AN OLD JAPANESE DOCTOR WHO SURVIVED HIROSHIMA
INTERVIEW AND PHOTO BY TOMOKAZU KOSUGA
TRANSLATED BY LENA OISHI
Japan is still (as of press time on this issue) the only country in the world that has been a victim of the atomic bomb. Since the demons dropped onto the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 63 years ago this past August, the country has continued to quietly suffer from the repercussions. One 91-year-old hibakusha [that’s Japanese for “A-bomb survivor”] doctor continues to call out the dangers and brutality of the A-bomb to the rest of the world. His name is Shuntaro Hida. On August 1, 1944, a year before the bomb dropped on the city, Dr. Hida was posted to Hiroshima’s army hospital as a military doctor. He experienced the bomb blast at just 3.5 miles away from its epicenter, and he has since seen everything there is to see as a doctor specializing in the treatment of A-bomb victims. Dr. Hida knows the effects of the bomb not only from the perspective of someone who was actually there but also from the specialized viewpoint of an army medic. It’s no wonder then that almost 6,000 radiation-sickness sufferers in Japan and around the world have sought his expertise. So what exactly happened on that fateful day in Hiroshima? Vice spoke to Dr. Hida, who remembers every single detail about the experience.
Vice: How did you manage to avoid being hit by the bomb directly, despite being in Hiroshima at the time?
Dr. Hida: I was dozing off on my futon the night before the bombing on August 6, when somebody suddenly shook me awake. It was an old man who came from Hesaka village, which is a couple of miles away from Hiroshima. His granddaughter had cardiac valvular disease and often had seizures, so I regularly went to the village to check up on her. That night she suffered another one, so I got on the back of the old man’s bicycle and he rode me to their place. This meant that I got out of Hiroshima just in time to be saved from being directly hit. I was exposed to the radiation, but from a distance of just over three miles from the epicenter.
Did you actually see the moment when the A-bomb was dropped?
Yes, I did. I think I’m the only person who actually saw it with his own eyes and then wrote about the experience later, because most people in Hiroshima were killed the instant they saw that bright flash of light.
Let me explain how I actually saw the bombing. I spent the night at the old man’s place after looking at the child. The next morning, I decided to give her a sedative before going back to the hospital, because if she woke up and started crying she might have another seizure. I took out a small syringe from my pocket, tilted it upward, and pushed out some liquid to let any air out. Suddenly I saw a plane flying above Hiroshima in front of me.
That must have been the Enola Gay. Tell us what you saw when the bomb hit Hiroshima.
The first thing I saw was the light. It was so bright that I was momentarily blinded. Simultaneously, I was surrounded by an intense heat. The bomb released a 4,000-degree heat wave in the instant that it hit the ground. I panicked, covered my eyes, and lay low on the floor. I couldn’t hear any noise and the trees weren’t rustling. I thought something was up, so I cautiously looked through the window toward where I’d seen the flash of light. The skies were blue with no cloud in sight, but there was this bright red ring of fire high up in the skies above the city! In the middle of the ring was a big white ball that kept growing like a thundercloud—this really round thing. It kept getting bigger and bigger until it finally hit the outer fire ring, and then the whole thing blew up into a huge red fireball. It was like I was witnessing the birth of a new sun. It was so perfectly round! When I was a child, I saw Asama Mountain erupt from really close up, but this was much more full-on. The clouds were white, but shining in rainbow colors as they rose up. It was really beautiful. People call it the “mushroom cloud” but it’s actually a pillar of fire: The bottom part is a column of flames and the top part is a fireball, which metamorphoses into clouds as it keeps rising up.
Then, below the pillar of fire, pitch-black clouds started spreading horizontally above the mountains surrounding Hiroshima. They consisted of sand and dust that were being pushed up from the ground due to the pressure generated from the blast. They were coming toward me like a tidal wave. We were on a hill and there was a cliff next to us, but the next moment the dust clouds had crept right up. Before I knew it, the old man’s house was swallowed up and crushed by the wave. Luckily the thatched roof acted as a cushion, saving the child and myself. It was then that I realized that something terrible must have happened, and rushed back to the hospital in Hiroshima on the old man’s bike.
CONTINUED
AN OLD JAPANESE DOCTOR | 1 | 2 | >
See all articles by this contributor Anonymous, on Aug 9, 2009 wrote:
This was an enlightening testimony...I hate this magazine. | | Anonymous, on Aug 7, 2009 wrote:
negotiate? with the people that bombed and kamikaze attacked pearl harbor without any prior aggression? | | Anonymous, on Aug 7, 2009 wrote:
they should have negotiated more. i read a quote in a book about einstein a long time ago that the americans considered renegotiating surrender with the japanese because they thought they had not made it clear that they would not remove the emperor. for whatever reason truman decided to drop the bomb instead.
i do not think it was the right choice. | | Anonymous, on Aug 6, 2009 wrote:
What’s done is done. Both sides have valid arguments. I’m never for killing innocents to end a war but over the long run it probably saved millions of lives and blah blah blah. Truman did what he did and there’s no turning back. We tried to stay out of this mess from the start and it WAS the Japanese that brought us into it. They shouldn’t have bit off more than they could chew. | | Anonymous, on Aug 6, 2009 wrote:
Wow! That puts things into perspective, it’s horrendous...almost make me wish the US never dropped the A-Bomb, but fought to the last man - but there would be more casualties. | |
| Vanzilla, on Aug 6, 2009 wrote:
’Japan and Germany had both convinced themselves that their people were some kind of superior race. We convinced them both otherwise.’ thats the most disgusting thing I’ve read today.... there is no way to justify dropping an A-Bomb! | | Anonymous, on Aug 6, 2009 wrote:
I mean obviously, I always imagined what happened to be horrific, but this is just mind-boggling. | | Anonymous, on May 11, 2009 wrote:
dunno | | Anonymous, on May 8, 2009 wrote:
Japan and Germany had both convinced themselves that their people were some kind of superior race. We convinced them both otherwise. Shame that it had to go down that way. | | Anonymous, on Jan 23, 2009 wrote:
Having been to Hiroshima myself all i can say is that it is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Beautiful beacuse of what the people have done after august 6th, not just to the land but to the way they treat people. The A-dome memorial centre had such a dramatic effect on me like nothing ive ever seen. Unless youve read or seen these horrors yourself, id shut the fuck up when it comes to bullshit comments. This incident should not be messed with by morons. | | Anonymous, on Nov 20, 2008 wrote:
I believe this man was interviewed in the outstanding documentary "White Light, Black Rain." Heartbreaking stories of nuclear holocaust survivors. | | Anonymous, on Nov 16, 2008 wrote:
To set the record straight: the bombs were dropped to force an unconditional (no more emperor, no more military) surrender. Before the bombs, Japan was offering a surrender, but with conditions (namely keeping imperial rule). | | Anonymous, on Nov 2, 2008 wrote:
"To any one that says that dropping the bomb was the only way to end the war, you do realize that the Japanese surrendered before the bomb was dropped?...we just choose to ignore it :("
Japan did NOT offer to surrender before the two atom bombs were dropped.
It wasn’t until AFTER the two bombs had been dropped and Russia’s entrance into the war against Japan that Japan surrendered.
| | Anonymous, on Nov 2, 2008 wrote:
We did not drop the bomb (bombs) after they surrendered, thats bullshit and is total "9/11 conspiracy theory". If we hand’t and invaded instead, you can bet the body count would have been MUCH higher for everyone. | |
| paddym, on Oct 28, 2008 wrote:
And Americans bitch about 9/11.... | | Anonymous, on Oct 24, 2008 wrote:
He looks like my grandad, same age too I think, they made some tough people in those days! The guro in this article feels a bit schadenfreude but maybe that’s just me. I for one think the translation is ok. | | Anonymous, on Oct 24, 2008 wrote:
hearttouching! | | Anonymous, on Oct 20, 2008 wrote:
They dropped both bombs on untouched cities because they wanted to know exactly what damage the bombs would cause. Every other city was burnt to the ground by this time. No journalists were aloud in to these cities and unfortunately not many details are known because of this. | | Anonymous, on Oct 20, 2008 wrote:
He has to live with the anxiety that he might one day develop cancer. Boo hoo, he’s 91 what does he expect at his age? | | Anonymous, on Oct 20, 2008 wrote:
maybe he was lucky enough to have the radiation give him superpowers (like spiderman). He must be over 80 years old! | |
| greven, on Oct 19, 2008 wrote:
congrats VICE
some meaningful interview rather than all the crap present in the site | | Anonymous, on Oct 19, 2008 wrote:
To any one that says that dropping the bomb was the only way to end the war, you do realize that the Japanese surrendered before the bomb was dropped?...we just choose to ignore it :( | | Anonymous, on Oct 18, 2008 wrote:
"and they never complained, or decided to ruin an entire region of the world in war against terror,"
Do you remember the 15 years that led up to the bomb? The Greater East Asian Coprosperity Sphere? The only reason they didn’t "complain"/retaliate is because their entire armed forces had been decimated over the course of the previous two years. How fucking stupid are the people who read this site today? | | Anonymous, on Oct 18, 2008 wrote:
"What fucking elderly japanese man speaks like this? "
It’s been translated into english you fucking dipshit. | | Anonymous, on Oct 18, 2008 wrote:
a futon is the fold-up mattress on the floor that japanese people sleep on | | Anonymous, on Oct 18, 2008 wrote:
To all the people complaining about anachronisms and language quirks or whatever: this is probably not the first time this man has told his story, and even if he was speaking in English there’s stuff that just doesn’t translate, like kinds of furniture. Anyway, why are you zeroing in on the friggin’ futon in the first place? | | Anonymous, on Oct 18, 2008 wrote:
fucking excellent | | Anonymous, on Oct 18, 2008 wrote:
"I thought something was up, so I cautiously"..."but this was much more full-on"... What fucking elderly japanese man speaks like this? Tell your intern he / she did a good job, vice. | | Anonymous, on Oct 18, 2008 wrote:
amazing. for everything they teach in schools, this is real life, real suffering, real consequences, real history. | | Anonymous, on Oct 18, 2008 wrote:
they had futons back then? | | | Next 30 comments > |
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