(10 years ago Chris Steele-Perkins visited Hiroshima with writer Miyako Yamada to document the stories of Hibakusha - Japanese survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
This is the second of a series of posts in which we'll share their recollections of the horrifying events that occurred 70 years ago..)

Ms. Hiroko Hatakeyama. Born in 1938. Exposed at 6 in Hiroshima.

When the pika (flash) struck, six-year-old Hiroko was playing marbles in a classroom at her elementary school. She was approximately four kilometers from the hypocenter. She has no memory of the flash. When the booming explosion came, she ran out of the classroom into the bathroom and covered up, as trained, with fingers in her ears and over her eyes. She opened her mouth wide and breathed out deeply.
“Even as a first grader I had been trained to protect myself from poison gas so I instantly went into position. However, when my mouth filled up with dust and soot, I didn’t know what to do, so I crawled out of the bathroom to look for my teacher. Out in the schoolyard, injured pupils my age were milling around the teacher. They were crying as blood streamed from their heads, arms and legs. Going back to the classroom, I saw window glass strewn everywhere, covering the floor. While I desperately searched for the new school supplies my mother had just bought for me, I got cuts on my feet. I ran home down familiar roads with thatched roofs in the neighborhood burning fiercely around me. I was terrified.”
The six-year-old girl’s memories stop here. She lived in a farm family of seven: her mother, younger brother, grandparents, father’s sister (aunt) and younger brother (uncle). Her father was at the front. With most of the men gone for soldiers, the village was populated by women, children and the elderly. At the time of the atomic bombing, her mother was cleaning the house, her three-year-old son clinging to the sleeve of her kimono. At the sound of the blast, the little boy was blown about ten meters and dashed against the dirt floor entrance.
Hiroko’s aunt (20), who worked at the waterworks bureau, came back uninjured the next evening, but died three days later. Her uncle, who was in the 4th year of middle school, had been working as a mobilized student near the hypocenter. Amazingly, he returned home in good shape and jumped in to help the family. Even after the war ended he filled in the bomb shelter and planted vegetables. However, his hair soon fell out and he died on September 2.
“We had no idea all of these deaths were caused by the atomic bomb. A few days later, my mother went to see what had happened to her parents’ home. She put my brother and some vegetables in a cart and took me with her. We walked south two and a half hours to get there, passing near the hypocenter. We went home the same day.”
People and horses floating in the river, bloated to the bursting point. Dead people with their heads thrust into wells where they had sought water. Mountains of corpses piled along the road, covered in oil, then burned. These are scenes Hiroko must have seen, but they are gone from her memory. She believes she must have instinctively repressed those memories of terror.
“Going back and forth through the hypocenter area must have brought our misfortune. Eventually, my younger brother got a high fever that wouldn’t go away. The inside of his mouth turned black with ulcers. He died the next January 16—he had just turned four.
My brother’s death unhinged my mother. We lived with relatives who had lost family houses to the bomb, and it was getting harder and harder to get enough food. My mother, a farmer’s wife, had to work all the time. She didn’t have time to hold—much less care for—her small child sick in bed. My brother died alone, without my mother’s careful attention. He was the precious son and heir of his farm family, and my grandfather blamed my mother. He would say, ‘Why did you kill him? You should have died instead.’ He drove my mother crazy with his attacks. None of us had any idea that my brother was killed by radiation. My mother was consumed by guilt that she had killed her own son.
Every night she would got out to my brother’s gravestone in the backyard and hug it as she broke down sobbing. I stared at her from the small window in the toilet. Even as a six-year-old child, I could feel my mother’s grief. At that point, I stopped relying on my mother. I thereafter felt I had to protect her. I was angry at myself for surviving instead of my brother. I think this was the start of my rejection of the system we call ‘family’ and my defensiveness against men.”
In sixty years Hatakeyama watched several close relatives die of stomach cancer, lung cancer, and other diseases. Now 66 years old, heart problems frequently take Hiroko herself to the hospital. She has repressed her horrific memories and tried to forget the A-bomb, but has not been able to escape the aftereffects of radiation.
“The damage done by radiation can take decades to appear. Even so, many people never applied for a Survivors Health Book because they were so afraid of the social consequences to the family. Many A-bomb orphans never got married, and when they got cancer they died alone. The cruelty of radiation is that survivors have to fight the fear of death for 20 years or even 50 years.”
She has complex feelings about the US. “When I think of what America did, I shed tears of rage. Sometimes I want to kill. The US Press Code (censoring of A-bomb information) killed so many that might not have died otherwise. Even today I hate the United States. However, I might like a chance to talk about peace with American women. I might be able to share my pain with Black women who have suffered discrimination….”
Ms. Hatakeyama lives alone, but she has a daughter and a grandchild in elementary school. “Sometime I would like to tell my grandchild about my A-bomb experience. Out in nature, taking plenty of time, sometime…” Her face was a gentle smile.