Hiroshima Black Rain
At 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1941, an atomic bomb (a nuclear bomb) blasted 580 m (1900 feet) above Hiroshima City as a US bomber dropped it in its air raid in the last phase of the US war against the Empire of Japan.
The nuclear explosion instantly took 70,000 lives, mostly, of Japanese civilians.
At the moment, a middle-aged manager of a clothing factory just got on a train, whose windows were open, in a station 1700 m (one mile) from the ground zero. Before the train started, he saw a very bright flash. Next moment, darkness surrounded the space which made him blinded. Passengers in the train all started to dash out of the train. The man was pressed and kicked to fall down. He struggled to stand up. A wave of men and woman crumpled him on the platform. So, the man clung to a pillar and closed his eyes to secure himself. And a little while later, silence fell on him. He looked around to see nobody. Electric wires fell on the floor. Carefully over them, he went out of the station to see most of houses and buildings being knocked down.
At the moment, a middle-aged manager of a clothing factory just got on a train, whose windows were open, in a station 1700 m (one mile) from the ground zero. Before the train started, he saw a very bright flash. Next moment, darkness surrounded the space which made him blinded. Passengers in the train all started to dash out of the train. The man was pressed and kicked to fall down. He struggled to stand up. A wave of men and woman crumpled him on the platform. So, the man clung to a pillar and closed his eyes to secure himself. And a little while later, silence fell on him. He looked around to see nobody. Electric wires fell on the floor. Carefully over them, he went out of the station to see most of houses and buildings being knocked down.
Finally a long day started for a middle-aged Hiroshima civilian on this day when the first nuclear weapon was used in the human history.
Shizuma Shigematsu could luckily meet his wife near his home. Then, the couple walked a long way to an office of a transportation company in the Hiroshima port where their niece worked. She was also safe as the office was 4500 meters south from the ground zero. At the time she lived with the Shigematsus in Hiroshima City. Then, through the devastated city full of the dead and the wounded, the three people narrowly managed to make it to a railroad station 3500 meter north of the ground zero, where transportation service was available. They got to a railroad station and got on a train which carried them to a town where the factory Shigematsu worked in was situated. They were finally relieved.
During their hard journey across nuclear-bombed Hiroshima to the station from the office in the port, they took a break near a brook. He took out a towel to dip it in the small river. But he noticed a school of Japanese killifish. The fish swam so peacefully. So, he put his towel in the water downstream not to disturb the small fish. Then he wiped sweat off his body with the towel. He dipped other towels into the fresh flow of water in the same manner. The two women also used the towels to clean up their skin. And then they again started to walk to the station in the periphery of Hiroshima City, passing by countless casualties and injured persons under the hot sun of August.
Shizuma Shigematsu was 42 years old in August 1941 when he was attacked by the atomic bomb in Hiroshima; his wife 31 and their niece 20.
But all the three persons suffered a kind of atomic-bomb disease, respectively. Shigematsu died in 1980 at the age of 77; his wife in 1991 at 78. And, their niece died of radiation disease in 1960 at 35, leaving her husband and two sons.
Shizuma Shigematsu kept a journal and a diary in those days when he experienced the Hiroshima nuclear-bomb attack. Based on his diary, a novel was written by a Japanese author. It became a best-seller.
Black Rain is a novel by Japanese author Masuji Ibuse. Ibuse began serializing Black Rain in the magazine Shincho in January 1965. The novel is based on historical records of the devastation caused by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. However, Ibuse does not refer to social or political considerations that led to the atomic holocaust. Sometimes his characters criticize the wartime government, but Ibuse generally focuses more on an everyday level. In the depiction of ultimate act of violence, Ibuse uses contrasts between horror and humor, destruction and beauty, the state and the individual. The narration alters between Kobatake, a rural hamlet some distance from Hiroshima, at a time several years after the end of the war, and Hiroshima itself in the days immediately after the bombing. The protagonist, Shizuma Shigematsu, a real-life person, tries to find a husband for his niece, Yasuko. Shigematsu, his wife Shigeko and Yasuko reassure prospective husbands that Yasuko was not affected by the radiation, although she was under the black rain that followed the destruction. Shigematsu reads his wartime diary to understand his own life. Yasuko gives up all hopes of marrying and falls ill with radiation sickness.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Rain_(novel)
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Mar 6:25 And she came in straightway with haste unto the king, and asked, saying, I will that thou give me by and by in a charger the head of John the Baptist.
Mar 6:26 And the king was exceeding sorry; yet for his oath's sake, and for their sakes which sat with him, he would not reject her.
Mar 6:27 And immediately the king sent an executioner, and commanded his head to be brought: and he went and beheaded him in the prison,
Mar 6:28 And brought his head in a charger, and gave it to the damsel: and the damsel gave it to her mother.