(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 ninth of a series of posts in which we'll share their recollections of the horrifying events that occurred 70 years ago.)
Ms. Tsuyo Kataoka. Born 1921. 24 years old at time of Nagasaki bombing.
The Urakami Cathedral is an exquisite building of red brick. Nagasaki City’s Urakami district was long home to a Catholic community. Severe, protracted oppression of Christians began in the 16th century. Mass deportations were carried out until the beginning of the Meiji Era (1868). The Urakami Cathedral, built one brick at a time by persecuted believers over 30 years, symbolized both their martyrdom and their faith. At 11:02 a.m. on August 9, 1945, the atomic bomb exploded directly in front of the building, shattering it into a pile of ruins. Roughly 10,000 Catholics perished in the bombing.
The church was rebuilt after the war and remodeled in 1981, the year Pope Jean Paul paid a visit to Nagasaki.
Tsuyo Kataoka (84) is a devout Catholic. She never misses Sunday mass, but she never attended Urakami Cathedral until she turned 60. She could not bear to revisit the scene of her wretched A-bomb experience.
“I had been conscripted to work at Mitsubishi Munitions Plant at age 19. When I was 21, my family entered marriage talks for me, but the man I was in love with was drafted and killed in the war. So, at 24 I was unmarried, still working, and living with my mother.”
Tsuyo talked with a fervor that sent shivers through her slight frame. “That morning, an air-raid alert was lifted just after 6:00 a.m. But just after 11:00 I heard a strange sound. ‘Could it be an enemy plane? Even after the alert was cancelled?’ I stood under the eaves of the plant staring into the sky for about two minutes.I remember a flash like lightening, then I lost consciousness. When I came to, the factory was dead silent, not a sound. The building had collapsed, and I saw no one. I ran desperately for home. The area along the Urakami River was a scene out of hell. Were these people dead or alive? They stood transfixed, without clothes, burned so black I could not tell if they were male or female. Their hair stuck up like wire. ‘God, help these people!’ I prayed fervently. I had yet to notice my own burns.”
A short while later, she discovered that her body was burned and foul smelling. Both sleeves of her work uniform were gone and the skin on her exposed arms was pink. Her ragged monpe (cotton work pants) were melted into the burnt skin underneath. Her whole body began to tremble. “‘What about my mother?’ I took off again for home, heedless of the corpses under my feet. Bodies floated like ants on the Urakami River. Countless bodies piled up on both sides as well.”
She found her house destroyed, her mother standing in a daze. “Mother!” The moment Tsuyo clasped her mother, she fell over, sightless. The pain of full body burns had overcome her. Very quickly, flames enveloped the Urakami district. Tsuyo’s 69-year-old mother led her blind daughter by the hand to safety on the mountainside. They slept outside for four days. They lost thirteen family members.
In time, Tsuyo was carried to the underground floor of Saint Francisco Hospital, which had been destroyed and burned to the ground. “They laid me on the concrete. Blinded, I couldn’t tell day from night. Males and females alike shrieked continuously in derangement. Calls to God (from the many Catholics), cries of pain, demented cries—the walls and ceilings reverberated with them. We had no medicine. The fourth day, a doctor came, but he couldn’t treat us. We were like living corpses.
Around September 20, I could see again. ‘Mother, I see a faint light.’ Mother was overjoyed. The third day, I could see her face again. But that meant I could see my body too… The fingers of my hands were stuck together. I asked, ‘Mother, what does my face look like?’ ‘It’s burnt, just a little, but your life was saved, so now you have to do your best to live.’”
When Tsuyo recovered enough to walk around the hospital grounds, she would gaze at the shell of the Urakami Cathedral bleaching in the autumn sun and cry out in grief, “God, why did you not save us?”
Then something happened. “One day, I found a mirror fragment glinting in the hospital courtyard. Trembling, I picked it up and peered at my reflection. My face! I quickly threw the mirror away. How I wished I had died!”
To Catholics, suicide is a sin. But living was terribly painful. For many years, the disabled Tsuyo worked as a cleaning woman at the hospital to support herself and her aging mother.
“I cursed the atomic bomb. It took everything from me. Many around me killed themselves, but I clung to God’s teachings. Nevertheless, I stayed away from church. I could not bear to have my friends to see my ugly face.”
A surgeon took pity on her and performed surgery for free on her face and hands.
“When I was 60, when my keloids had subsided, the Pope came to Japan. He made a Peace Appeal in Japanese, saying, ‘War is the work of man.’ Previously, some believers had said ‘The A-bomb was divine providence.’ Half believing, half doubting, I could not argue against them. The words ‘War is the work of man’ finally brought relief to my heart.” Tsuyo saw the Pope in Nagasaki in 1981, then again in the Vatican the following year. It was like a dream. She began attending church again.
“My strength has diminished since my stomach cancer surgery last year. I also suffer Meniere disease. Life is hard. Every day I pray, ‘Please let me live.’ I want to continue in the peace movement as a way of honoring the late Pope in heaven.'
Pope Jean Paul II smiles gently in a photo beside the softly murmuring woman.