Susumu Amato, 85, and his wife Yurie, 83, Minami Ward, Hiroshima

Grateful for their survival

Susumu (left) and Yurie at home

Couple relives day of bombing, including death of wife's sister

Each year, as August 6 approaches, Yurie Amato, 83, and her husband Susumu, 85, reaffirm the feeling: "It was a terrible experience, but we're glad we survived." They express gratitude for the lives fate has given them.

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Yurie at around the age of 12

Back in August of 1945, Yurie was 17, a second-year student at Hiroshima Second Municipal Girls' High School (now, Funairi High School). On August 6, the day of the atomic bombing, she was working as a mobilized student at a factory in Nishi Ward, about 1.5 kilometers from the hypocenter. Given the task of cleaning canteens, she was standing in front of a mirror, set to tie a towel around her head. At that moment she heard a loud boom and saw a flash of orange. The building shook and then collapsed.

Yurie found herself under the wreckage of the building. She was able to crawl out, but discovered glass fragments stuck in her back and her face. Looking back, she recalled: "In a single moment I was changed into a young girl covered with blood and dust." Her left hand was injured, too, and she couldn't move two of her fingers.

When she returned to her home in Naka Ward, she found that her house had burned to the ground. She was reunited with her anxious mother, Fusa, 63 at the time, at an evacuation site. They were unable to find her sister, Hideko, 36, who was working as a hairdresser.

Hideko had run a hair salon out of her home, but the house was slated to be dismantled in order to create a fire lane in the event of air raids. Yurie later heard from an acquaintance that, on the morning of August 6, Hideko had gone to a house in the neighborhood to discuss locating a new site for her hair salon. She likely was buried underneath that fallen house.

Yurie and her mother gathered up the bones that seemed to be her sister's remains, wrapping as many as they could with a white cloth. As the father had passed away some time before, Hideko's livelihood had been keeping the family afloat. "I feel sorry for my sister," Yurie said, choking back tears. "She supported our family instead of getting married, then sacrificed her life for the country."

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In 1953 she married Susumu, who is also an A-bomb survivor. On the day of the bombing, Susumu was 18 years old and he was working at the Toyo Kogyo factory (now, Mazda, a major automobile maker). After working the night shift, he had a day off on August 6. He was near the Tsurumibashi Bridge, about 1.5 kilometers from the hypocenter, when the bomb exploded. The blast blew him into the air and he landed in the river.

He had severe burns on the left side of his body. No proper medicine was available, though, so he fashioned a home remedy which was rumored to be effective. He mixed bone meal, usually used as fertilizer, with oil and rubbed this concoction onto his burned skin. His body still bears keloid scars today.

Susumu now feels pain in the joints of his legs and he spends most of the day in bed. "It might be hard for young people today to understand our experience," he said. "But atomic bombs and war are evil things."

Yurie recalled her younger days as a teenager, when war shadowed everything around them, and said: "Children today are happy. If they make the effort, their dreams can come true. I hope they'll give it their best." (Sakiko Masuda, Staff Writer)