72nd anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima

What is more unreal than the damage done by the nuclear bomb? 

Today is the 72nd anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Three days later the US dropped the third atomic bomb detonated on earth on Nagasaki. Twenty-two years ago I wrote down the story this woman told, slowly, haltingly, in English, about when she was 13 years old that day in Nagasaki.

-Rebecca Solnit

The city was a flat sea in flames
and the dust from the sky
is complete
Sky is black

That time we don't feel anything.
Not fear
[she had a nail in her foot]
I do not feel pain
Nearby we have a big pan full of water
When I looked, no water, none, no fish

Under the house they are screaming Help me, help me
but there is no way I can help them.
Some of them they crawl because foot is smashed
And on the way is dead I had to pass one by one
After three days is smell....
from the dead people,
Even the clothes, even the money smell for long after
You could wash yourself, you smell
They bring body, part of body, and cremate it in open sky
and I hear that noise, I can't forget that noise---
excuse me but like a barbeque.
I couldn't touch the meat for many years.

Every time I see--I don't want to remember--but after fifty years I say, If I don't tell them who will?
I lose six members of my family and I can't cry, I am in shock, I say maybe it was burned, that's why I can't cry
[burnt man full of maggots screaming Help, please kill me]
some like mummy
and the skeleton all over the place
One time I find a string
My mother says don't touch
Now I think it was intestine
I had no shoes--because was inside the house
So we have to tear up our clothes to walk

I was drinking the dirty water because we had no water--no food, no medicine
Next thing I see body floating down towards me in the water

Most of the half-burned body is that way--eyes open, surprised

I don't even know how long I survive. Maybe tomorrow. Of course I have scar on side back arm
Doesn't show face leg

[man blackened exiting train, frozen in place, inside the train sitting there--of courses all dead, black burned]
It was so hot
Nagasaki is so hot.

But we can't make it
We are so sick
Infection from nail, spent one night in bamboo then decide to go back to grandmother's home
The Americans coming so we [young girls] all have to cut hair
but I no cut hair

Every time you comb like this hair comes out
gum start losing teeth start losing
I was so skinny, my grandmother could pick it [me?] up
My cousins started dying one by one
They die
They didn't have big scar, they die from radiation symptoms
They start vomiting
It is black, black
The plutonium in Nagasaki is different
Whatever comes out is black.

Grandmother took us to hospital but they say we cannot help you
We stayed there in the hospital
My mother starts getting very sick
pimple spots all over stomach is bloated
Every day she is by the train: Father come home
Of course he didn't come
And her condition was so bad that no one would go near....
smell like decay
from her nose it looks like black oil comes out
Whatever comes out is turned to black
I don't understand it

Uncle took back to his my grandmother's home
and on the way she drink the spring water
and she say
delicious
and those were her last words.
Then she was at peace
She had been in hell.

When I saw those bones I thought, I said
Am I living
or am I dreaming,
in other world
and that's why I am here speaking.