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Part 3 Rescue and Medical Relief

1. Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard Aid Unit
2. Mitsubishi Arms Dōzaki Factory Aid Unit
3. Kawanami Shipyard Aid Unit
4. Kawanami Advanced Shipbuilding School Militia Unit
5. Fukahori Shipyard Aid Units

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1. Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard Aid Unit

Immediately after the atomic bombing, each affected Mitsubishi-affiliated factory, as previously stated, commenced rescue operations for persons trapped under the rubble of buildings. Each aid unit carried the seriously injured on stretchers, either individually or in cooperation with reinforcements and other rescuers. However, full-fledged aid activities commenced only from August 10.
　After daybreak, the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard dispatched aid units to affiliated steelworks and arms factories. In each department and section, small-scale aid units were organized and dispatched to the Saiwaimachi Factory and factories established in temporary locations. Mitsubishi Electric Works also hurriedly dispatched aid units from its main factory to branch factories and temporary facilities.
　The first Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard aid unit was divided into approximately 100 individuals for dispatch to the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Steelworks and approximately 300 for the Mitsubishi Arms Factory. The unit was organized in response to the desperate request of two messengers who had made their way over the mountain the previous night (August 9th) and arrived at the Mitsubishi Arms Factory before dawn on the 10th.
　As previously stated, Mitsubishi Arms Factory was located in the hypocenter zone where the greatest number of fatalities occurred. The memoir of Kusano Sueshirō, sub-chief of the First Engineering Division at the factory, sheds light on the activities of the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard aid unit and other units dispatched to the Mitsubishi Arms Factory:

At around midnight (or 3:00 a.m., according to another source) on August 9, an aid unit of 300 members from Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard arrived and brought a large quantity of hardtack for food. We were as happy as sufferers in hell seeing the Buddha. Groans were heard here and there. However, it was too dark to do anything. After due consultation, we decided to wait for dawn and then commence rescue activities.
　At dawn on August 10 we awoke in a huddle with the injured people, who were on the edge of death. In the first gray light, the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard aid unit broke into several teams and initiated rescue operations, searching through the rubble in the direction of the groans. The sound of the sawing of toppled pillars and the battering of obstacles echoed in the morning breeze. (The aid unit headquarters had been established in the burned-out main building of Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard. Unit Chief and Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard Administration Director: Mori Yonejirō, Vice Unit Chief: Ōhashi Hiroshi)
　Aid units from outside Nagasaki began to arrive one after another, including the Dōzaki unit with 100 members (or 300 members according to one source), led by the foreman Mr. Ido, and the tunnel unit led by unit chief Mr. Ono, who was wearing a white headband as well as a Japanese sword in a sheath at his waist. Approximately 100 crewmembers of a coastal defense ship, 20 members of anti-aircraft gun units and three members from the patrol unit, including Warrant Soldier Ito, had also arrived, and I enlisted all of them to engage in rescue operations. However, I asked the Dōzaki unit to help deal with the situation at Morimachi Plant, and the shipbuilding unit to send 200 people daily to Morimachi Plant. Of the 16 injured persons found in the collapsed main building, six died while being rescued.
　From August 11, the newly arriving aid units included 100 members of the 21st Naval Air Arsenal, 150 members (250 members according to one source) of the Kawatana Arsenal, 30 members of Hario Marine Corps, and 30 members of Kurume Military Hospital army doctor unit. I asked the Kurume Military Hospital army doctor unit to assist at Morimachi Factory.
　On August 13, 100 members of Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard aid unit, including the foreman Mr. Takesawa, arrived.
　Two trucks piled with relief supplies arrived from Kawatana Arsenal. 51

The following is the memoir of a 16-year-old student named Nakagawa Kazuo who was rescued by an aid unit:

I had been assigned to Mitsubishi Nagasaki Arms Factory Ōhashi Plant since the year before (1944) as part of the mobilization of students to work in factories.
　Glancing through a wide-open window, I saw a bright yellow light, as if several hundred camera flashes had gone off all at once. It was a dazzlingly intense flash.
　Uttering a cry, I automatically thrust my chair aside and hit the floor, losing consciousness.
　When I came to my senses, I found myself in complete darkness. The only body part I could move was my fingertips. The rest of my body was pinned under the rubble, holding me down as tightly as a vise. The debris of the ceiling, beams and walls must have piled on top of me after I rose from the chair and fell to the floor. I lay on my side facing left, with my right hand twisted behind my back.
　‘What on earth happened? How could it have become like this? Did a bomb explode outside the window? I didn’t hear any explosion.’
　For a while it was very quiet, as if a great silence reigned over the world. However, the eerie quiet was soon disrupted by cries and screams here and there. I did not know what was happening, only that I was pinned under the rubble of the collapsed building. I had to get out of there as soon as possible, and tried to do so, but I was stuck. I called for help, joining the chorus of men’s voices crying for friends and coworkers and women’s tearful pleas for their mothers.
　I could move my mouth. I assumed that I would be rescued soon, because the education and accounting sections, as well as the technology section, were near the labor section where I had been working. However much I called for help, though, no reply was heard. The only sound I could hear was the grievous cries of other people in the same situation as me. In time, everyone began to realize that this was not an easy situation from which we would soon be rescued. In the intervals of calling for help, people began to encourage and cheer each other up. However, not knowing how much time had passed, or what was going on outside, we began to think that we would not be rescued.
　Pinned under huge heavy objects, I could not budge from my waist to my toes, and I was becoming numb, with both of my arms in unnatural positions. I yearned to stretch myself and turn on my side. As I was thinking these things, I heard lumber being dragged and moved high above.
　I also heard someone grunting ‘heave-ho, heave-ho’ somewhere far away from me. The voices were not great in number, probably people who had crawled out on their own. They seemed to be removing the rubble nearby, calling to people underneath.
　The tip of my right hand, twisted around my back and numb, seemed to touch something moving. Although I was desperately trying to move my body and stretch my hand, I could not do it. It was impossible to move even a centimeter.
　The trapped people gradually began to feel anxious, praying for the early arrival of the rescue teams and thinking, ‘When will they finally come and help us?’ ‘Why haven’t they come yet?’ However, there were fewer cries for help now, and women were weeping, probably due to pain and fatigue, or because they had given up.
　In such a situation I felt like singing, and said, ‘Hey! This is Nakagawa. I am going to sing. If anybody knows this song, join me.’
　What I started to sing was neither a war song nor a school song. It was a popular song, called ‘Jūsan-ya’ that I had memorized. In retrospect, I feel ridiculous, wondering why I sang such a song. It may have been a subtle change in the mentality of a person looking death in the face. For people in normal circumstances, such thoughts cannot be understood.
　My friend Yanahara sang the song with me intermittently, along with a few other people. Tears welled up in my eyes. Thinking that this might be my last song, that I would die singing ‘Jūsan-ya,’ I finished the first through the third verse without a mistake.
　After that, I didn’t speak much. The others also became quiet. I started thinking that I could die without suffering if I could only fall asleep. ‘That’s it. I’m going to sleep.’ I tried to sleep, thinking nothing.
　My entire body had become numb. I thought of my family. It was hard to sleep. It occurred to me that people think about relatives in a situation like this.
　I don’t know how many hours had passed when it suddenly became very noisy and I could hear many people moving about.
　‘We’ve come to rescue you. Keep strong.’
　I was very happy to hear the voice and thought, ‘I will finally be able to get out of here. I’ll survive. Everything is going to be OK.’
　‘Hello! I’m pinned under the rubble. Help me!’
　‘All right, please wait a little while.’
　The people engaged in rescue operations and those waiting to be rescued encouraged each other during the hours of rescue operation.
　It seemed that the injured were being rescued one by one from the edges of the collapsed building. People were moving to and fro on the rubble above us. In time, I heard the rattling sound of things being removed from over my head, and something like sand poured over my face. Just as I closed my eyes instinctively, light from outside poured in over my head. I clearly saw the blue sky through the small opening. The opening on the sky grew larger as lumber and sheets of wood were removed one after another.
　Before long, air from outside entered the opening near my toes. About 30 minutes after that, the weights that had pinned my legs were removed and I was grasped tightly around my ankles by strong hands.
　In this way I was rescued from the chasm of death. If the building had caught fire, what would have become of me? Probably I would have been burnt alive. In that sense,
I was lucky. 52

2. Mitsubishi Arms Dōzaki Factory Aid Unit

The Dōzaki Factory was the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Arms Factory dock site, located at the northern edge of Nagayo Village.
　Ōi Takeshi described the factory’s aid unit activities as follows in his memoir:

Approximately 300 members from the factory’s aid unit left Shirahige at 7:30 a.m. on August 10. Since cars and trains were not available, they walked past Nagayo Railroad Station and arrived at Ōhashi Factory. The factory buildings, which had collapsed like dominoes, were completely destroyed. In the ruins, I followed the command of Naval Lieutenant Izumi Shūhei, who had a navy flag thrown over the shoulder on his uniform. The aid unit, divided into the 1st Company and 2nd Company, initiated operations to accommodate the seriously injured, the slightly injured and corpses.
　At first, we had to move the corpses aside in order to proceed with the operations. While doing that, we found the body of Counselor Masumoto Kōnosuke, cremated it in the schoolyard at Junshin Women’s Vocational School and handed the ashes to his family.
　On the following day (August 11), the persons in charge of torpedo type 91 were ordered to go to the Ōhashi Plant, and our group, in charge of torpedo type 95, was ordered to the Morimachi Plant. On our way to the factory near Ōhashi, I was saddened to see a man pushing a bicycle with a child’s corpse tied to the handlebars and two children’s corpses loaded onto the luggage carrier at the back.
　The first thing we had to do at the Morimachi Plant was again to take care of the injured. We picked up dozens of factory workers in the hillside air-raid shelter in Zenza-machi. All of them were injured. Very few persons were able-bodied. Encouraging the injured as best we could, we carried them on stretchers to the factory office. However, as time passed, these people began to die one after another. In the afternoon, we brought slabs of wood from the lumberyard on the factory premises, created caskets and cinerary containers, and cremated the corpses in the ruins of a fire in Zenza-machi in the evening.
　During the cremation, American warplanes flew overhead but we continued our operations, running into an air-raid shelter several times. 53

3. Kawanami Shipyard Aid Unit

After the atomic bombing, the factories and schools affiliated with Kawanami Industries Co. made concerted efforts to provide aid in Nagasaki City. The Kawanami Kōyagishima Shipyard, Kawanami Advanced Shipbuilding School and Fukahori Shipyard across the strait were all located in the area outside Nagasaki Harbor, as far as 10 km from the hypocenter. The relatively light damage to those facilities made systematic aid activities easier.
　Since the atomic bombing had rendered long distance telephone calls impossible, the headquarters of Kawanami Industries Co. (Umegasaki-machi, Nagasaki City) flew homing pigeons to Kōyagishima Shipyard to convey information about the damages suffered in Nagasaki. In response to this information, Kōyagishima Shipyard dispatched an emergency ship at 2:00 p.m., evacuated its workers who had commuted from the inner city, established the Kawanami Shipyard Aid Headquarters in Daikōji Temple in Imakago-machi, and made efforts to accommodate the families of its workers who had been affected by the atomic bombing.
　Kawanami Sotoji (headquarters’ chief manager), Motoyama Kōji (house police division chief) and Saikawa Genji (steel manufacturing section chief) managed the Kawanami Shipyard Aid Headquarters. Mr. Saikawa assumed leadership on-site.
　The Kawanami Shipyard aid unit from Kōyagishima began full-fledged operations on August 10. The unit was divided into 12 companies for the entire shipyard, with one company (150 members) per plant. Around 1,500 members took the field that day. In addition, more than 10 trucks were mobilized for transportation.
　After that, Mr. Saikawa accompanied Governor Nagano, Nagasaki Prefectural Guard Unit Chief Mr. Toyoshima (criminal affairs section chief), and Police Department Security Section Chief Mr. Kamichika Shinobu to the local relief headquarters in Ibinokuchi. Mr. Saikawa suggested that the clearing of roads should be the first step in aid activities. Accordingly, half the members of the Kawanami Shipyard Aid Unit immediately began removing debris from the roads. This fact is mentioned as follows in the Final Reports of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey:

On the morning of the 10th, with the aid of workers from Kawanami Shipyard, the Guard Unit began clearing the rubble to create a 6.5-foot (two-meter)-wide path, fighting the intense heat from the smoking flames. On August 15, the roads were cleared for two-way traffic. Three days after the atomic bombing, the Nagasaki Prefectural Civil Engineering Department began clearing roads under the general command of the Air Defense Section Chief. 54

The remaining half of the aid unit broke into small teams (each with 10 members and two stretchers) and began rescuing the injured. Initial priority was given to families of Kawanami Shipyard workers in the rescue operation, but this distinction was later removed.
　The accommodation of injured people by the Kawanami Shipyard aid unit was conducted at the Buddhist temple Taikōji. The main hall of the temple quickly filled to capacity with the dead and dying. After that, the injured were transferred to Kawakō Hospital on Kōyagishima.
　The activities of the Kawanami Shipyard aid unit continued until between August 10 and 14, during which time the unit members gradually decreased in number. After the 15th, the number of unit members became so low that the aid activities had to be terminated.
　The problem of cinerary containers was mentioned previously. Food for aid unit members, injured persons and shipbuilding school volunteer unit members during the aid activities was prepared at the company cafeteria on Kōyagishima by mobilized staff members, and it was carried to the city everyday by the transportation unit.
　The following is the memoir of Nishihara Kōichi, who was working in the transportation unit at the time:

In those days, I worked as a truck driver at the Kawanami Shipyard Transportation Unit on Kōyagishima. Just after 11:00 a.m., I saw a sudden bluish-white flash, like a spark from a short-circuited high-voltage line.
　Assuming that bombs had been dropped nearby, three of us ran into Nagahama Tunnel. After a while, we received various snippets of information.
　Finally, we received the following instructions from our company: ‘Nagasaki seems to have been bombed. Those who commute from Nagasaki should be on board a company ship departing at 1:00 p.m. Those who find no damage to their homes and no casualties among family members must assemble in front of Shōwakaku in Ōhato for aid unit activities,’ and ‘Kawanami Shipbuilding Vocational School (“Nagasaki Shipbuilding Vocational School” at the time) dormitory students, all of whom are safe, must participate in the aid unit activities.’
　After a while, we managed to board a company ship and to land at Ōura Matsugae Pier. On my way home, I saw that the Nagasaki Prefectural Office Building and the Tsukimachi Market were burning. Since I could not bear the heat, I began running toward my home when I reached Hamanomachi Nakadōri Street.
　Although my son had a slight cut on the back of his neck, I was relieved to see that my wife and six-year old daughter were safe.
　After a meal the following day, I walked to Shōwakaku in Ōhato, as instructed by my company. However, no one else commuting from Nagasaki was there, probably because everyone except me had suffered injuries among family members or damage to their homes. A four-ton charcoal-gas powered vehicle (truck) from Kawanami Fukahori Shipyard came by, and I boarded it for the railroad station with students from the shipbuilding school.
　Looking in the direction of Urakami from the railroad station, I saw that Urakami, Takenokubo, Shiroyama and other neighborhoods had turned into scorched fields, except for a rusty gas tank in Yachiyo-machi and the chimneys at Nagasaki Medical College Hospital which had been towering on a hill but were now bent at the middle. There was not even a road to drive our truck on. I had the students remove the obstacles from the road so that we could move forward. Despite our efforts to find and pick up survivors by slowing down the truck, we could not find any. Looking around, I saw a pile of corpses scorched beyond recognition, including bodies on a wagon and one body still in a bicycle-drawn cart. There was nothing I could do.
　At around 5:00 in the evening, we drove into the vicinity of present-day Hamaguchi-machi. On our way from Hamaguchi-machi to Matsuyama-machi, we found a group of survivors, mostly injured, in an air-raid shelter created by hollowing out the cliff wall. We had 20 to 30 of them lie down on the floor of the truck. Following the instructions of the Nagasaki City Defense Unit, we brought them to Nagasaki Medical College Hospital. However, the hospital wing was gutted, and the doctors and nurses, who had been exposed to the explosion, did not seem able to give sufficient care to the survivors. We dropped the injured off at the hospital entrance, asked the doctors and nurses to take care of them for the time being, and returned to the affected site.
　Thanks to the selfless work of the students, the road was cleared enough for our truck to pass. We pulled the truck over at a point near Ōhashi and searched for survivors again. We rescued 50 to 60 people from the riverbanks between Ōhashi and Shiroyama, and by 8:30 p.m. we had transferred them in four trips to the relief stations at Shinkōzen and Irabayashi Elementary Schools.
　At around 8:00 a.m. the next day (August 11), we searched for survivors in the areas of Ōhashi, Takenokubo and Shiroyama, but could not find any. I decided that I had no choice but to collect dead bodies and started doing so, but I heard the faint cry of a baby from where I was standing, above an air-raid shelter with its opening covered with debris. Clearing away the debris, I took a look inside the shelter and found a mother lying dead but still firmly holding her five or six month-old baby. I asked for help from another relief unit member and, with the baby in the front passenger seat, drove to Nagasaki Medical College Hospital. I wonder if the baby survived. That experience is my most vivid memory, not only of relief operations, but also of the entire wartime. 55

4. Kawanami Advanced Shipbuilding School Militia Unit

The members of the Kawanami Advanced Shipbuilding School Militia Unit were also dispatched to Nagasaki on August 10. The main focus of their aid operations was disposal of the dead. According to the chapter entitled “Disposal of the Dead” in the governor’s Nagasaki Atomic Bombing Damage Report: “Police officers, defense unit members, army units, students of Kawanami Advanced Shipbuilding School and other national militia units engaged in unearthing and collecting bodies…”
　The memoir of Yamaguchi Masuto, an instructor in the school at the time, sheds light as follows on the activities of the school militia unit:

On the 10th, the day after the atomic bombing, the ship Kawakō-maru left Ōhato wharf on time. Upon arriving in Mategaura, I received a message saying, ‘Since the factory is temporarily closed, a relief unit was organized and sent to Nagasaki. Students should be dispatched with them.’ I immediately contacted the school, and within 20 minutes 120 students had gathered and joined the relief unit, with Inoue Tsutomu as company leader. After returning to Ōhato, we went to help deal with the situation under the command of the police. I accompanied the group part of the way, but, unable to walk due to blisters on my feet, I entrusted the role of supervisor to the teacher Yamamoto Noboru and left for home.
　On the 11th, I rejoined the student unit at Ōhato, accompanied them to the relief headquarters at the police station in Ibinokuchi, and then engaged in disposal of the dead in the area west of the national highway.
　Some bodies were scorched black; others were only half burned or had no injuries at all. The pressure generated by the blast had been so great that that the eyeballs had popped out of the heads of the some of the bodies in the area near the hypocenter. Some had their intestines hanging out, a sight so revolting that we averted our eyes. The bodies were decomposing in the glaring sun to such a degree that we could hardly move them. The stench was so strong that it numbed our sense of smell.
　We handled about 100 corpses on the day of the atomic bombing. We brought them together at a place for identification by their relatives and cremated those remaining unclaimed. It took a long time to cremate them because we had to pile up scraps of lumber in an open space. One student told me, ‘If no company hires me after graduation, I will be an undertaker.’ Corpses were decomposing and giving off such a strong stench that I strictly warned students against directly touching them. I made them wear gloves and use a hook when handling corpses. Those students, who worked briskly and efficiently in such a situation, looked noble to me.
　From the 12th, we established the aid division in a classroom of Yamazato Elementary School and engaged in bringing the seriously injured from the surrounding area to the school as well as in sorting corpses. In front of the schoolyard, I saw a woman standing beside the swollen corpse of a man who had died sitting upright. She said, in tears, ‘My husband was the chief of the 6th group of the Nagasaki Defense Unit. I’d been looking for him for days. A man told me that he thought he’d seen him on the roof of this school building. I came all the way here and finally found him.’ The body was too enlarged to move. The woman and I piled blocks of wood on the body and cremated it. Other cremations were being conducted in a similar way around every corner; blue flames were billowing here and there.
　On the 13th and 14th, I engaged in the same operation. I appeared at the relief headquarters in Ibinokuchi at 10:00 a.m., reported the general condition of the day’s operation at 3:00 p.m., and was dismissed. Such a task did not seem to be hard work, but the actual physical fatigue was great. I was so exhausted by the time I returned to Nishiyama that I had to take a rest and drink water before entering the house. I prepared a canteen because I felt very thirsty in the field. When I checked in at headquarters at the end of each day of work, I found a keg of rice wine with the cover removed and a dipper. I took a rest there, enjoying the wine.
　At the end of the operations on the 14th, someone pleaded with me to let him take a day off because the fatigue was simply too great. So I decided that August 15th would be a holiday and dismissed everyone. However, the Emperor’s announcement of Japan’s unconditional surrender that day automatically brought our work to an end.

5. Fukahori Shipyard Aid Units

One of the Fukahori Shipyard aid units was at work on the night of the atomic bombing. The following is an excerpt from the memoir of Iwaasa Sadao, general manager of the Fukahori Shipyard Hospital at the time:

I don’t remember who gave Fukahori Shipyard the instructions, but on the night of August 9, the aid unit headed to Nagasaki riding five or six mobilized trucks. The following morning, the unit accommodated approximately 20 injured people in the underground hospital that had been dug into the hillside behind Fukahori Shipyard. All of those people had sustained burn injuries. Many of them were burned beyond recognition. Although I had special volunteer nurses attend to the most seriously injured, they died one after another. When the last remaining injured person passed away one month later, it meant that all of the injured people who had been accommodated in the hospital had died. It fell on me to cremate several bodies.

Another unit began to work from August 10. The following is an excerpt from the memoir of Hamada Akira, a mobilized worker in the Fukahori Shipyard at the time:

All the workers who had been mobilized for labor service at factories and were living in the Takachiho Dormitory at Fukahori Shipyard were instructed to join in aid operations in Nagasaki. They broke into several groups traveling by truck and ship and assembled at Ōhato wharf. We engaged in clearing roads, rescuing the injured and disposing of the dead in the area from Urakami Railroad Station to Nagasaki Medical College Hospital in Sakamoto-machi. The workers made daily round trips between the devastated site and the dormitory and continued operations until August 15, the final day of World War II.

Although the total number of dispatched workers is unknown, other units seem to have been dispatched as well.

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51 Kusano Sueshirō, Genbaku zengo (Before and After the Atomic Bombing), edited by Shirai Hideo (1969), Vol.21. ^
52 Nagasaki Testimonies Publication Committee (ed.), Nagasaki no shōgen daisanshū (Nagasaki Testimonies, Vol.3)(Nagasaki, 1973) p.29-34 ^
53 Ōi Takeshi, Genbaku zengo (Before and After the Atomic Bombing) Vol.18, edited by Hideo Shirai) ^
54 The United States Strategic Bombing Survey ^
55 Nagasaki Testimonies Publication Committee (ed.), Nagasaki no shōgen daiyonshū (Nagasaki Testimonies, Vol.4)(Nagasaki, 1973) p.44-6 ^

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