EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT - 4

We take off again with the hand cart. The bright day now
reveals the frightful picture which last night’s darkness had
partly concealed. Where the city stood everything, as far
as the eye could reach, is a waste of ashes and ruin. Only
several skeletons of buildings completely burned out in the
interior remain. The banks of the river are covered with
dead and wounded, and the rising waters have here and
there covered some of the corpses. On the broad street in
the Hakushima district, naked burned cadavers are particularly
numerous. Among them are the wounded who
are still alive. A few have crawled under the burnt-out autos
and trams. Frightfully injured forms beckon to us and
then collapse. An old woman and a girl whom she is pulling
along with her fall down at our feet. We place them on
our cart and wheel them to the hospital at whose entrance
a dressing station has been set up. Here the wounded lie on
the hard floor, row on row. Only the largest wounds are
dressed. We convey another soldier and an old woman to
the place but we cannot move everybody who lies exposed
in the sun. It would be endless and it is questionable whether
those whom we can drag to the dressing station can come
out alive, because even here nothing really effective can be
done. Later, we ascertain that the wounded lay for days in
the burnt-out hallways of the hospital and there they died.
We must proceed to our goal in the park and are forced
to leave the wounded to their fate. We make our way to
the place where our church stood to dig up those few belongings
that we had buried yesterday. We find them intact.
Everything else has been completely burned. In the
ruins, we find a few molten remnants of holy vessels. At
the park, we load the housekeeper and a mother with her
two children on the cart. Father Kleinsorge feels strong
enough, with the aid of Brother Nobuhara, to make his
way home on foot. The way back takes us once again past
the dead and wounded in Hakushima. Again no rescue
parties are in evidence. At the Misasa Bridge, there still
lies the family which the Fathers Tappe and Luhmer had
yesterday rescued from the ruins. A piece of tin had been

placed over them to shield them from the sun. We cannot
take them along for our cart is full. We give them and those
nearby water to drink and decide to rescue them later. At
three o’clock in the afternoon, we are back in Nagatsuka.
After we have had a few swallows and a little food, Fathers
Stolte, Luhmer, Erlinghagen and myself, take off once
again to bring in the family. Father Kleinsorge requests that
we also rescue two children who had lost their mother and
who had lain near him in the park. On the way, we were
greeted by strangers who had noted that we were on a
mission of mercy and who praised our efforts. We now
met groups of individuals who were carrying the wounded
about on litters. As we arrived at the Misasa Bridge, the
family that had been there was gone. They might well have
been borne away in the meantime. There was a group of
soldiers at work taking away those that had been sacrificed
yesterday.
More than thirty hours had gone by until the first official
rescue party had appeared on the scene. We find both children
and take them out of the park: a six-year old boy who
was uninjured, and a twelve-year old girl who had been
burned about the head, hands and legs, and who had lain
for thirty hours without care in the park. The left side of
her face and the left eye were completely covered with
blood and pus, so that we thought that she had lost the
eye. When the wound was later washed, we noted that the
eye was intact and that the lids had just become stuck together.
On the way home, we took another group of three
refugees with us. They first wanted to know, however, of
what nationality we were. They, too, feared that we might
be Americans who had parachuted in. When we arrived in
Nagatsuka, it had just become dark.