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Part 3: Rescue and Medical Relief

1. Medical Relief in Suburban Areas of Nagasaki
2. Sasebo Naval Hospital Isahaya Branch
3. Medical Relief in Isahaya City
4. Ōmura Naval Hospital
5. Kawatana Naval Kyōsai Hospital
6. Hario Marine Corps Temporary Accommodation and Hario Marine Corps Relief Team
7. Sasebo Naval Hospital
8. Sasebo Naval Kyōsai Hospital

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1. Medical Relief in Suburban Areas of Nagasaki

The main routes from Nagasaki City to other towns and villages at the time of the atomic bombing were Togitsu Road, Mogi Road, Himi Tunnel, Tomachi Tunnel and Fukuda Road.
　In addition to transportation via trains and trucks, the atomic bomb victims followed these routes hoping to take shelter in suburban areas. Especially on the Togitsu Road, which was directly connected to the hypocenter, continuous lines of injured people and evacuees headed out of the city. Going north along Togitsu Road from the hypocenter area, they could reach the nearby town of Togitsu if they turned northeast along the railroad tracks, or another adjacent town called Nagayo. (Both towns were villages at the time of the atomic bombing.) In Togitsu Village, the injured were carried in one after another by truck from a short time after the atomic bombing.

Togitsu Village
　The first part of Ka Hospital’s “List of Atomic Bomb Victims” starts with the phrase, “Around 12:20, a woman died.” This seems to refer to a woman who perished on one of the trucks arriving in the village and indicates that the injured began to arrive in Togitsu Village from around this time, little more than an hour after the atomic bombing. The injured were accommodated at the Buddhist temple Mangyōji, Togitsu Elementary School, and youth clubs. The number of victims accommodated at the above-mentioned facilities and the situation of the disposal of the dead can be briefly summarized as follows.

	Togitsu Elementary School	Mangyōji
No. accommodated	521	358
Fatalities	62	45
(Those buried)	47	37
(Those claimed by family)	15	863

The injured were accommodated in the above facilities until August 18, when they were transferred to Shinkōzen Elementary School.

Nagayo Village
　This village was in a situation similar to that of Togitsu. After a while, the injured began to arrive one after another from Nagasaki, and people receiving them became extremely busy accommodating them and attending to their wounds. However, since there were no physicians in the village at the time of the atomic bombing, the injured received first-aid treatment from orderlies without any professional experience. In this village, the injured were carried in from the railroad station using all the bicycle-drawn carts available in the village. Survivors were successively accommodated at a temporary medical facility established at Nagayo Elementary School. Members of the local women’s association, youth association and defense unit were mobilized to provide assistance. On the day after the atomic bombing, a Saga Army Hospital unit arrived.
　In addition to Nagayo Elementary School, a recreation facility called Banshō-en (near Michino’o Park), Kōda Branch School and the Nagasaki Administrative Division of the Moji Railroad Division served as temporary clinics. Many atomic bomb victims sought refuge with farming families and received treatment there. It is said that the platforms and lobby at Michino’o Railroad Station were swamped with the injured immediately after the atomic bombing. The temporary relief center in front of the station opened on August 11, the day after the unit’s arrival.

	Nagayo Elementary School
Number accommodated	782
Fatalities	96
(Those Cremated or Buried)	91
(Those claimed by family)	5

Mogi-machi
　The road in front of the burned-out Nagasaki Prefectural Office led southeast to the neighboring town of Mogi (currently part of Nagasaki City) via Tagami Pass. That town mainly received injured Mitsubishi employees and family members carried by naval trucks. The injured were accommodated in the former Japanese restaurants Kangetsu (later Shiomisō) and Bōyōsō, as well as Tagami Hospital. The breakdown of the approximate number accommodated is as follows:

Kangetsu: 50

Bōyōsō: 30

Tagami Hosptal: 30

　The injured interned at the restaurants passed away one after another. The unclaimed bodies were carried on bicycle-drawn carts to a beach near Tateishi and cremated. Some bodies were also carried to Kitaura by boat and cremated on the beach there.

Yagami Village
　Present-day Highway 34 led east from Nagasaki to the village of Yagami (currently part of Nagasaki City) via Himi Tunnel. Since the village was located along the main road between Nagasaki and Isahaya, many groups of evacuees arrived there. The names of 189 patients appear on the list compiled by Yagamimori Clinic. Moreover, the injured were accommodated for about three days in the local mausoleum, the nightkeeper's room at Yagami Elementary School, and the principal’s residence.
　In every town and village in the suburban areas, the atomic bomb victims were accommodated and attended to by groups or individuals.

2. Sasebo Naval Hospital Isahaya Branch

Isahaya City, located on the northeast route approximately 25 kilometers from Nagasaki, was a transportation hub of Nagasaki Prefecture. In those days, the Sasebo Naval Hospital Isahaya Branch had been established near Isahaya Railroad Station.
　The closest military-related hospital to Nagasaki, this facility dispatched a medical relief unit to Nagasaki a mere three or four hours after the atomic bombing. The hospital continuously received groups of injured people arriving from Nagasaki. The hospital remained in full operation under the branch director Dr. Daijō, providing medical relief to the atomic bomb victims.

Dispatching Medical Relief Units
　The military physician Dr. Katsu Masatoshi was appointed relief unit leader and ordered to dispatch a unit to Nagasaki. He hurriedly headed for Nagasaki on a bus provided by the Japanese Red Cross Hospital and fully loaded with medical supplies and equipment for treatment, along with a few military physicians, six or seven health personnel, approximately 30 stretcher unit members and approximately 10 Japanese Red Cross Society nurses. The bus departed around 2 or 3 p.m. on August 9. Upon arriving in Nagasaki, the unit divided into four groups, initiating relief activities at Irabayashi Elementary School under the instructions of Nagasaki City Defense Headquarters, and performing emergency medical treatment in cooperation with medical staff in the city. The stretcher unit took an active role in the Mt. Kompira area.

Activities of the Isahaya Branch
　Meanwhile, after dispatching the relief unit, the Isahaya Branch received a message from Isahaya Railroad Station that many injured people had arrived. The hospital staff had still not finished preparing to receive patients when the seriously injured were successively carried in. The hour was sometime around 3:00 or 4:00 p.m.
　Another unit dispatched from this hospital established a temporary emergency clinic in front of Isahaya Railroad Station and engaged in treating the injured there. According to the “Nagasaki Atomic Bombing Damage Report,” the number of atomic bomb victims treated there totaled 521 as of September 1, and of the 521, 156 died. The injured were treated until the American Occupation forces requisitioned the hospital and all the patients were transferred to the naval hospitals in Ōmura and Ureshino around September 20.
　The following is an excerpt from the memoir of Kasahara Miyo, at the time a nurse working at the Sasebo Naval Hospital Isahaya Branch:

I worked in the Sasebo Naval Hospital Isahaya Branch in the city of Isahaya, Nagasaki Prefecture as a Japanese Red Cross Society nurse. The branch hospital had been established in a former cotton mill because the intensification of the war had resulted in an increasing number of injuries and illnesses that finally exceeded the capacity of the facility in Sasebo.
　We organized a team of a few nurses and military physician cadets and established a relief center under the sandalwood tree by a private house in front of Isahaya Railroad Station. It was a simple emergency clinic, with several tables and chairs arranged under the shade of the tree, without even a tent for the clinic.
　After a while, the first train arrived from Nagasaki and hordes of injured people disembarked. They were terribly disfigured, beyond differentiation as male or female, with faces like the spongy flesh of a rotten sweet potato. We did our utmost to provide medical relief under the scorching sun, surrounded by line upon line of injured people. With only those poor medical supplies, we could not provide adequate treatment, especially when every single victim was in such a serious condition. Even when treating a broken arm dangling from the shoulder, we had no splint to support the arm. The only treatment we could give to the injured was to smear Mercurochrome on wounded areas. We did not have enough time to search for pieces of wood that could substitute as splints. With no leeway even to comfort our patients with words of encouragement, we just kept giving perfunctory treatment to each group of newly arrived victims.
　Their skin, charred black like it had been sprinkled with soot, peeled with just the touch of a pair of tweezers. People who had managed to get away without burns instead had been showered with broken glass and had fragments of glass of various sizes sticking out of their bodies. It was like sand had been sprinkled and pressed into their skin. The glass fragments were stuck deep, from the skin surface to internal organs. Many people died before the glass fragments could be removed with tweezers.
　At night, when special trains stopped arriving, we were finally able to have meals in rotation. Returning to our hospital, we found that both the inside and outside of the hospital were jammed with the atomic bomb injured. The compound between the front gate and the main building was covered with corpses stiffening in the moonlight. One woman, still holding her baby tightly to her breast, had grown cold along with her baby. The baby had probably been breathing before arriving at the gate.
　I was not even inclined to eat. Breathing with my shoulders heaving, my tired body leaning over the mud wall near an air-raid shelter, I felt too miserable to shed tears. I looked up at the sky, and my tired eyes observed a blood-red moon.
　All the same, the sun rose as usual the next day, August 10. The accommodation, a hurriedly built temporary shelter in front of the railroad station, was crowded with the injured. The atomic bomb victims, who were unable to lie down on their burned backs, lined up like blackened jizo statues. Maggots swarmed in great numbers under the charred black skin of the victims and spilled out onto the floor when touched by the tips of tweezers during treatment. Soon our main treatment was to use liquid chlorinated lime to wash out maggots, which were the size of cooked rice grains. Most of the patients had become so weak that they could not remove the maggots themselves, even when the insects were crawling over their bodies or sucking their blood. Some patients with few external injuries, whom we had expected to survive, died suddenly of some strange brain condition. I remember that those patients had extremely low white blood cell counts.
　At the end of September, the American Occupation forces that had arrived in Sasebo from Okinawa requisitioned the branch hospital in Isahaya. The soldiers suddenly appeared at our hospital, where atomic bomb survivors were still suffering severely, and demanded that we vacate the hospital within three days.
　Since most of the injured Japanese soldiers had been sent home for treatment in their hometowns from around the end of the war, we transported the atomic bomb survivors to the naval hospital in Ureshino. 64

3. Medical Relief in Isahaya City

Several hours after the atomic bombing, the first relief train left Nagasaki and carried a full load of atomic bomb victims to Isahaya. Meanwhile, the Isahaya Police Station and Isahaya City Hall had received a message from the Nagasaki City Defense Headquarters saying that the victims had been sent there and asking for preparations to be made. Doctors, police officers, members of the local defense unit and women’s association, and municipal employees were mobilized and stood ready to receive the victims at Isahaya Railroad Station.
　Before long, the train arrived and the victims were placed on the platforms. The people waiting in Isahaya were shocked to see the ravaged appearance of the victims; some of them are said to have burst into tears at the sight of the victims in such misery.
　In any case, the people waiting at the station were fully prepared to transfer the atomic bomb victims to the above-mentioned naval hospital and other facilities, including Isahaya Middle School, Isahaya Commercial School, Isahaya Women’s High School, elementary schools, the 21st Naval Air Arsenal Kyōsai Hospital Isahaya Branch, agricultural experiment station, Butokuden Hall and temples throughout the city.
　Although no accurate record was ever kept, the number of injured people accommodated in facilities in Isahaya, including those transferred by trucks and the second and successive relief trains, is said to have reached between 2,000 and 4,000.
　The victims accommodated at Isahaya Naval Hospital, which had relatively adequate medical facilities and equipment, as well as sufficient staff, were in a better situation than those accommodated in poorly equipped facilities like school lecture halls and required to lie on rags or straw mats due to a lack of blankets.
　Disposal of the increasing number of dead was difficult. People from local neighborhoods took turns with top-ranking city officials in cremating the dead, a fact mentioned in the testimonies of the atomic bomb survivors. These descriptions also indicate that disposal of the dead was carried out night and day throughout the city.

4. Ōmura Naval Hospital

Ōmura Naval Hospital (present-day National Hospital Organization Nagasaki Medical Center) could accommodate 1,700 patients. It was located in Ōmura City on the northeast route approximately 35 kilometers from Nagasaki.
　Yasuyama Kōdō, the hospital director at the time, stated in his memoir that: “On the day of the Nagasaki atomic bombing, Ōmura Naval Hospital accommodated 758 injured people and also accommodated seriously injured atomic bomb survivors who had been temporarily accommodated in other hospitals. In total, hundreds of atomic bomb victims were treated there.”
　The names of 1,006 atomic bomb injured appear in a list compiled by Ōmura Naval Hospital and currently preserved at the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum. The hospital turned into a vision of hell on the evening of August 9 when hordes of injured people were carried in writhing in pain and the staff devoted themselves around the clock to provide treatment and care.
　Dr. Yasuyama penned a voluminous 425-page memoir (presently preserved at the Nagasaki University School of Medicine) that describes the details of the situation in the hospital during that difficult period. The following is an excerpt.

The Day of the Nagasaki Atomic Bombing and the Day After
　A large white mushroom-shaped cloud rose in the sky in the direction of Nagasaki. The cloud, which had a roaring fire inside, was drawing near and expanding in size. Looking through his binoculars, my subordinate said that he saw three parachutes. While we were wondering what would become of us if the cloud reached the sky directly above us, the parachutes disappeared.
　Since military phone service was often out those days, we could obtain no information. Even when we asked the Ōmura Police Station about the situation via the city telephone line, no one could answer our questions. Around 3:00 p.m., the police received a message from Nagasaki stating that there had been many casualties and that the city was burning. We decided to dispatch a relief unit composed of orderlies and nurses from the Japanese Red Cross Society led by Dr. Jinnai. Understanding that there might be some risks but fully prepared to die if necessary, our relief unit immediately departed with a truck fully loaded with medical supplies and food.
　Around 5:00 p.m., I received a telephone call from Yamaguchi Naoaki, the mayor of Ōmura. He told me that the casualties in Nagasaki were innumerable and that a decision had been made to accommodate them in hospitals along the railroad line for the time being. He asked if Ōmura Naval Hospital could accommodate approximately 1,000 injured and reported that Ōmura City was preparing for an all-out aid mission to Nagasaki. The injured would be transferred to Ōmura Railroad Station from Urakami via special trains and from Ōmura Railroad Station to hospitals using fire engines mobilized for that purpose. He concluded with the words, ‘In addition, Ōmura City will take care of meals for the injured, with the National Women’s Defense Association currently mobilizing to prepare meals.’
　I immediately ordered my staff to prepare for the accommodation of 1,000 injured people. Laundered bed sheets were spread on the floors of the wards, surgical equipment was sterilized in the operating rooms, and heaps of bandages and emergency medications were prepared for the injured. In the kitchenette, the preparation of hundreds of bowls of porridge commenced. We were able to prepare quickly because we had a work force of 864 and there were only 200 inpatients in the hospital at the time.
　We received word that the injured had arrived at Ōmura Railroad Station and that, since some were in critical condition, military medical officers should be dispatched with cardiac stimulants. I quickly organized a relief unit and sent it to the station. Around the same time, a fire engine arrived, siren screaming, with dozens of severely injured people.
　The main entrance to the hospital, which was used as an arrival and departure area, was cloaked in darkness. More than 10 staff members began collecting information on name, age and the status of injuries, and they recorded the information on tags placed at each person’s neck, in the same manner as they would when accommodating other patients. Subsequently, the injured arrived by the truckload and flocked into the entrance area. I ordered the staff to stop taking notes, a task that could be done later, and to immediately allocate the injured to the appropriate wards. After that, a fire engine and a truck, fully loaded with the injured, blocked the entrance. Some people were quickly transferred to ward No. 15 and others to ward No. 9. Those who could walk entered the wards under the guidance of attending nurses. The seriously injured were carried on stretchers to the operating rooms. Many of the faces were charred black with portions of skin peeled back, revealing blood-oozing subcutaneous tissue. Their hair was burned, crinkled and brown, and their clothes were all torn off, or scorched to such a degree that no original color could be distinguished. The worst cases were beyond gender recognition and breathing feebly, unable even to squirm in pain, much less to respond to questions.
　Fire engines and trucks carried the injured to our hospital, shuttling several times between the hospital and Ōmura Railroad Station, a distance of about four kilometers. Every time one of these vehicles pulled into the hospital garden, dozens of injured people, none of whom wore shoes, jumped off the vehicle and trudged into the arrival and departure area.
　The clothes of both the men and women were hanging off like rags, and they were naked from the waist up. Something like pieces of thin cloth seemed to be dangling from their backs, but when I took a closer look I saw that it was actually sheets of skin that had come off like cow’s hide in a slaughterhouse. Even so, the injured were walking along stoically. One of the senior physicians said that they might not be in as bad condition as we’d thought, but I admonished him to treat them more carefully, because we did not know what conditions were yet to manifest themselves.
　It was a scene of chaos, disaster and carnage. Firefighters and defense unit members from the Ōmura municipal government were working as best they could to transfer the injured from the railroad station to the hospital. Thanks to their efforts, the process of accommodating the injured finished by 11:00 p.m.
　In the wards, shielded with curtains, the medical staff and nurses attended to the patients in spite of the sweltering heat. All the probationary and regular military doctors provided first-aid treatment until late at night on August 9, and the relief unit led by Dr. Jinnai that had been dispatched to Nagasaki returned to the hospital shortly after 11:00 p.m.
　On the night of the atomic bombing, the hospital staff attended to the injured without sleeping or resting. The total number of injured accommodated was 758. Although I mention the figure 758 in a matter-of-fact way, I believe that no hospital, even a military hospital, has ever accommodated so many seriously injured people all at one time.
　Despite our utmost efforts, nearly 100 people had perished by the morning of August 10. Of those, 36 remained unidentified and their addresses, names and ages unknown. We put their bodies into coffins that had been hurriedly thrown together for the purpose and buried them temporarily in the field behind the hospital so that they could be dug up later.
　Day finally broke. Looking down at the garden from the window of the director’s office, I saw more than 10 injured people walking out of the hospital with bamboo canes, their faces bandaged, wearing half-torn clothes and sandals that had been provided by the hospital. They were carrying medicine bottles filled with water slung over their shoulders on strings. I hurriedly went down the stairs and told them, ‘With such injuries, it’s reckless of you to go home! Stay here and take care of your health.’ However, it was obvious from their replies that they were leaving out of apprehension for the safety of their own families. Since I could not force them to stay, I decided to drive them to Ōmura Railroad Station from the hospital, a distance of about four kilometers that would be very tough for them to manage on foot, even on a cool morning.
　In this way, families were torn apart, not knowing each other’s life or death situation. The injured were overcome, not with the pain of their own wounds, but with worry for the safety of their families and friends. It was a truly horrendous situation.

Report on the Atomic Bomb Victims Accommodated in Ōmura Naval Hospital
　Although I had an opportunity, for the first time in the world, to conduct research on the illnesses suffered by atomic bomb victims admitted to the hospital, I could not get around to it because treating so many injured demanded all my time and effort. After the end of the war, the hospital continued to accommodate the injured from Nagasaki. Surviving professors of Nagasaki Medical College visited our hospital to register as inpatients. When we were about to initiate systematic research on atomic bomb diseases under the instruction of those professors, a research team from the Occupation Forces arrived and we had to give them our research notes. Moreover, our military physicians were demobilized and departed, making it impossible to conduct research and compile information. This was a disgrace to me as an academic. However, the military physicians Dr. Watanabe Takichi and Dr. Fukuhara Nobuto launched further studies and submitted a report to me based on records kept by Dr. Shiotsuki Masao. 65

The following is a summary of the research conducted on the atomic bomb victims who received treatment at Ōmura Naval Hospital (as of September 1).

1. Total number of patients accommodated: 758 (97% had suffered direct injuries from the atomic bombing, while the remaining 3% had been injured by fire and other indirect causes)
2. Total fatalities: 158
3. The number of patients who died after manifesting specific symptoms (hair loss, bloody stool, vomiting, hemorrhage of skin and mucous membranes, high fever etc.): 153
Note: The number of patients and fatalities later increased.

The following is a description of the activities conducted by the relief unit led by Dr. Jinnai (included in the above memoir of Dr.Yasuyama Kōdō).

　Shortly after 1:00 p.m., about ten members of the first party of the special medical relief unit composed of military doctors, orderlies and nurses left Ōmura Naval Hospital under the orders of the hospital director Dr. Yasuyama on a truck loaded with medical supplies. When the party reached Himi Pass via Isahaya, Kikitsu and Yagami, they encountered a line of refugees leaving Nagasaki. An old woman drew near the truck, knelt on the roadside holding her palms together, and shouted something that sounded like a desperate request for medical assistance. After passing through Himi Tunnel, the party descended into the city of Nagasaki. As they advanced, the damage became more extensive. By the time the truck arrived at the entrance to Tateyama-machi, they had been informed that Urakami was the center of destruction. They reached the railroad station via the road in front of Nakamachi Catholic Church and found the area still burning, and when they passed the gas tanks near the station, somebody shouted, “Stop! It’s dangerous!” but they continued northward past the gas tanks, keeping low in the truck, and entered the devastated Urakami area where soldiers were cutting electrical wires strewn along the road.
　Although this was probably the first medical relief unit to approach the hypocenter area, it was impossible to enter the neighborhoods north of Ibinokuchi, due to the fires, and the unit began treating the injured on a bridge near the police station (at present a closed conduit).
　The injured gathered one after another. Most of them were half-naked, with disheveled hair. It was a disastrous scene. The injured were only able to receive first-aid treatment, because the unit simply did not have enough time to provide proper attention. Hundreds of injured people were lying in the air-raid shelter dug into the cliff below Shōtokuji Temple. The unit members gave injections of cardiac stimulants to the patients who had become very weak.
　On the bridge where they continued their activities, live electric cables sometimes sagged down and the members avoided danger by warning each other. The need for treatment seemed endless, but several hours later the unit ran out of medical supplies and had to retreat. It is said that the unit left Nagasaki between 8:00 and 9:00 p.m. 66

　This medical relief unit continued operation on the 10th and later and provided medical relief in various areas. Moreover, the hospital escaped being requisitioned by Occupation Forces and continued to care for the atomic bomb victims for many subsequent weeks.
　Ōmura Naval Hospital was not the only medical institution in the city of Ōmura. Other hospitals including the Ōmura Army Hospital and the Ōmura Kaisei Hospital (Nishikawa Hospital) accommodated as many as 4,000 atomic bomb victims, and more than 10,000 medical staff were mobilized over the same period.

5. Kawatana Naval Kyōsai Hospital

Kawatana Naval Arsenal and Kawatana Naval Kyōsai Hospital were located in the town of Kawatana about 60 kilometers northeast of Nagasaki on the National Railroad Ōmura Line.
　The situation at the above hospital is described below on the basis of records kept by both the hospital and the Kawatana town government.

It was 11:00 p.m. on August 9 when a message from Kawatana Railroad Station arrived, requesting that the hospital accommodate approximately 500 injured people because Nagasaki City had sustained great damage as a result of a new type of bomb dropped on the city. Since the hospital was equipped with only 250 beds, we decided to use the assembly room at Kawatana Naval Arsenal Factory Workers’ Training School (located in Shiraishi) as the first temporary accommodation, and the Buddhist temple Jōzaiji as the second. Emergency medical staff, including the hospital director, immediately set about in full force to prepare for emergency medical treatment, and they dispatched a relief unit to Kawatana Railroad Station. Many members of the defense unit of Kawatana Town rushed to the hospital. Also, 30 members of the Special Forces Arashi Unit in Ogushi, including the chief military physician, rushed to help deal with the situation.
　While we were on standby in this manner, a relief train crowded with atomic bomb victims arrived at Kawatana Railroad Station. The arrival time was 2:30 a.m. on August 10, according to the hospital record, and there were 54 people in the arriving group, two of whom had already died. The station presented a gruesome scene, like a battlefield. We carried the seriously injured on stretchers and bicycle-drawn carts, and lent our arms and shoulders to those who could walk to the assembly room in Shiraishi.
　It was 4:00 a.m. when we finally finished providing emergency medical treatment to the first party of injured people, which was followed at around 6:30 a.m. (according to the hospital record) by a second group of 159 injured people. Of these, 112 were accommodated in the assembly room and 47 at Jōzaiji. After that, we accommodated 23 newly arrived injured people, bringing the total number to 234.
　Of the injured people accommodated in the hospital, 32 had died by August 13. Five or six days after that, because treatment was seriously hampered at the temporary facilities, we transferred all the remaining inpatients to the main hospital for further treatment. Until then, employees of the local government and members of the local defense unit and women’s association came to the facilities everyday to take care of the atomic bomb victims. 67

According to the above records, the dedicated volunteer activities conducted by the people of the town continued until the end of September. Despite their efforts, 73 injured people perished (the injured people whose names appeared on the list numbered 63).
　In addition, physicians from the Kawatana Naval Kyōsai Hospital Chiwata Clinic made regular rounds.

6. Hario Marine Corps Temporary Accommodation and Hario Marine Corps Relief Team

The injured arrived at Haenosaki Railroad Station, eight kilometers north of Kawatana Railroad Station on the National Railroad Ōmura Line, around 7:00 a.m. on August 10. From there the injured were carried on stretchers and accommodated by the Hario Marine Corps and the Fukuda Surgical Hospital (then Marine Corps officers’ assembly hall). When they arrived, nearly 20 hours had already passed since the atomic bombing. The victims were in a critical condition made worse by fatigue from the long trip. 68 It is noteworthy, meanwhile, that the Marine Corps dispatched a relief unit comprised of several hundred military physicians and orderlies to the devastated area in Nagasaki. They provided medical relief to the atomic bombing injured for a long time from August 11 in cooperation with the relief unit dispatched by Sasebo Naval Hospital.
　The following is based on information about the medical relief activities of the unit included in the Nagasaki City Atomic Bomb Damage Research Report.

Relief Operations
　The Hario Marine Corps Relief Unit was hurriedly dispatched to Nagasaki on August 11, 1945. From the following day, the unit lodged in Shinkōzen Elementary School and engaged in relief activities. The damage to Nagasaki was extensive, and by the time the unit arrived at the facility most of the casualties had been left untreated for some time and presented a shocking appearance.
　The unit therefore placed importance on accommodating the injured. They made every effort under a scorching sun to rescue injured people throughout the city and to transport them on stretchers to several facilities in the city. Rescuing the injured who had evacuated to the area surrounding the hypocenter was so difficult that it required heroic efforts. Some of the injured had gone untreated for as long as a week. On August 17, a second unit arrived and made the rounds of several facilities in and outside the city, treating the injured and gradually transferring them to the headquarters established at Shinkōzen Elementary School. In the meantime, the advance party and backup party of the Sasebo Naval Hospital Unit arrived and began operations in the headquarters on August 16 and 20, respectively. These two groups established an even more efficient treatment system, with ample medical supplies.
　Part of the Hario Marine Corps Relief Unit completed work related to the accommodation and treatment of the injured and other difficult tasks and returned to headquarters on August 25. The navy unit and Sasebo Naval Hospital Unit left Shinkōzen on August 31, but part of the remaining Hario Marine Corps Relief Unit stayed behind until September 5 to serve as an atomic bomb damage research team. The residents of Nagasaki were deeply grateful to the members of the unit, who had made selfless efforts to provide medical relief to the injured throughout the devastated area under the blazing sun.
　These operations were possible only as a result of the dedication of the military physicians, apprentice junior-grade officers and the young recruits who provided volunteer support as orderlies.
　It is believed that the Hario Marine Corps Relief Unit arrived at Michino’o Railroad Station before 3:00 p.m. on August 10. 69
　According to the above report, approximately 240 unit members marched in parade to Shinkōzen Elementary School in Nagasaki City. Medical supplies and equipment arrived separately on three trucks. On their way to the school, the members gathered information on the situation by sending scouts to important facilities, including factories. The office of the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Steelworks in Urakami was used as a base for their relief activities, while the Shinkōzen Elementary School served as lodgings. The treatment of injured people in the office of the steelworks was probably initiated after the arrival of medical supplies, which had been carried in by truck on August 11.
　From August 12, the office of the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Steelworks became headquarters for the Hario Marine Corps Relief Unit, and the area of activity was expanded beyond Urakami, ranging from the vicinity of Nagasaki Railroad Station to elementary schools in Togitsu and Nagayo. The expansion of activities was facilitated by the unit’s three gasoline-fueled trucks, which drastically improved mobility and organization.
　The second unit replaced the first unit on August 17, and both made great contributions, most of the members returning to their original unit on August 31.

7. Sasebo Naval Hospital

The dispatch schedule of units from Sasebo Naval Hospital was as follows:
○ Advance party dispatched on August 16, comprised of 16 military physicians including 15 cadets and 15 nurses, or a total of 31 persons.
○ Backup party dispatched on August 20, comprised of six military physicians, one health section officer, two orderlies and 35 nurses, or a total of 44 persons.
　The majority of surgeons at Sasebo Naval Hospital had evacuated to Takeo, a Saga Prefecture hot-spring resort, to establish a branch hospital. From that branch hospital, a medical relief unit composed of four military physicians and 20 Japanese Red Cross Society nurses was dispatched to Shinkōzen Elementary School on August 12 (an advance party was dispatched around August 11) to provide medical relief. During the relief period, which lasted until September 5, the unit contributed significantly to medical relief activities by carrying medical equipment and supplies, fully loaded onto four trucks, from Takeo to the Shinkōzen Relief Hospital established in the school.

8. Sasebo Naval Kyōsai Hospital

Sasebo Naval Kyōsai Hospital had already accommodated a large number of people injured in an air raid on Sasebo. As a result, the atomic bomb victims were mainly accommodated in the Haiki Branch (Haiki Kyōsai Branch). The town of Haiki was located at the junction of the Sasebo Line and Ōmura Line of the national railroad, approximately 73 kilometers from Nagasaki on the overland route.
　Since the Haiki Branch was situated on a low hill, a location inconvenient for the transfer of the injured, many of those taken off the train were first accommodated in the local elementary school and the Buddhist temple Sairenji. A total of 157 seriously injured people were carried to the hospital by means of makeshift stretchers. Although the exact number remains unknown, as many as 500 injured people were accommodated in Haiki, and many fatalities were noted in this facility as well. 70
　The following is an excerpt from a report on the Sasebo Naval Hospital Takeo First Relief Unit included in the memoir of Miake Kenji:

Three operating tables had been arranged on the first floor of Shinkōzen Elementary School, one each for the relief unit chief Colonel Ikemoto Kenzō, vice chief Lieutenant Colonel Yamaguchi (currently in medical practice in Chiba) and me (First Lieutenant Miake Kenji). We performed operations on the injured, who were suffering from burns over almost their entire bodies, crush wounds to the limbs, abdominal hernias and other injuries. We performed procedures such as quadruple amputation, amputation stump plasty and abdominal surgery, but most of the severely injured died, their names and addresses remaining unknown. When we made the rounds of the wards, there was a stench like that in a toilet due to the sweltering heat, festering wounds and maggots swarming in the open flesh of burn victims. After a couple of days, however, we found ourselves becoming accustomed to the stench as well as well as to the horrific injuries.
　Can anyone imagine the scene of maggots swarming all over a living person’s body? Maggots were found to have tripled to half an inch in length when bandages were exchanged. When we removed the gauze pads, the remaining maggots made a rustling sound as they dug deeper into muscles and under the skin. When a disinfectant was sprinkled onto the infested areas, the maggots crawled out again. Initially, we removed them one by one with tweezers, but this was so slow and ineffective that we had to flick them off with our bare hands. At mealtimes those days, cooked rice looked like swarming maggots.
　During the rounds of the wards, we treated the patients in the first row and then continued to the next row, but by the time we had turned to treat patients in the second row, one of the patients in the first row, with whom we had just exchanged words, had already died. This happened frequently. Patients who developed fever, suppurations and a bloody nose all died within a couple of days.
　No accurate records were kept, so the maximum number of patients accommodated in the facility at one time is not known. I counted 363 patients one day, but 168 of them perished the same day. Under orders from a superior officer, I was directly responsible for the cremation, with gasoline, of unidentified and unclaimed bodies, arranged in a double cross in the corner of the Shinkōzen Elementary School garden. I felt pity and profound sorrow for them.
　Around August 21, several physicians led by Professor Sawada of the third department of internal medicine at Kyūshū University arrived to treat the injured. They also wanted to perform autopsies; I made arrangements for them.
　Although we kept asking Sasebo Naval Hospital to dispatch replacements, their answer was negative. The hospital could not organize a supplementary team of military physicians and nurses, because many of them had been demobilized or separated from the hospital during the chaos that followed the end of the war. While we had no choice but to remain in Nagasaki for another 24 days, the same accommodation of the injured and high death toll were repeated as described above.
　On September 5, replacements finally arrived and the dispatched relief units were able to leave within two to five days. 71

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63 Nagasaki Prefecture et al, Hibaku chiiki no kakudai ni kansuru yōbōsho (Request to Expand the Designated Atomic-bombed Area) (Nagasaki Prefecture, Nagayo-chō, Togitsu-chō), p.19 ^
64 Nagasaki Testimonies Publication Committee (ed.), Nagasaki no shōgen daiyonshū (Nagasaki Testimonies, Vol.4) (Nagasaki, 1972), pp.66-8. ^
65 Yasuyama Kōdō, Ko Yasuyama Kōdō shōshō no shuki (The Memoir of Rear Admiral Yasuyama Kōdō) (Ayumi Shuppan, 1984), p.49. ^
66 Matsuno Hideo, Taiyō ga ochiru (The Sun Falls) (Nagasaki Testimonies Publication Committee, 1973), pp.129-32. ^
67 Kikitsu Kenju, Kawatana monogatari (Tale of Kawatana) (Takemura Torajirō, Mayor of Kawatana, 1973), pp.223-4. ^
68 Nishina Memorial Foundation (ed.), Genshibakudan hiroshima nagasaki no shashin to kiroku (The Atomic Bombs: Photographs and Records of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) (Kōfūsha Shoten, 1973),
pp.102-3. ^
69 Ibid, pp.211-2. ^
70 Shirabe Raisuke (ed.), Nagasaki bakushinchi fukugen no kiroku (Nagasaki: A Record of the Restoration of the Hypocenter Area) (Nippon Hōsō Shuppan Kyōkai, 1995), pp.113-4. ^
71 Nagasaki Testimonies Publication Committee (ed.), Nagasaki no shōgen dainanashū (Nagasaki Testimonies, Vol.7) (Nagasaki, 1973) p.240-43. ^

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