EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT - 5

We took under our care fifty refugees who had lost everything.
The majority of them were wounded and not a
few had dangerous burns. Father Rektor treated the wounds
as well as he could with the few medicaments that we could,
with effort, gather up. He had to confine himself in general
to cleansing the wounds of purulent material. Even those
with the smaller burns are very weak and all suffered from
diarrhea. In the farm houses in the vicinity, almost everywhere,
there are also wounded. Father Rektor made daily
rounds and acted in the capacity of a painstaking physician
and was a great Samaritan. Our work was, in the eyes of
the people, a greater boost for Christianity than all our
work during the preceding long years.
Three of the severely burned in our house died within
the next few days. Suddenly the pulse and respirations
ceased. It is certainly a sign of our good care that so few
died. In the official aid stations and hospitals, a good third
or half of those that had been brought in died. They lay
about there almost without care, and a very high percentage
succumbed. Everything was lacking: doctors, assistants,
dressings, drugs, etc. In an aid station at a school at-

a nearby village, a group of soldiers for several days did
nothing except to bring in and cremate the dead behind the
school.
During the next few days, funeral processions passed our
house from morning to night, bringing the deceased to a
small valley nearby. There, in six places, the dead were
burned. People brought their own wood and themselves
did the cremation. Father Luhmer and Father Laures found
a dead man in a nearby house who had already become
bloated and who emitted a frightful odor. They brought
him to this valley and incinerated him themselves. Even
late at night, the little valley was lit up by the funeral pyres.
We made systematic efforts to trace our acquaintances
and the families of the refugees whom we had sheltered.
Frequently, after the passage of several weeks, some one
was found in a distant village or hospital but of many there
was no news, and these were apparently dead. We were
lucky to discover the mother of the two children whom we
had found in the park and who had been given up for dead.
After three weeks, she saw her children once again. In the
great joy of the reunion were mingled the tears for those
whom we shall not see again.
The magnitude of the disaster that befell Hiroshima on
August 6th was only slowly pieced together in my mind. I
lived through the catastrophe and saw it only in flashes,
which only gradually were merged to give me a total picture.
What actually happened simultaneously in the city as
a whole is as follows: As a result of the explosion of the
bomb at 8:15, almost the entire city was destroyed at a
single blow. Only small outlying districts in the southern
and eastern parts of the town escaped complete destruction.
The bomb exploded over the center of the city. As a
result of the blast, the small Japanese houses in a diameter
of five kilometers, which compressed 99% of the city, collapsed
or were blown up. Those who were in the houses
were buried in the ruins. Those who were in the open sustained
burns resulting from contact with the substance or
rays emitted by the bomb. Where the substance struck in
quantity, fires sprang up. These spread rapidly.
The heat which rose from the center created a whirlwind
which was effective in spreading fire throughout the whole
city. Those who had been caught beneath the ruins and
who could not be freed rapidly, and those who had been
caught by the flames, became casualties. As much as six
kilometers from the center of the explosion, all houses were
damaged and many collapsed and caught fire. Even fifteen
kilometers away, windows were broken. It was rumored
that the enemy fliers had spread an explosive and incendiary
material over the city and then had created the explosion
and ignition. A few maintained that they saw the planes
drop a parachute which had carried something that exploded
at a height of 1,000 meters. The newspapers called the

bomb an “atomic bomb” and noted that the force of the
blast had resulted from the explosion of uranium atoms,
and that gamma rays had been sent out as a result of this,
but no one knew anything for certain concerning the nature
of the bomb.