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Part 3 Rescue and Medical Relief

1. People and Time Period for Dispatch
2. Saga Prefectural Police Aid Unit

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First, the distinction between the words kyūen (aid) and kyūgo (relief) should be clarified. The two terms as used herein are defined as follows:
Aid: Rescuing and transporting the injured, disposal of the dead, transportation and supply of relief food, cleaning of the affected area and facility restoration work
Relief: Accommodating the injured, first aid and medical services, including medical treatment

1. People and Time Period for Dispatch

The police department, as previously mentioned, was the main promoter of aid activities. At Inasa Police Station, located on the opposite bank of Urakami River 2.4 kilometers south of the hypocenter, several people, including the police chief Ōmagari Yoshiki were injured, and four died in Shiroyama and Takenokubo, the districts of jurisdiction. It was under these circumstances that the Inasa Police Station conducted aid activities. The following is an excerpt from the memoir of Uchino Kikuji, then assistant chief of the Inasa Police Station:

On the morning of the fourth day after the atomic bombing, teachers from Keihō Middle School came to request help in unearthing the bodies of the school principal and assistant principal. I asked my officers to go to a construction company I knew to borrow crowbars, saws, hammers and axes. Fortunately, we received four police cadets as reinforcements before going to the Keihō Middle School lecture hall to exhume the principal and assistant principal. The building was the former barracks of the Heavy Artillery Battalion, a sturdy two-story structure. In addition, the north wing had collapsed over the ruins of the south wing, making it necessary to cut through the debris of two buildings. The length of the borrowed saws was only half the width of the beams and made a futile squeaking sound; the beams could not be cut as we wished. We took all day just to locate the decomposing bodies by their smell, and we left the site after temporarily suspending the operation in the evening.
　The following day, we started again in the early morning, but the corpses could not be pulled out easily and the operation was extremely difficult. We were finally able to recover the bodies and to carry them to an open space in front of the temporary police station for cremation.
　On the day of the atomic bombing, we carried the bodies of police sergeant Mr. Kuriyama and his wife and police officer Mr. Sakai, who had been killed at Inasa Elementary School, to the space in front of the school and cremated them there. Mr. Kuriyama’s eldest son, a first-year middle school student and Mr. Sakai’s son, a first-year student at the Isahaya Agricultural School, were on hand. The ashes were laid to rest in the Inasa Police Station Sergeant’s Office. As the two sons had no place to stay the night, I put them up at my home.
　After that, I helped 21 injured residents from outside Nagasaki City to board a train for transportation from Urakami Station to the army hospitals in Ōmura and Takeo. I had one police officer and one member of the defense unit attend to them on the way to the hospital. My heart ached every time I saw a horribly burned atomic bomb victim. Thinking it my mission to deal with this, I did my best to provide relief for victims, encouraging myself as best I could. 50

There were 20 fatalities among police officers and office workers at the Nagasaki Police Department. Regarding the firehouse, 12 people died of the late effects of radiation exposure.
　As for the number of police officers, firefighters and defense unit members who were dispatched to the affected area and played a central role in aid operations, the “Nagasaki Atomic Bombing Damage Report” (8th interim report) gives the following information as to the situation as of August 13:

Dispatched from Nagasaki City
Police Officers: 578 (including 96 members of the police department, 61 members of the guard unit, 130 cadets, and others from the Special Rescue Unit, police officers of Nagasaki, Umegasaki and Inasa police stations)
Firemen: 160 (including 50 cadets)
Members of defense units: 465
Members of transportation volunteer labor units: 78 (including members of the repair volunteer labor unit)
National food protection units: 180
Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard worker units: 1,510 (engaged in cleaning factories related to Mitsubishi)
School cooperation unit: 75

Dispatched from outside the city
Police officers: 88
Members of defense units: 497
Members of national militia units: 346
Members of emergency work units: 40

School cooperation volunteer labor units: 107
Members of Kawanami Advanced Shipbuilding School militia units: 210
(as well as 350 people who cleaned the houses of affected workers related to Mitsubishi)

Military and naval forces and other reinforcements
Nagasaki Fortress Headquarters
Army work units: 150
Army telegram units: one company
Army infantry: two companies

Kurume Military Hospital relief units: 177
The 21st Naval Aeronautical Arsenal workers’ units: 150
Kawatana Naval Dockyard workers’ units: 250

The period of dispatch was 10 days from August 9, the day of the atomic bombing, to the 18th. The disposal of dead bodies, the most difficult task of all, came to an end on the 18th.
　Police aid units, reinforcements from Saga and other prefectures, not to mention each police station in Nagasaki Prefecture, were dispatched to the affected areas as previously stated.

2. Saga Prefectural Police Aid Unit

Around 6:00 p.m. on August 9, the Saga Prefectural Police Department was asked by the Nagasaki Prefectural Police Department to dispatch a reinforcement unit. The Saga Prefectural Police Aid Unit was immediately organized with about 175 members in total, including 25 members of special guard units and 150 persons from police stations in Saga, Karatsu, Imari and Arita. The chief of the aid unit was Shinzaki Kiyoshi, deputy captain in the police department security section.
　Along with two doctors and two nurses from the prefectural office, the members of the main Saga unit boarded four trucks commissioned from civilians and departed around 9:00 p.m. that night under an air-raid alarm. After passing Kashima, they camped in the area of Hizen-ōura because the headlights of the trucks might attract the attention of B-29 bombers. At around 8:00 a.m. the next morning they arrived at the Nagasaki Police Department at Katsuyama Elementary School and were joined there by the Karatsu, Imari and Arita units, which had come by a different route.
　Their mission was initially to transport the injured. However, divided into several groups of four or five members, they conducted other activities such as post-mortem identification and the handing over of bodies to the bereaved, continuously for three days from August 10 to 12 in the Urakami District, without any essential mode of transportation. There is no accurate activity record and the number of dispatched members is unclear, but they handled as many as several hundred bodies.
　The aid unit members lodged in Katsuyama Elementary School. Hardly sleeping, and with only one rice ball per meal, they were too busy with the disposal of the dead to cook the food that they had carried with them (a week’s rations for each member).
　While the unit members were on duty, the accompanying doctors and nurses were treating the injured at the relief station established in Katsuyama Elementary School.
　Around 10:00 a.m. on August 12, the Saga District suffered an air raid and the Saga Prefectural Police Department was hit directly by a bomb. Three persons perished, including Ōkuma Sadakuni, the police department chief. Nagasaki City received news of the air raid in the evening of that day. As a result of a meeting with the Nagasaki Prefectural Police Department, the Saga Prefectural Police Aid Unit decided to return immediately. However, the unit could not leave for Saga that night because the commissioned trucks had already been returned. The unit members left for Saga by train early in the morning on the 13th.
　Records kept by the Saga Prefectural Police indicated that police aid units also arrived from Fukuoka, Kumamoto, Oita, Miyazaki and Kagoshima on the 10th or 11th.

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50 Hamada Masao ed., Keiko (Warning Drum) Vol.49, No.6 (Nagasaki Prefectural Police Headquarters Education Department, 1971), p.52-3 ^

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