The petechiae in particular became an obsession, a mark of death to those affected. Wounds never healed, they just broke and bled. Large ecchymoses developed where needles had been injected. Petechiae also appeared on limbs and pressure points.
In the days that followed, doctors from other cities arrived in Hiroshima to offer help, including doctors and a group of nurses from nearby Yamaguchi, carrying with them bandages and antiseptics.īut soon they began to notice signs of some sort of contagion in the city: at least, contagion was suspected when people - apparently uninjured - began to die.Īt first the vomiting and diarrhoea was thought to be dysentery and there were attempts amid the devastation to introduce some sort of quarantine to contain a possible outbreak. There were burns of course, and broken bodies and the enormous psychological trauma.ĭoctors like Dr Sasaki would attempt to sew up wounds - many of which were quickly becoming infected. In Hiroshima itself, the small number of doctors alive and still able to work struggled without blood supplies and all but the most basic medications. These people puzzled me until I suddenly realized that they had been burned and they were holding their arms out to prevent the painful friction of raw surfaces rubbing together. Others moved as though in pain, like scarecrows, their arms held out from their bodies with forearms and hands dangling. There were the shadowy forms of people, some of whom looked like walking ghosts. Gradually things around me came into focus. In one reservoir I saw one man, horribly burned, crouching beside another man who was dead. I saw fire reservoirs filled to the brim with dead bodies who looked as they had been boiled alive.
Streetcars were standing and inside were dozens of bodies, blackened beyond recognition. I saw nothing that wasn’t burnt to a crisp.
#HIROSHIMA AFTERMATH FULL#
Some looked as if they had been frozen by death while in the full action of flight others lay sprawled as though some giant had flung them to their death from a great height. My movements were ever so slow only my mind was running at top speed. It was all a nightmare - my wounds, the darkness, the road ahead.
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