What the Boy Saw: A Fire In the Sky

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When Yoshitaka Kawamoto came to, the classroom was very dark, and he was lying under the debris of the crushed school building. In those days most Japanese buildings were made of wood; when the Bomb dropped, all but one or two of the structures that stood near the hypo-center of the explosion were flattened like paper hats. Kawamoto's school, the Hiroshima Prefectural First Middle School, stood only 800 meters, a mere half-mile, from the hypocenter. Two-thirds of his classmates were killed instantly where they sat at their desks. Some who survived were weeping and calling for their mothers. Others began singing the school song to bolster their courage and to let passersby know that the 13-year-olds were still alive.

"But then the singing and the cries grew weaker. My classmates were dying one by one. That made me very frightened. I struggled to free myself from the broken fragments, and looked around. I thought that gas tanks had exploded. Through a hole in the roof I could see clouds swirling in a cone; some were black, some pink. There were fires in the middle of the clouds. I checked my body. Three upper teeth were chipped off; perhaps a roof tile had hit me. My left arm was pierced by a piece of wood that stuck in my flesh like an arrow. Unable to pull it out, I tied a tourniquet around my upper arm to stanch the flow of blood. I had no other injuries, but I did not run away. We were taught that it was cowardly to desert one's classmates. So I crawled about the rubble, calling, 'Is there anyone alive?'

"Then I saw an arm shifting under planks of wood. Ota, my friend, was moving. But I could see that his back was broken, and I had to pull him up into the clear. Ota was looking at me with his left eye. His right eyeball was hanging from his face. I think he said something, but I could not make it out. Pieces of nails were stuck on his lips. He took a student handbook from his pocket. I asked, 'Do you want me to give this to your mother?' Ota nodded. A moment later he died. By now the school was engulfed in flames. I started to walk away, and then looked back. Ota was staring at me with his one good eye. I can still see that eye in the dark."

So began Kawamoto's morning, Aug. 6, 1945. Yoshitaka Kawamoto is 53 today, a small, solid man who dresses formally in blue or brown suits and carries himself with a quick-moving dignity. When he tells the story of what happened 40 years ago, however, he can become a 13-year-old on the spot--suddenly springing from a chair to strike a military pose, demonstrating a march step, or hunching down like a shortstop. In his office he sang the school song that was sung by his classmates the morning of the bombing. As he did, he rose automatically and snapped to attention, chin tucked, eyes forward:

The rain pours white against the Hiroshima evening. Colors fade on petals just past full bloom, Spring is passing. But we stand firm, our dreams of prosperity unfading.