2023-08-06 18:33:00
“It must have been the hell on earth. It scares me too much to even imagine. They all died there immediately.” Sadao Yamamoto he was 14 years old when the United States launched the first atomic attack on Japan 78 years ago. He witnesses the nuclear holocaust in which his schoolmates died. burned in extreme agony, asking for their mothers and begging for water. By divine chance, Yamamoto was saved from the bomb that reduced Hiroshima to ashes in a split second and would change the course of history.
Yamamoto is one of hundreds of thousands of Hibakusha (atomic bombing survivors) who take note of the biological clock and rush to tell their stories with a message of peace. He relives his story over and over once more with images worthy of a horror movie of that August 6, 1945, when a US Air Force B-29 (Enola Gay) dropped the first nuclear bomb on the city of Japanese steel. “As the bombers approached the sky over Hiroshima, they suddenly turned around and flew away. that seemed strange to me”, he recalls with enviable lucidity.
Hiroshima: 78 years have passed since the greatest nuclear murder in history
Before beginning his story, Yamamoto greets his audience with a smile, clears his voice, and settles into a chair in a state office in Hiroshima near the Park of Memory and Peace, a symbol of the city’s reconstruction. At 91 years old, he says that the secret of having lived so long is in his regular medical check-ups and an active social life. He also says that “he loves the tango” upon realizing the country of origin of this chronicler, part of the group of journalists invited by the host of the meeting (the Japanese government) within the framework of the historic G7 Summit that this year was held in that emblematic city.
The story of Sadao Yamamoto
On August 6, 1945, Sadao Yamamoto woke up early and changed his route. Instead of driving through downtown Hiroshima to get to school, a drive that took regarding half an hour from his house in the east of the city, he turned northeast and walked toward the sweet potato plantations.
Like other students, Yamamoto alternated school with work to demolish buildings and build an anti-aircraft cordon or increase food production. One day he went to school (in the center of the city) and another to work in the outskirts. It was the twilight of World War II, Japan was besieged by American fighter planes and did not surrender to the demands of the allies. All citizens were mobilized regardless of age or gender.
What Yamamoto didn’t know was that a month before a decision would change the history of his people and the world. american president Harry Truman he inherited responsibility from his predecessor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, for what to do with the atomic bomb, the new weapon of unprecedented destructive capacity created under the Manhattan Project. After considering various options, it was Hiroshima, the mild-weather steelmaking enclave on Japan’s largest island, that was chosen as the first target to measure the impact of the bomb and force the Japanese -by the way- to surrender.
At 8:15 in the morning and with a “tremendous explosion”, according to Yamamoto, “hot winds ripped through the city”. “When I regained consciousness down to my feet, I saw a huge bright pink llama right in the direction of Hiroshima station growing at tremendous speed. Immediately following the explosion, a fireball 400 meters in diameter and following regarding 10 seconds collapsed and turned into a huge flame. That was exactly what I saw,” he details.
“Hell on Earth”
In an instant, Hiroshima became a scene of unprecedented chaos. In less than a fraction of a minute, the temperature rose between 3 and 4 thousand degrees, enough to melt iron and a little less than that recorded in the first layer of the Sun. 90 percent of the city became ruins. “It was hell on earth”says the survivor.
Were 140,000 of the 350,000 people who lived in Hiroshima those who pulverized to death for the explosion and others in extreme agony by the burns of the widespread fire that followed, in the midst of the desperate to drink water, a sad common denominator among the victims. They were joined by hundreds of thousands more who died in the following decades from the “atomic bomb diseases” because of radiation, a ghost that tortured the survivors throughout their lives.
Fearing another attack, Yamamoto headed to the Santuario Onaga Tenmangu who was at the bottom of a nearby hill and, in the absence of medical supplies, asked for cooking oil to be applied to soothe the burns on half of his face. He then returned to the center of the city to look for his family. There he saw scenes difficult to describe. People with the hanging skin, begging for water, Others, desperate, jumped into the Motoyasu River, which turned into a pit of corpses like the sides of the roads.
“I saw a dead soldier on the side of the road from severe burns, with the body swollen like a rubber balloon. Also a young girl to whom a nurse applied white oxide with a brush and that she had nothing to wear,” recalls Yamamoto. “How cruel,” he laments.
The shadow of the nuclear holocaust in Hiroshima
“Toddler”
At the age of 14, Yamamoto survived thanks to the fact that that day he had to work 2.5 kilometers from the hypocenter instead of going to study at the Hiroshima Middle School, located 500 meters away, or to work in the anti-aircraft shelters. Others 321 freshmen They did not have the same luck and were “annihilated” by the uranium bomb which curiously the United States called “Little boy” (Little boy).
“On the fateful day of August 6, the freshmen went to demolish the buildings while the sophomores went to the sweet potato field 2.5 km from the hypocenter. This distance marked the difference between life and death.”clarifies.
As he was able to find out later, a third of them they turned “to dust” instantlysome others struggled to get homeothers died by the side of the roads due to exhaustion and others were swept away by the river while saying “mama”.
“It seems that the first-year students of Hiroshima High School, those who collapsed on the streets, at the rescue center, or those who came home, all begged for water, but many of them did not receive it. No only the students wanted water: everyone exposed to radiation and in agony asked for water,” he says.
Hiroshima Middle School
Music was the channel through which Sadao Yamamoto, graduated as an engineer, dedicated his life to telling the tragic story of the students at his school. He did it through the direction of the male choir Ishibumi. Like other Hibakusha, Yamamoto’s life mission is to convey the consequences of weapons of mass destruction, which he corrects as an “element of extermination”.
“When they dropped the bomb I hated the United States but now I think I have forgiven them. The number one reason is that it was Japan who started the war, so part of the responsibility lies with the Japanese side. The second is that when you look war, the best way is to join hands with fellow democratic countries.The responsibility to abolish nuclear weapons falls not only on Western countries but also on Russia, China. Unless we all work together, we will not be able to achieve the abolition of nuclear weapons.”
Yamamoto repeats this story over and over once more for an end that transcends him: to promote the abolition of nuclear weapons in a hostile international context. He also gives a message for peace, represented in the flame that burns in the cenotaph of the Peace Memorial Park in the center of a green and rebuilt Hiroshima and that, 78 years later, forgives but does not forget.
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