I knew a Hiroshima Survivor [View All]

My grandmother's best friend was a lady who had survived Hiroshima. When I was adopted, she volunteered to be my godmother, even though my parents are atheists. She was always trying to get us to go to church with her.

Masako and her husband used to get together with my grandparents and my folks and played cards just about every Friday night. My brother and I were supposed to be asleep, but we would often hide in the hallway and listen to their coversation.

One night, for some reason, Masako talked about Hiroshima. She talked about how she was at school that day. She talked about trying to get home after the blast, about the things she saw. She talked about how things got worse the closer she got to home, about how people were blind, and often horribly burned or missing skin off large portions of their bodies altogether. She talked about seeing a naked girl who seemed to have the pattern from her clothes burned into the flesh on her back. She said everywhere people were crying and moaning and begging for water. She said that the water was black and foul but that they would drink it anyway. She said that when she was in the hospital, a lady in a near-by bed seemed to "menstruate through her skin". The skin on her belly was weeping blood. The bleeding got worse. The lady didn't survive.

Masako survived. She left Japan, like many survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, because they were considered tainted by others in Japan. She married a Mexican-American man and they had four healthy children. Masako died of cancer. Her husband said she was just "eat up" with cancer, in her lungs, breasts, uterus, skin, stomach and brain. The doctor said that it was probably related to the fact that she smoked for the first few years she was in America.

I've never forgotten the things Masako said that night. I dream about them sometimes. My partner was presenting a paper on Hiroshima for an academic conference, and I was originally attracted to him in part because of this. I wonder sometimes if I would have been strong enough to continue Masako's journey from ruined schoolhouse to burned out home.

Edited for grammar.