Hiroshima - a picture-based story.

My mother and father are dead. The Emperor surrendered when Tokyo was bombed – the radio stations all told us this. And yet they came. Iwo Jima, Hiroshima, and now Nagasaki. Does their bloodlust know no relent?

Apparently, the blast was hot enough to burn outlines of people onto the pavements – hundreds of thousands of degrees Celsius. We must leave soon – there are reports of people getting sick. Tokyo is near destroyed; I must go live with my sister in Okinawa – I must take my son, Kazuko. We have nothing. We are lucky to have the flesh on our backs. 

Why did this have to happen? Why? The birds are gone, the sky is dead, and yet everything is peaceful, and strangely beautiful. I would cry, but I don’t think I could ever stop; I don’t think tears will stand up to the iron, acid curtain above us. 

She holds her son tighter. He is confused. He wonders why on earth there’s a strange man with a strange thing on stilts in front of him. He is scared. He is cold.