Terufumi Sagasaki: The Bombing Of Hiroshima

On August 6, 1945 the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. About 140,000 people died and the great majority of the city was demolished, those who survived were exposed to the radiation poisoning and cause death. When the bomb blows up, Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura is watching her children sleep, they all get covered in the debris of their house. Miss Toshiko Sasaki is an clerk, she is leaning over to speak to a co-worker when she is forced from her desk to under heavy bookcases, she lives but has a broken leg. A doctor, Masakazu Fujii, is reading a book on his porch when he was blasted in a river. Terufumi Sasaki, another doctor, falls in the Red Cross Hospital and watches the mushroom cloud rise. Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge wakes …show more content…
Dr. Sasaki grabs bandages and works 19 hours at a time, trying to bandage the 10,000 injured people making their way to his hospital. In the hours and days after the bombing, he becomes an automaton, going from one patient to another. Dr. Fujii, injured badly himself, attempts to help his nurses and find his way to his family's home where he can get first aid supplies. Mrs. Nakamura works relentlessly to uncover her three children in the debris; they appear unhurt but dazed and shaken. She takes them to Asano Park where they can find some shelter under trees. Miss Sasaki spends days and hours in the debris, but she is finally rescued although semi-conscious and in pain and left in a lean-to. Father Kleinsorge helps those trapped under houses and makes his way to Asano Park along with Mr. Tanimoto. Both ministers help people in the park put out fires and get medical …show more content…
Mrs. Nakamura is receiving medical help for her many radiation illnesses and staying away from political rallies by the survivors, who are now called "hibakusha." The hibakusha have become the targets of politics and the peace movement. Mrs. Nakamura's children are grown, and she has retired from a job at a chemical company. Dr. Sasaki ran a lucrative medical practice. He lost his wife to cancer, and he is still haunted by the souls of those who died as a result of the bombing. Father Kleinsorge spent many years ill, both in and out of the hospital. In 1976, he slipped and fell on ice, resulting in fractures that left him bedridden. The following year he weakened, became comatose, and died. Miss Sasaki endured numerous surgeries on her leg. She converted to Catholicism and became a nun, helping people die in peace. Dr. Fujii died of cancer, but his life after the bombing was one of wealth and the pursuit of pleasure. The Reverend Mr. Tanimoto, after traveling to America several times to raise money to aid the hibakusha, has retired quietly, living out the rest of his life with vague memories that day forty years