Hiroshima

Hiroshima


Chapter 1 – A Noiseless Flash

The story starts out by a mini intro of the characters. Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the East Asia Tin Works, was sitting down talking to the girl of the next desk. Dr. Fuji was sitting down the Osaka Asahi on the porch of his private hospital. Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura, a tailor's widow, stood by the window of her kitchen, watching a neighbor tear down his house. Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge, a German priest, reclined in his underwear on a cot on the top floor of his order's mission house. Dr. Terufumi Sasaki, a young member of the surgical staff of the city's Red Cross Hospital, walked along in the halls carrying a blood specimen. Reverend Mr. Kiyoshi Tanimoto, a pastor of the Hiroshima Methodist was carrying some of his possessions to a rich man's house in fear of the massive B-29 raid, which everyone expected Hiroshima to suffer.


Reverend Mr. Tanimoto

Mr. Tanimoto was a small man, quick to talk, laugh, and cry. His hair parted in the middle and rather long; the prominence of the frontal bones just above his eyebrows and the smallness of hi mustache, mouth, and chin gave him a strange, old-young look, boyish and yet wise, weak and yet fiery. He woke up a 5:00 because he could not sleep. He was worrying about his wife and kids, and a massive raid on their town. Mr. Tanimoto had studied theology at Emory College, in Atlanta, Georgia. He started to carry his things and belongings from the church with his friend Mr. Matsuo to Mr. Matsui's house, a man who let a large number of his friends and acquaintances, so that they might evacuate whatever they wished to a safe distance from the target area. Mr. Tanimoto and Mr. Matsuo made a quick stop to Mr. Matsuo's house to carry a large Japanese cabinet. They arrived to Mr. Matsui's house tired and exhausted. A tremendous flash of light cut across the sky. They were 2 miles from the center of the explosion. Mr. Matsuo dived in the bedrolls. Mr. Tanimoto took four or five steps... [continues]

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