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Part 3 Rescue and Medical Relief

1. Relief Food
2. Disaster Victim Certificates

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1. Relief Food

Only meager food rations were available to the victims of the atomic bombing during the period from August 9 to 18.
　On the day of the atomic bombing, hardtack was rationed in the evening. Police officers and defense unit members searched for injured persons in the air-raid shelters and other places in the surrounding forest and gave the rations to them. However, since the president of the community association, the head of the neighborhood association and leaders of the defense unit had been killed or injured, food rationing was extremely difficult. Meanwhile, survivors gathered at the site of the present-day municipal athletic stadium. In one instance of food rationing, two young survivors including Isono Takeshi (a first-year student at Nagasaki Medical College), went to Nagasaki Police Station in faraway Ōhato, returned with as much hardtack as they could carry on their shoulders, and rationed it among the other survivors. 43
　At the same time, the Nagasaki City government established temporary supply stations in Togiya Elementary School and Irabayashi Elementary School, and the official in charge called out to residents in the old part of the city using a megaphone to notify them that food was being rationed there. However, only a few people came to receive food.
　Although the Nagasaki City government had previously established emergency meal distribution units as part of defense preparations, the distribution of food had become impossible because the entire city was affected by the atomic bombing and also far more people than expected had taken refuge in the old part of the city. Even so, members of community women’s associations distributed meals to the people fleeing from devastated neighborhoods. Kawamura Kiyoshi of the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Steelworks remembered that, “The members of a certain women’s association rolled up their sleeves and rationed rice balls as relief food for the atomic bombing victims. I happily accepted one of the rice balls. The taste was particularly good as I had not eaten anything since breakfast early that morning.”
　The atomic bombing memoir collection Wasurenagusa (Forget-me-not) includes a passage stating that a student from Nagasaki Medical College, who came over Mt. Kompira to take shelter, received rice balls from a women’s association working near Katafuchi-machi. Another example can be found in the memoir of Iwanaga Yūichi (a third-year medical student): “On my way to a shelter, I encountered members of a neighborhood women’s association in Rokasu-machi. They were serving peeled pears on a desk placed on the road. The taste of the slice of pear I put in my mouth is still etched in my memory.”
　On the other hand, although the police department requested neighboring local governments to supply emergency food, relief parties did not make it into the city on that day. Due to an air-raid alarm, the relief party from the village of Koga spent the night in Himi Tunnel, unable to distribute the rice balls they had prepared. The food relief party from Ōmura did not arrive at the air defense headquarters in Tateyama until the middle of the night.
　Hamada Setsurō, formerly chief of the Ōmura City Economy Section, described the situation as follows:

Around 5:00 in the afternoon on August 9th, we received a request for food relief for thousands of bombing victims via the head of the Ōmura Police Station. After consultations with Mayor Yamaguchi and the Chief of Police, I asked several hundred private households in the central area of the city to provide the equivalent of 2.3 liters of cooked rice per household. We gathered the rice in front of the police station, loaded it on a truck and left at 10:00 p.m. as the first food relief party. It took time to get to the affected site because of air-raid alerts and alarms. We arrived at the air defense headquarters in Tateyama close to midnight and waited for instructions. Around 7:00 a.m., I was told at the headquarters to obtain instructions from the head of the Nagasaki Police Station. At the police station, I was ordered to carry the rations to the local rescue headquarters in Ibinokuchi. We arrived at the headquarters via Gotō-machi, Nagasaki Railroad Station and Mifune-machi. After delivering the food to the person in charge, we left for Ōmura at 10:00 a.m.

It has been reported that another food relief party left Isahaya the same evening, but no detailed record remains.
　Thus, it was from the day after the atomic bombing (August 10) that the rationing of relief food in the form of rice balls commenced at the affected site. The ration was two rice balls per person.
　Fukuda Tsurumatsu, formerly the officer in the police department’s economic security section in charge of rationing, described the situation as follows:

Rice balls and radish pickles were prepared for distribution, but transporting them was another matter altogether. Our attempts to carry the food to Nagasaki from Isahaya and Ōmura, using three or four trucks in the heat of summer, were dogged by the food spoilage. The rice cooked the previous night arrived in Nagasaki at 6:00 a.m. at the earliest and sometimes as late as 9:00 or 10:00, and this was distributed to the victims taking shelter in the vicinity by about 10:00 or 11:00. If the destination was a remote place, the arrival would be around noon. Breakfast was therefore canceled and rations only distributed for midday and evening meals. Between 10,000 and 15,000 rations were distributed everyday. 44

The Nagasaki Prefectural Police Department submitted requests for relief food distribution through police stations in the two cities of Ōmura and Isahaya, and villages including Ōkusa, Nagayo, Koga, Yagami, Himi, Mie, and Nagaura. Records indicate that the number of rations requested was 15,000 from Ōmura, 2,000 from Yagami and 1,000 from Himi, and the number of rations requested from other towns and villages would have been comparable to those figures.
　The following table presents the data on food rations distributed after the atomic bombing submitted by Nagasaki City to the United States Strategic Bombing Survey. The breakdown was 52,000 pieces of hardtack and 598,250 rice balls (approximately 1,050 bags). The first four days, that is August 10th to 13th, marked the busiest period for relief parties and medical relief units. It was also during this period that evacuees were rushed to other cities. After the 15th (the end of the war), the problem of food spoilage due to transportation and distribution under the burning sun had gradually been resolved, and ample food was available to the victims. The 10-day relief distribution of food rations was terminated on August 18.

Number of rations distributed after the atomic bombing

Date	Morning	Midday	Evening	Total
August 9	(unit: meals)	25,000	71,000	96,000
10	65,600	67,500	67,500	200,600
11	53,600	47,500	41,300	142,000
12	27,500	28,900	33,400	89,800
13	26,800	23,400	27,000	77,200
14	22,350	5,500	2,100	29,950
15	1,200	1,500	1,500	4,200
16	1,200	1,200	1,200	3,600
17	1,200	1,200	1,200	3,600
18	1,000	1,000	1,000	3,000
Total	200,450	202,600	247,200	650,250

　The distribution of food to patients in the temporary relief stations at Shinkōzen Elementary School and other sites was continued for about two months, with the cooperation of volunteer units and women’s associations working from August 17.

2. Disaster Victim Certificates

Disaster Victim Certificates were issued starting from August 11 or 12. Nagasaki City initially printed 30,000 certificate forms for a worst-case scenario, but the insufficiency of the forms became apparent as soon as issuance commenced, so tens of thousands of additional forms were printed. The certificate was indispensable to various activities, from the receipt of rationed goods and supplies to moving one’s place of residence. The city enlisted 30 or 40 workers from each section of City Hall to form more than 10 teams and to establish temporary offices in various places in the city where the certificates could be issued. The temporary offices in the affected area not only issued Disaster Victim Certificates but also oversaw rationing, and disposal of the dead.
　Yamao Gunji of the Nagasaki City Education Affairs Section, who was in charge of the temporary office at Yamazato Elementary School, remembered the situation as follows:

On the 12th, with two clerical assistants, I placed desks on the dirt floor of the gutted Yamazato Elementary School building and opened the temporary branch office. First of all, I conducted inquiries among local survivors who visited the office and their family members, then issued rationing cards for goods. I also distributed the brown rice rationed by the city. The brown rice alone was not a sufficient source of nutrition, but considering supplies in those days, we were grateful. After one or two days, white rice was rationed. Furthermore, various supplies, such as canned food and milk, were rationed one after another. It was a pity that other foods did not arrive.
　In addition to the distribution of food, I was occupied with rescuing and accommodating victims, especially the injured, giving them medical treatment and disposing of the dead. In addition to help from families of the victims and my acquaintances, reinforcement units from various districts, including the defense units, lent a hand. I should give specific mention to the more than ten students from the shipbuilding school in Kōyagi who helped me to carry injured people on stretchers out of each air-raid shelter and to cremate the dead. I can never thank them enough for their selfless efforts.
　In late August, when rescue and relief activities had ceased, daily necessities including wooden clogs, cigarettes, mosquito nets, clothing, pans, pots, blankets, matches and candles were rationed from emergency stockpiles. The queue of recipients extended from the repository - two warehouses at Hongōchi Kōbu Dam – all the way to Hotarujaya. We implemented rationing methods and measures suited to the occasion, distributing daily necessities based on each Disaster Victim Certificate which said: ‘Give pots to five-member households and mosquito nets to 8-10 member households.’ 45

　Sugimoto Kamekichi described the situation as follows:

Over six months after the atomic bombing, the Shiroyama neighborhood was still isolated. We were not able to establish contact with City Hall. In addition, we had no electricity or water. The only things we could get were a tiny amount of liquor and tobacco, which were intermittently supplied by the Inasa Police Station. However, I was overjoyed to receive these supplies. If I remember correctly, I was notified by City Hall about 20 days after the atomic bombing that soy sauce would be distributed. They told me to get soy sauce from a supply depot in Furu-machi. Since I hadn’t seen real soy sauce for months, the moment I heard the notification I had my assistants hurry to the supply depot. However, by the time they arrived there, no soy sauce remained. They trudged back dejected. Around the same time, I was also notified that furniture would be distributed at Hongōchi Teibu Dam. I was excited at the notification, wondering what kind of furniture they would give us, and went all the way to Hongōchi. However, again we got nothing, because when we arrived, distribution had already ended. 46

In the devastated Urakami district, the railroad and streetcars providing the principal means of transportation had been crippled by the atomic bomb, making it necessary for people to walk in and out of the district. Hongōchi was about seven kilometers from Shiroyama. Sugimoto Kamekichi described the circumstances as follows: “My legs felt very heavy on my way back to Shiroyama, after I had been told that all the goods had been distributed. I trudged back thinking about how much I detested war.”

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43 Shirabe Raisuke (ed.), Wasurenagusa (Forget-Me-Not) Vol.5 (Aaru Shobō, 1974) ^
44 Hamada Masao ed., Keiko (Warning Drum) Vol.49, No.3 (Nagasaki Prefectural Police Headquarters Education Department, 1971), p.47 ^
45 Nagasaki Testimonies Publication Committee (ed.), Nagasaki no shōgen daihasshū (Nagasaki Testimonies, Vol.8, 1973) p.183 ^
46 Sugimoto Kamekichi, Genshigumo no shita ni (Under the Mushroom Cloud) (Sugimoto Kamekichi, 1972), pp.91-2 ^

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