A MEMOIR: THE DAY HIROSIMA TURNED INTO HELL

More than 100.000 people died instantly when the US droped a Nuclear bomb on the city of Hiroshima.

TOKYO Japan - Sixty-six years ago, Hiroshima was turned into a burning inferno as the Americans dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city.
Keijiro Matsushima was 16 years old when he witnessed the attack which claimed roughly 100,000 lives in one day.
He recalls how August 6, 1945, was a beautiful day, with a blue sky. Keijiro had returned to school only a week earlier, after he and his peers were mobilized to work for a year and a half in a factory producing military uniforms.

• At 8.15 in the morning, his class had just started. He was listening to his teacher explaining a question on differential and integral calculus.
• "I was looking out through the window and saw two American B-29 bombers. I just thought 'American planes again', assuming they were out for some routine work."
• When he looked back at his books, the bomb exploded.
• "There was a very strong flash and a heat wave. The whole world turned into something orange. I felt like I was thrown into an oven for a moment".
• Later, he learned that temperatures on the ground near the hypo_center, 2km from his school, had reached at least 3,000 degrees centigrade. The flash was followed by a loud boom. Until now, Keijiro doesn't know whether it was the sound of the explosion or of collapsing buildings.
• "I covered my ears and eyes and jumped under the desk," he says.
• "It was pitch black, I could see nothing. So many boys in the room, but no one screamed.
• "There was a deadly silence. I was crawling around, thinking 'help me mother, help me Buddha'. It was the first time I prayed to Buddha."
• Keijiro describes himself as one of the most fortunate survivors. He got some cut wounds from glass splinters, but suffered no serious injuries.
• "I thought it had been just one bomb. But when I got out, I was shocked to see that all buildings had been hit. I was thinking, 'just two planes, what did they do?"
• One of his friends had a big cut in his head. Keijiro covered the wound with a piece of textile and supported his friend as they walked slowly towards the nearby Red Cross hospital.

Buildings were on fire and the two boys met scores of injured people walking along the tram tracks, away from the mayhem in the heart of the city.
"Their hair stood up straight. Some had lost their hair," Keijiro recalls.
"Some were so badly burned from head to toe, their skin peeling from their heads. Their clothes were burned, some were almost naked.
"I thought to myself, 'Hiroshima is dying'.

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