued my fruitless wandering in the city for one week but had to accept the sad conclusion that I could not find my family.
　I had searched for them in every hospital and sanatorium in the city but could not uncover a single clue about even one of my seven family members. In rural areas, including Togitsu Village, many injured people had been carried by members of the defense units and placed in every available space in every first-aid station. Members of women’s associations were at their wits’ end dealing with the injured in a difficult situation without medicine or bandages. Most of the injured died one after another, creating a hell on earth.
　In Nagasaki, I could not help but cover my eyes at the scenes in which bodies that had gone unclaimed were cremated on the street. I immediately associated the scene with my seven family members’ deaths.
　There are no words to properly describe the horror of the atomic bombing. 38

No Mementos, No Ashes – the memoir of Taguchi Tokiyoshi

On the day of the atomic bombing, I was constructing a house for evacuation on the hill behind Urakami Branch Prison in present-day Shiratori-machi.
　The explosion of the atomic bomb crushed the house and covered me in fallen debris. I sustained injuries to my back and shoulder but escaped from being burned.
　From this site, located on a hill that commanded a view over the area spreading in the direction of Urakami, I saw that most houses had collapsed and fire was breaking out here and there in the neighborhoods from Nagasaki Railroad Station to Urakami and Ōhashi. My own family came to my mind.
　My third daughter had just been discharged from Nagasaki Medical College Hospital on August 8. On the day of the atomic bombing, my wife and my second and third daughters went to the hospital to pay the hospital bill. Seeing the ruins of the hospital, I thought that my wife and daughters might have been exposed to the blast.
　However, the fact that they had left home in Ōura early in the morning gave rise to the hope that they might have paid the hospital bill and returned home by the time of the bombing. I wanted to return home as soon as possible to confirm their safety, but two of my coworkers could not walk due to serious burn injuries and I myself was injured. I decided to go with them to the first-aid station at Michino’o Hospital.
　It was 9:00 in the evening when I finally returned home to Ōura. Since my house was three kilometers away from the hypocenter, it had not caught fire. However, it was difficult to enter the house because chests of drawers, clocks and other furniture had been scattered about by the blast. No one was there. Thinking that my family members may have fled to the neighborhood air-raid shelter in Ōura, I headed there.
　I couldn’t find any of my family members in the shelter. I was stunned for a while, considering the possibility that they had been at the hospital at the time of the atomic bombing and could be dead. At the same time, I also thought that they could have luckily taken shelter somewhere.
　I decided to search for them the next day.
　On the morning of the 10th, I woke up around 7:00 a.m. and departed for Urakami with my uncle. We took the route from Nagasaki Railroad Station via Ōhato, passing a continuous procession of injured people carried on stretchers. After the station, we began to see scorched fields with corpses lying all over. People who had suffered burn injuries over their entire bodies asked us to give them water.
　Finally arriving at Nagasaki Medical College Hospital, we immediately began searching for family members. The damage to the hospital was more serious than I had estimated when viewing it from the hill at the rear the previous day. Although we continued to search until early afternoon, we couldn’t find any traces of my family. We extended our search area to Yamazato-machi, Ōhashi-machi and the neighborhood of Junshin Women’s Vocational School and continued to search for them until evening, but still we could not determine their whereabouts.
　On the 11th, we searched the same places, only to have the same result.
　On the 12th, someone advised us to go to the hospital in Ōmura where many injured people had been accommodated, so we went there. Many injured people were lying there, some beyond recognition, but I could not identify any of my family members. That day, we returned to Nagasaki and went to Irabayashi Elementary School and Shinkōzen Elementary School, which were also accommodation centers for the injured, but to no avail.
　I started to feel restless. While searching for them in Urakami, we saw many blackened corpses. When it seemed obvious that I would not be able to find the remains of my family, I thought of bringing these corpses home instead.
　After that, I gave up on my family and went to the house of my wife’s parents and held a provisional funeral for them. It was a sad and pointless ceremony, without even ashes or mementos. 39

In this way, the long day of the atomic bombing ended.
　On August 10, with the arrival of reinforcement units from the navy and army and neighboring prefectures, the prefectural and municipal governments joined with the military in making concerted efforts to promote active operations throughout the affected area. These operations ranged from handling corpses, relieving victims and emergency repair of facilities, to rescue and relief activities for the injured as well as medical relief. In the early morning of August 10, Nagasaki Prefecture established a local task force for rescuing the injured (local rescue headquarters) on the site of the Ibinokuchi Police Station. In the afternoon of the same day, they established a temporary task force in the Air Defense Headquarters in Tateyama.

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38 Nagasaki Testimonies Publication Committee (ed.), Nagasaki no shōgen daigoshū (Nagasaki Testimonies, Vol.5)(Nagasaki, 1973) p.234-81. ^
39 Nagasaki Testimonies Publication Committee (ed.), Nagasaki no shōgen daigoshū (Nagasaki Testimonies, Vol.5)(Nagasaki, 1973) p.227-9. ^

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