ABSTRACT

So runs the diary entry for 6 August 1945 of Hachiya Michihiko, director of Hiroshima Communications Hospital. By the next day, having reached his hospital and sought some succour for himself, Hachiya was hearing still more hellish tales. A friend had walked over the Misasa bridge near Hiroshima Castle. There many thousands had died. The friend explained:

The sight of the soldiers, though, was more dreadful than the dead people floating down the river. I came onto I don’t know how many, burned from the hips up; and where the skin had peeled, their flesh was wet and mushy. …And they had no faces! Their eyes, noses and mouths had been burned away, and it looked like their ears had melted off. It was hard to tell front from back. One soldier, whose features had been destroyed and was left with his white teeth sticking out, asked me for some water, but I didn’t have any!2